August 29 - Sept 4, 2010
Mama Duck
Not going into apologies.. just restarting my happy little home blog, lol.

We moved last week into a new apartment. A new, bigger place with a dining room and no carpeted kitchen!!! The new place is great, and the neighbors seem wonderful. Already helped us out with a car issue on a truck we borrowed for the move just because. Peanut doesn't get to roam free anymore and I think she's sad over that, but I also think she and I are going to start going for longer walks down the road.. now that we live on a road with a wide shoulder.

I'm very excited to have a normal looking home that easily accommodates company. We had my IL's over for dinner last weekend, and my mom was supposed to be this weekend.. but was too tired (she still  works overnights). Planning menu's with Sunday dinners is more fun now that I can share meals with friends and family.

This weeks menu is:
Sunday- Mustard Crusted Salmon, wild rice blend, vegetable medley
Monday - Hot dogs, tossed salad, macaroni salad
Tuesday - Spaghetti and Meatballs, tossed salad
Wednesday - grilled chicken salad
Thursday - mu shu pork, steamed veggies
Friday - take out?
Saturday - Luau party!!! Pineapple and shrimp skewers, rum glazed ribs, terriyaki chicken on a stick, cucumber salad, tossed salad, homemade fruit punch

the luau party is because it's our month for a small group get together we started back in april. My gf found an affordable and easy tiki party menu which helped as my original plan was serve grilled pineapple on the burgers, lol.

my shopping list is well planned, although I need to hit up 2 stores to get everything. Its not terrible though as one is near a laundromat ( no more washer and dryer for me, sigh) so I can do laundry and shop at the same time.
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"phoof!..cough..cough..achhhhoooooo!...phoof"
Mama Duck
Guess a little bit of dust has settled onto my little blog here. In the spirit of spring cleaning and getting back to routines and such I'm dusting it off to once again track menu planning and cost saving tracking.

DH and I have been having a good ole bout of issues stemming from his health and have gotten a little lazy about attention to detail in regards to budgetting groceries and planning meals. Needless to say our grocery spending is once again over what it should be. However I haven't had the heart to see how much and have decided on a clean slate.


Today I had to go grocery shopping. we were basically down to a few cans of soup and cereal in the pantry. It was getting a little desperate for organized, instead of on the fly, shopping. So off I went to 3 stores with a 3 year old. I'm happy to say we survived quite well.. and the only bad thing was a result of me rushing to do things when I got home.. and being exhausted.. and an incident with a large bread knife.,.. a new dvd to open.. and a finger of mine. OOps.. guess thats why they say not to play with knives. All's well except that I am sporting a Diego bandaid on my finger. Bandaids are now on the top of the next shopping list, lol.


Now for the menu. Week of April 25 - May , 2010


Sunday - Gourmet Burgers with a topping of brie and carmelized onions, side of tossed salad
Monday - leftovers - JP will be at grandparents all day and DH will be mooching dinner off of them. I work till 7 and am not cooking a dinner when I get home.
Tuesday -Meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy, steamed italian veggies
Wednesday - Tikki Masala (box mix from target to try) -sched is the same as Monday but I'll make this before leaving for work or make it tues afternoon
Thursday - Malaysian fried chicken over rice, haven't made this in ages and have some awesome curry for it
Friday - Meatball parm sandwiches
Saturday - chicken alfredo over linguini


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unplanned week, coupon savings so far and the menu for this week
Mama Duck
Some weeks I just don't get arounnd to menu planning. For the week of  10/4 - 10/10 I had no plan. Luckily we made out fine thanks to coupons, but it wasn't the healthiest of choices.

Monday and Wednesday were Quizno's subs- Buy 1 get one of same size free.
Tuesday - chicken fried rice
Thursday - chicken cutlets
Friday - sandwiches after grocery shopping
Saturday - spaghetti and meatballs

the Quizno's coupons were a huge savings. $8 on Monday and for some reason $9 on Wed. Works for me, lol

I've been having a really eye opening experience with my coupons and smarter shopping. I now look thru the circulars much more carefully, usually while relaxing and watching TV. Doing this I am starting to stock up on items that we'll use and while using coupons as well.

I added up my savings since I started using the Couponizer... in 2.5/3 weeks of use I have saved $110.  Not bad when my first goal was to have the couponizer pay for itself at a mere $23.70, lol. What I have also noticed though is that we are not doing a full grocery shopping every week. Now we have enough to go every other week, with just a brief trip during the week for little things. Generally not more then $10.00. I'll have to start tracking that so I know the savings there as well.I'm also starting to stockpile a 3 or 4 month supply of items so that I do not have to buy them if not on sale. we have enough laundry detergent for 5 months I think, lol.

This morning I was reading a news report where food prices are once again predicted to rise in 2010. Thats giving me more incentive to be even more diligent with being smarter with grocery costs.

Now to this week's menu... 10/11 - 10/17/2009

Monday -Barber's Chicken Cordon Blue
Tuesday - potato battered cod
Wednesday - Slow Cooker Pot Roast
Thursday - Spaghetti and Meatballs
Friday - Quizno's - coupons good till 10/25
Saturday - chicken parmigian
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Meal Planning 9/27 - 10/3
Mama Duck
Sunday - Dinner at the IL's- taking something made of apples for a desert I think. not quite sure yet though

Monday - Pizza
Wednesday -Italian Wedding Soup and homemade bread - at least Joe can make the soup easy enough, lol

Thursday - Crockpot chili
Friday -  Dinner at Chez` Fridge......aka Leftovers!
Saturday - Grilled chicken salad
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The Couponizer
Mama Duck

I'm always looking to save money on the cost of food. Coupons are a great way to do this, but having them in an envelope or one of those small, velcro tabbed file systems was not working. First off an envelope is just to unorganized.. the small file systems leave it to you to either sit and wonder at the best categories to put on the tabs.. or to buy 2 sets to have a tab for each suggested label they give you. Now I'm sure many do perfectly well with  these methods.. but it was not working for me. I had found the website for the Couponizer some time ago. While I liked the look of it... $20 for a coupon organizing system seemed a little pricey.  I finally caved. My husband does not want to set a budget when it comes to food. So I told him fine, then we will start using coupons more and more.

