Hog Love & My Usual Breakfast

I am truly in mourning here today.
I just discovered that we are down to our last package of bacon.

Once upon a time there use to be regular bacon deals when I could stock up on that magical meat product until the next deal rolled around.
The last bacon stock-up deal was at Price Chopper back in 2010.  You can read about it HERE.
If you don't want to look, the deal was 4 packs of bacon for $10.98 total and a $7 Catalina Q.....so after the 1st transaction I was paying $1 a package for 1lb. of bacon.
Stupidly easy and cheap!!!

Well, we are down to the last package.
And while I KNOW in this economy and inflationary period that I won't find $1 bacon now, I've been looking around for the last 2+ months for a real deal on bacon.
And the best I've been able to come up with is $3.49 a package....and only once that low.  The other best prices have all been about $4 a package.
And I'm having a hard time getting myself to pay that for bacon.....because I hold out hope of finding it for a better price after sales/Qs/whatever.

So I shed a tear today for the depletion of my stash of "the gods elixir".
Bacon, how we hardly knew ye......


And since I don't have any pork products to fry up this morning I rustled up my "go-to" breakfast instead.

Have a look at my "go-to" breakfast.

It's plain Greek Yogurt(for my digestion).
I put a tablespoon of flax seeds(for my heart) on it.
Then I put a teaspoon of local honey(for my allergies)on it.
Finish it off with a 1/4 cup of granola with nuts and raisins(nuts for protein and 'cuz I like granola)on top.  If I don't have granola I break up some walnuts and add those instead.

Along side is a banana, though sometimes it's an orange or an apple or some other whole fruit.  The fruit is to help get things moving....if you know what I mean. ;-) 
It also helps ward off scurvy, you know, if I ever decide to take to the sea and become a pirate.

In warm months I have a big glass of ice water, in cold months a big mug of red zinger herbal tea or something similar to wash this all down.


What price are you willing to pay for bacon? 

What is your "go-to" breakfast?

Sluggy 

Randomly Yours Monday

**My sleep schedule has been off for a week now.
I am wide awake at the crack of dawn.....so unlike me.
Then I crash and nap by noon and wake up again around 2 or 3pm.
Then I am wore out by 9pm and crawl back into bed.....and it starts all over again the next day.

I know this schedule is like most people's out there but my usual schedule is to to go to bed between 2 and 7 am, sleep until 2pm, nap again around 7pm for 2 or 3 hours and then up by 10pm until 2am or later and start it all over again the next 24 hours.
I have always been a night person and find I am much more productive at night.

Anybody else have unusual sleeping/waking patterns?

**And no, I haven't been to Rite-Aid this week yet.....but the week is young yet!lol
Anybody else been yet?  What did ya get??

**I have a Meal Plan figured out for this week to as far as Tuesday.lol  Last week I hardly cooked at all.  Only one night getting take-out too.  Seems the teens have hardly eaten here all last week so when I cooked something it lasted for 3 meals or so for just Hubs and I.....meaning I didn't need to cook but 2 times.

**I just found 2 high value coupons over on AllYou dotcom.  1--It's a Scott products Q for $2.50/1 on the purchase of 8 or more roll package of Scott Extra Soft Bath Tissue or a 4 or more roll package of Scott Towels.   Print it now for any upcoming TP deals.  2--It's a $2.50/1 Kendall/AMD Wound Care Product(they make bandages, etc.) Q.  Rite-Aid has a sale/+Ups deal coming up on Kendall/AMD products in a week.

**After slacking off on the decluttering/donating the last couple of months, I sent 2 loads to Sallie's last week.  No pretty pictures though....

**And from the annals of "The Grocery Store Powers That Be Heard Me"......I saw a Catalina Deal in the Price Chopper(northeast) Sales Flyer from my Sunday paper yesterday involving.....BACON!
Woohoo!!!
It's a Hormel Catalina.....Spend $10-$14.99/Get $3 OYNO Cat Q, Spend $15-$19.99/Get $5 OYNO Cat Q, and Spend $20 or More/Get $7 OYNO Cat Q.
Price Chopper has historically gone off of the reg. retail shelf price to figure spending threshold levels(not the sale prices on the participating items),but I haven't been in awhile so I'll be taking a trip to the store tomorrow to test the waters.  When my coupons arrive in the next couple of days I'll be all ready to stock-up then on some Pork Love. ;-)

**I got something rigged up for my Eggplant plants, in hopes that I could keep them alive long enough for the tiny eggplants to grow enough to be edible.
First I took a clear plastic gallon milk jug and cut the bottom off of it so I could put it over the plant.
That would have been quick and easy but the plant was too tall.  I then considered taking more milk jugs, cutting the bottom and tops off and leaving the sides(making a big plastic square)that I could duct tape together to make the 1st milk jug taller.  But that idea fizzled out once I started the cutting.lol

Then Hubs and I came up with this.....

