Frugal Friday......the April 17th Edition

Still no Friday freebies at Weis or Fantastic Friday Deals there but let's still see what frugal wins we can pull out of our asses hats from this past week.

* On Sunday I was making lasagna for Easter but was low on mozzarella cheese.  Going through my meat/cheese drawer in the fridge I found these.......

String cheese sticks I had gotten in Feb. 50% off on clearance AND an Ibotta cash rebate on.  Since they were mozzarella I cut them into small coins and mixed with my reg. shredded cheese to put into the lasagna.  Win/win!

*  I had Hubs pick up my Easter freebie last Friday with my Weis points.  I had him get one of these boneless dinner hams.

I had used the one from the freezer for his birthday dinner(instead of Easter)and Ex-College Boy really liked it so we got another to put into the freezer for future dinners.

*  I found money!

I had to drive Hubs to his eye shot appointment on Wednesday but they wouldn't let any one in besides the patients so it was either sit in the car for up to an hour or go to Maines restaurant supply nearby.  I found this penny walking up to the door to Maines.

* And speaking of Maines.......I got a few good deals in there though most were in restaurant quantities.

10 lbs. of flour wasn't a "great" buy but still less for Gold Medal at Weis(PMITA)Markets.
If you can't find baking supplies try your local restaurant supply store if they let the public in.  With many restaurants closed or doing less business since they are restricted to take-out/carry out meals the restaurant supply stores should be stocked with anything you need.

I also got these cans of pineapple juice there for .99¢ each with use by dates to the end of 2022.  Theses run $2.50 or more at the grocery stores around here.  I now make my own Sweet and Sour Sauce and this is an ingredient.  And if not for that, for Summer cocktails(Pina Coladas anyone?).

While we were out on this side of town I hit up P and R Discount Outlet while Hubs went to Lowe's and found Ex-College Boy's favorite coffee for cheap.  They also had a new flavor called "Florida" which is a caramel flan so I picked one of those up.

Then the other day I realized we were on our last bottle of yellow mustard when I made deviled eggs so I picked up  another bottle for cheap there as well.

*  By the time we were done with Hubs' eye doc and the my food errands it was lunch time so we used a discount code Hubs got on his account and got lunch here...

Primo Hoagies are a Philly based business but we have a couple of franchises here so we did our part to help a small business by getting lunch to take home.

*  I had Hubs call our car insurance provider since I heard many were giving discounts/reductions/credits on future bills due to the pandemic and folks just aren't driving or driving as much.
State Farm is giving a 25% discount from mid-March to the end of May on your car insurance bill.
Of course we received our renewal bill that day so we won't actually see a discount until the bill that comes in November. lolz

But that $109.45 discount will be welcomed when it does arrive.

*  We decided to put Chester and Dixie on the dog food Chester and Cinnamon use to eat when the grand dog lived here.  The best deal on this variety is the 41 lb. bag.  For some reason the Chewy site kept crashing so I bought it on Amazon.  I also put it on Subscribe and Save so saved 5% this order.

I also ordered 4 types of dog treats too(the ones in the blue bag are Chester's absolute favorite and I can't find large bags of them here anymore).  All these qualify for the Subscribe and Save program on Amazon so we'll get various % off every order.

The best part is I used credit card points to pay for it all so nothing OOP. yay

And that's about all I have that's frugal this week.

Be safe, stay home if you can and tell us about your frugal wins lately.

Sluggy

Frugal Friday......the July 5th Edition

Not much frugal-ness around Chez Sluggy this past week(I didn't really go anywhere, even Rite-Aid, and didn't find any change sigh)but here's the recap of what did happen.......

*  I got the Friday Freebie at Weis(PMITA)Markets............

A free container of cottage cheese.  Back in the day, I always used cottage cheese instead of ricotta when I made lasagna or stuffed shells.  Back then you couldn't find ricotta in the supermarket down South or if you did it was a very pricey specialty item.
After we were married a year and we moved to NJ, ricotta was widely available and I began using that in my Italian dishes.
I have gotten back into a habit of using cottage cheese in these Italian dishes again after getting better deals/coupons for cottage cheese.  I think the cc has more flavor than ricotta so this is a great item for me to get for free! ;-)


*  I noticed that we were low on checks for our bank account so I ordered new ones.