Being me I found a coupon for $1.00 or $2.00 off the purchase of the  Couponizer system.. with shipping the total price was $23.70. I did NOT tell hubby till it arrived. He thought I was nuts to spend that much to sort coupons to save money. I told him that my goal was to have it pay for itself in the first month and then anything else was a bonus.. my ultimate goal is to have one or more of those trips where I buy oodles of items.. and pay less then $10.00, lol.

Today was my first official day of using the Couponizer. 2 local stores had fabulous sales to begin with, and are close together, so we did both. Well I'm please to say that the Couponizer did very well. I planned my shopping with the circluars and used the enclosed shopping list with the ones with coupons checked off.  Then  had my potential use coupons neatly in the section for  'coupons for this shopping trip'  I had a large stack of coupons and that did cost me time in sorting thru the stack to find the one I wanted, but was a learning curve. As I found the items and my coupons i placed them in the pocket for 'checkout' and headed to checkout. At the first store I saved $10.69 with the coupons. In the second store I saved $13.23 for a total of $23.92. Plus was able to find a coupon for $1.00 off for an item that the woman ahead of me had. While I hoped to have it pay in the first month.... my Couponizer paid for itself in the first day!  I was very impressed. The checkout woman asked me about it in the first store and I gave her the website name www.thecouponizer.com to check it out for herself. (If you're reading this post please click on my affiliate link in the upper right hand side to get to the website.)

To give you an idea of my new shopping buddy I thought you'd enjoy some pictures:



the outside of the organizer on top and what you get with the system on the bottom.




one section of the coupon mat on top and the entire thing stretched out on the bottom. There are a lot of categories, lol.


 These pictures show the pockets. On the top is the pocket for 'Coupons for this shopping trip' and 'Checkout'. Pretty self explanatory. On the bottom, when its time to put the coupons in the organizer sections, each section of the organizer has it's own corresponding  pocket. Just take them off the sorter and put them in the correct pocket, quick and easy.



The picture on the top shows the additional categories other then groceries. There are sections for entertainment and travel, shops and retail, restaurants and a few others. I love having a pocket for rebates as I never keep my rebate forms where I can find them. On the bottom is the last pocket which has a nice list for tracking coupons and the savings.

The front and back have a nice sturdy piece of lightly frosted plastic to protect the book. A purchase well made in my eyes and experience.

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Weekly Menu 9/20 - 9/26/09
Mama Duck
Sunday - Oriental Shark Steak


1 ½ lb. shark steak sliced into ¾ inch thick steaks
¼ cup soy sauce
1Tb sesame oil
1Tb olive oil
2TB lemon juice
1/4tsp ground ginger
1 clove garlic
1tsp prepared mustard
1/2tsp sugar

Directions:
Combine all ingredients except shark steaks in shallow baking dish. Add steaks and marinate about 1 hour, turning half way through. Pour off excess marinade and reserve. Broil shark steaks about 4 or 5 minutes on each side, brushing with reserved marinade when turning. Makes 4 servings.


Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Spaghetti and Meatballs
Wednesday - Chicken and Dumplings
Thursday- Oriental sausage stir fry - this should be interesting. This is a sausage made in a local grocery store that is dark pink and supposedly tastes like boneless spare ribs.
Friday - chicken cutlets ala joe
Saturday - Chicken fried rice, heavy on the chicken and veggies and not so much the rice



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9/13/09 - 9/19/09 Menu
Mama Duck
Sunday - Stuffed Pepper Casserole
I have a bag of frozen green pepper strips in the freezer. So instead of traditional stuffed peppers, I'll layer the dish and make a casserole out of it. I'll also be using brown rice instead of white and some mashed white beans mixed in with that (Thanks for that idea Dani!)
Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup with fresh baked bread
this will be so easy as I made the chicken noodle soup tonight. I'll freeze a portion and just toss the frozen soup in the crockpot mid day for a nice easy dinner
Wednesday - Leftover night
Thursday - Herb Crusted London Broil with tuscan salad and baked potatoes. Apple Bread for desert with light whipped cream.
This week I cleaned my spice jars and restocked up on fresh herbs at the health food store. 10 varieties of fresh, organic, dried herbs cost me $7.81! Plus I have no big jars lying around with herbs that will go stale.
Friday - Malaysian Fried Chicken and rice 
I'm going to try this in a crockpot, less fat then frying the chicken and Joe can put it on mid day.
Saturday - Spaghetti and meat balls

If anyone is wondering how Joe managed with the hip surgery and the crockpot... he did just fine. He walked out of the surgery with no crutches or cane, fully weight bearing... and managed to avoid lifting the crockpot completely.

My new crockpot has been given a very thorough test run this week. It has made a couple of batches of bbq chicken drumsticks (good for lunches) , a crockpot roasted sticky chicken (too salty, I'd almost leave the salt out), chicken noodle soup, baked ziti and tomorrow it's making the brown rice for the week. It has performed like a champ and my only near miss was the ziti.. but that should have had more sauce anyway.
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