We put a tomato cage on each plant.
Then we took a drum liner.....it's a HUGE clear plastic bag(used to line metal drums, like oil drums).....and put it over 2 cages at a time. 
Then we used pieces of bricks to hold down the edges of the liner to keep out the cold and keep the liner from sailing off with the first stiff wind gust.
It turned out to be a quick and easy fix with no cutting or taping involved.  Plus we can reuse the bag. ;-)

Two days out and so far so good.
I don't know how much time I can by these eggplants though since we will probably get our first freezing night later this week. 8-(

**October is almost 2/3 over!  I was adding last week's grocery spending to my budget book and realized that.  Speaking of grocery spending, I spent $37.89 last week.....fresh fruit, produce, 1lb. of butter on sale and about 16lbs. of meat/chicken.  Ok...I also had an impulse buy and picked up a bag of cheese curls for $2 on the spur of the moment.  Yes, my one wild and crazy purchase for that week!lol  Sometimes junk food calls my name.....well, it seems to SCREAM my name loudly and often.....and I just give in.  Ah well......
Anyway, I haven't even broken $100 for food spending in October yet.  Yay for the freezer and the stockpile!! ;-)

So what has everyone else been up to lately??

Sluggy

Friday Randomness with Sluggy

 Here are some things fermenting in my wacky brain lately....

**Have you noticed the escalating price of bacon lately?  I hit a rather decent sales/coupons double out of the ballpark about 5 months ago so I haven't really checked in on the current going price for that porky goodness since early last Spring.
Since our supply is almost gone, I started last week to take note of the market price for bacon.
And let me say for the record....that shits gone way up!!  Regular retail here for $5 to $6 a PACKAGE!
Great Googley Moogley!!
I paid $1.00 a package the last time I stocked up and it was an amazing $2.00 straight sale price without a coupon then.
I might have to start trolling the local animal shelters for abandoned pot bellied pigs to bring home and fatten up.....ok, not really but I *did* consider that for a few moments. ;-)

**I took SonyaAnn's ADVICE and cashed out my credit card Rewards for Christmas gift cards the other day.  I have 8 gift cards winging their way to me in time for Holiday giving.  I have to dig out my gift stash and figure what more I still have to acquire/make.  I'll probably do that next week or this weekend.  I want to have everything in process or done by Thanksgiving so I only have to darken a stores door for food between Black Friday and New Year's Day.
Not to freak anyone out or anything but there are only 70 Shopping Days left Until Christmas......

**This is a photo of part of our high school's Marching Band taken 3 weeks ago.
The kid in the center playing the flute is my son.
I do think it's time for a haircut.....

**Have you noticed that Outlet Malls are no longer the place to get a deal?
Ok....maybe sometimes they are.....but over the past few years outlet malls have really become just another excuse to throw up a shopping mall somewhere and sell regularly priced stuff.  I am old enough to remember when an outlet 'store' meant it was located in the geographic area of it's manufacturing mill and carried overruns, imperfects, seconds, etc. and you could buy them at a deep discount off of the regularly priced perfects that got shipped to the regular stores.  My mom and I use to take trips to Lightfoot VA to snag deals at the Williamsburg Pottery Factory when I was growing up.  Good times.....
Somewhere about 1978 though they began renting out space there(after they over expanded and the economy tanked a bit)directly to the manufacturers they had previously bought outlet bound stuff from and resold.  Other real outlet stores followed suite.  That's when it all went downhill for the deals in my humble opinion.  The manufacturers began stocking/running their own outlets.  Seeing how successful this model was, developers began building outlet malls so you could go to one place and get deals from many different brands without traveling far.  And they located them in touristy areas to generate more revenue.  Then they started offering regular mall bound merchandise or lines created just to sell in the outlets, which raised all the prices and just bastardized the whole original concept and made outlet stores/malls mostly crap in my opinion.

The point was illustrated clearly this past week on our trip to Ocean City.  We stopped in Rehobeth Delaware at the Tanger Outlets to do some clothes/shoe shopping.  While Hubs got some deals on shoes at Rack Room shoes and I picked up a pair of Chuck Taylors for Daughter for less than full retail, no deals were to be found at the supposed Under Armor outlet store.

#2 son wanted a basic black shirt to wear under his Marching Band uniform so we went looking. Everything in that store was full retail price, unless you wanted some boys sized shirts(that were STILL $20!) or some hideously ugly pieces I wouldn't buy at a thrift store for a fraction of the price they were charging.

**I mentioned awhile back about a relative who was having a financial crisis, and that I was helping them with a plan to get them "out of the weeds", as they say in golf.....not that I play golf or anything....
I am so happy to hear that they got through September and have taken the budgeting info. and embraced it, tweeking it and making it their own.  Hopefully, they should be able to get through the next few years until their situation is scheduled to improve.

**One of the Deal Blogs(sorry, can't remember which one)had something posted Sunday about a 10-10-10 sale on 6pm, the dotcom shoe/clothing store.  Big clearance sale where everything was $10!
Luckily we have some oddball sized feet in this house, so I was able to find 9 pairs of shoes we could use...woohoo!
I am not a big fan of buying shoes online since you can't try them on, but I figured for $10 I'd take some calculated risks on styles/sizes and if some don't fit right, I can pass brand new shoes along for Christmas to friends, other family members, the local Christmas charity program or make a thrift store donation.

#2 son is a skateboarder.  He goes through shoes quickly.  He lusts after expensive skaterboarding branded shoes.  I found one of these brands in this clearance sale for $10 a pr.  Reg. retail of $65 a pr.  I bought 5 pairs(in 3 sizes) for less than what 1 pair would cost me at the mall store(not that I'd every buy them there for full retail). lolol

The downside.....now my bedroom closet looks like the storeroom in a shoe warehouse.

Anybody seen my shoe horn?

Sluggy