They came in quickly and with this bank's checking account, if we get the basic checks(no designer or branded logos, just plain old safety checks)they cost us ZERO.  I'll forgo dogs or peace signs on my checks to get them for FREE!

*  I hit Weis last Friday for the free cottage cheese, fresh tomatoes and almond milk for Hubs and happened upon trash bags on clearance as well as some Pam spray oil........

$16.45 for everything pictured(including sales tax)and they were all at least 50% off. 8-))

*  I had Hubs pick up ground beef and onions since his eye doctor appointment on Tuesday was right by the Restaurant Supply Store.  We needed the ground beef for grilling burgers(on the 3rd instead of the 4th since Ex-College Boy worked on the 4th).  I also made a big meatloaf on Tuesday and will be making some meatballs out of what is left of the bag o' meat.

I like to buy my onions in a large quantity at either a farm stand or the restaurant supply store. It is more cost effective to buy these in bulk.  25 lbs. for $14.99 makes them .60¢ a lb.  Onions in the grocery store in those little 2 lbs.bags can run you $1.49 each and specialty onions(red/Vidalia/etc.)can run you up to $2.49 per lb.  Next week the Shursave Market has 2 lb. bags of yellow onions on sale, 2 bags for $3. That costs out to .75¢ per lb. which is a really good price and if I didn't have room for 25 lbs. of onions I'd be all over that deal! lolz

My other gripe with those small bags of onions is the onions can be TINY!  Tiny onions means you are getting more onions skins and less usable parts of the onion thus they cost you even more buying them that way.
Quite a few years ago I made a root cellar for myself in my garage so I can store things like onions, potatoes, root veggies longer.  It's just a small Rubbermaid type tub with paper bags inside but it does a great job of keeping the produce dark and cool and keeping most items from bolting/sprouting.  If the temps get too cold for consecutive days(like below Zero, which doesn't happen too often around here)I can bring whatever is in the root cellar into my pantry closet in the kitchen.

*  I bought celery.....I know everybody is gasping about how un-frugal buying celery is lately. lolz
I like to snack on celery in the Summer and I had found my favorite roasted red pepper cream cheese dip at a produce market in W-B and had stocked up.  So I needed to get some celery. I ended up at the Shursave Market after seeing the insane price of celery at Weis(PMITA)Markets.  Shursave had 2 options--a bunch of celery in a bag for $2.99 or celery hearts on sale 2/$5(or $2.50 each).
So I took a bag of each to the scale and weighed them both.
The bunch of celery was very thin and didn't even weigh in at 1 lb.
The celery hearts was labeled 1 lb. but weighed in at over 2 lbs!  I checked other packages of the celery hearts to see if this was an anomaly but no, they ALL weighed at least 2 lbs.!
So guess which one I bought? ;-)  I paid $2.50 a pack for celery hearts weighing 2+ lbs. which meant  I paid $1.25 per lb. instead of $2.99 for a bunch that was barely 1 lb. in weight.

Moral of this story.....even if a produce item is marked with a weight, always weigh it yourself to see what it actually weighs.  Don't let the grocery stores rip you off!!! 8-)

*  This won't happen until next weekend but I wanted to mention it today.....

It's been confirmed that that the next 20% off everything Friends and Family Sale at Big Lots is going to be July 13th and 14th(Saturday and Sunday).  I have already started my list of what I want/need to get during this sale--including toilet paper, baby wipes, hydrogen peroxide to name a few.
I don't need a lot right now but it helps me stay organized if I go in with a written list.  Otherwise I'd just start picking up things because they are cheap but we don't necessarily need them right now.

Planning ahead is how you start to live a frugal life.

What frugal wins did y'all have this week?
Tell us all about it.


Sluggy