Cleaning Out the Freezer Challenge-June 25th & Recipe

June 25th, Thursday, I was rooting around in the deep dark recesses of my Freezer and came up with a DOUBLE PLAY in the Cleaning Out the Freezer Challenge.

First I found these 2 forlorn breaded chicken cutlets. They are the long lost survivors from a rather large pack of cutlets that was consumed many months ago.
Just the perfect size package of chicken for tonight, as Hubby is the only one eating solid food today in this house.

But what to do with breaded chicken cutlets, what to do....
Oh, here's an opened bag of shredded mozzarella cheese!
That gives me an idea.....

And then I found & thawed out 2 large bags of spinach. I was going to prepare something grand with this until I opened it and saw that the spinach was itsy bitsy chopped pieces, really only good for adding to a creamed soup or such.
Note to self.....do NOT buy this brand of frozen spinach again.

So what to do with stringy, watery, itsy bitsy pieces of green mush???
...And make it pseudo-healthy & a side dish for the chicken that hubby will eat?

So I grabbed an egg, garlic powder, milk and parmesan cheese.

I had printed out a recipe eons ago for an 'Easy Spinach Souffle'. Now is as good a time as any to give it a whirl, right? You can find the recipe on the Allrecipes site HERE.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees(unless you want to make this in the microwave if you are short on time).

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1 egg, 1/3 c. milk, 1/3 c. parmesan cheese, 1 teaspoon garlic and salt & pepper to taste. Fold in 2(10 ounces)packages of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained.
Put in casserole dish.
Bake in oven for 20 minutes or until lightly set.

Alternate baking method:If you are in a hurry, use a microwave safe casserole dish, cover with palstic wrap and cook on high for 3 minutes. Release the steam, recover and cook on high for another 3 mintues.



And here is what it looks like after baking.

I have to say that mine took 30-35 minutes to set up, not 20 mins. But then again, maybe I overbaked mine. At 20 min. it was still very loose.
Hubby said it could have used more cheese. Next time, I'm going to add some mozzarella too.

The chicken cutlets got a quick saute in some EVOO in a skillet and then some spaghetti sauce(from an opened jar in the fridge)and a handful of mozzarella on top. Cover with the lid and let melt for 5-10 mins.
Spoon up the spinach and mange!
Ok, so my food photography skills are somewhat lacking. I'll put it on my master list of things to conquer right after curing AIDS and disarming North Korea. 8-P

If you are a beginner or one of those cooks who is scared of souffle preparations, this recipe is a good one to try.
It's not a true souffle but it gives you the taste/feel of one without the work.

I've still got some of that bag of spinach left to use up in the next couple of days. I'll have to dig into the fridge and see what is lurking in there that I can possibly combine to make something fabulous to use this EX-Freezer item up.

Freezer-0
Sluggy-2

sluggy

CleanseFest....Day 3 & 4 My Kingdom for a Salt Lick!

Day Three went rather well. I think I was over the hump with the nastier hunger pains by the end of the 3rd day of the CleanseFest.

I will say that at the end of Day 3 I was so tired of Slim-Fast shakes! Why are these things so blasted sweet?? Why do they think that people on reduced or restricted calorie intake diets ONLY want to eat sweet flavored stuff? These things have so much sugar in them.
After 3 days of sweet, sweet, sweet, I would give my eye teeth for a DILL PICKLE.....or a Greek Salad with Oil & Vinegar Dressing......or a big Vat of SAURKRAUT. I DETEST Saurkraut by the way....

Ok.....just give me Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips!
************drool***************

So Day Four(today) & I took daughter and we made our run to do the Kraft/Unilever/General Mills Catalina Deal at Shop-Rite.
As we were far from home during meal time with no SF shake with us, we broke down and ate FOOD today for lunch.
Not just any food.....Chinese Food!
I took it easy with the meats, staying away from any Beef dishes and sampled from the chicken & shrimp dishes. I loaded up with the veggies in the dishes as well as sauteed green beans. No rice except for what was on the sushi I ate. I did eat some dumplings though, which I shouldn't have had. I usually get a soup bowl and dip dumpling sauce into it for my dumplings. Well I put the dumplings right in the bowl so they REALLY soaked up that sauce.
I didn't notice that the sauce was a tad RED today(aka CHILI OIL!!!)and took a big honking bite out of one of the dumplings. It took exactly 4 seconds for my mouth to catch fire from that bite.
Great.
Googley.
Moogley.

I took the dumplings out of the sauce of FIRE! and tried to dry them out. After picking chili flakes(!) off of them, I tried dunking them in Duck Sauce. But that just kept my mouth from burning about 5 extra seconds after putting a piece of dumpling in again. Then the HEAT hit me on the 'back end' of my mouth, as it slid down my esophagus.
I choked down 2.5 dumplings before my lips went numb and I raised the white paper napkin of surrender.
9 hours later, I can still feel a bit of tingle on my lips.....
I KNOW I ate too much but it was so good! And I haven't had anything else today because of it.

The Shop-Rite run kept me from my water consumption most of the afternoon so I am downing glasses of water this evening to catch up.
I am sure my kidneys are screaming at me to stop by now.

Oh, but the kidneys haven't seen anything yet! As daughter may be returning to work at camp a week from Sunday, we have to step up the schedule so we can get in at least 7 days of the second part of this CleanseFest.

Tomorrow, Phase Two begins.
Phase Two is 7 days of drinking a mixture of Water/Lemon/Syrup/Cayenne Pepper, in addition to plain water too. Actually, the spicy dumplings was probably a good way to get me used to the Cayenne Pepper in the drink I have to consume.

And I get to begin the next seven days with an Oral Sea Salt & Water Enema.
Oh goody!
Can't.
Wait.

I'll be sure to take LOTS of pictures and share this part of my adventure with you.
I'm sure ya'll can't wait for that, huh?LOLOL

Off to work on some Frugal Shopping reports. I have Wags, CVS & Shop-Rite to post on, as well as some Cleaning out the Freezer stuff and a Recipe.
Look for those in the coming days....in between trips to the bathroom. ;-))

Sluggy

WEIS/GILLETTE CAT PROMO...Final Numbers!

The Weis Markets 2 Week Long GILLETTE $5 CAT PROMOTION ended yesterday, June 24th. Here is my Final Tally.
Gillette Razors-11
Gillette Hydra Gel-11
Gillette Body Wash-55
Gillette Shampoo-55
GRAND TOTAL.........132 Products



Total OOP.......$14.65, $8.37 of that was tax.
The OOP comes out to .11¢ per item.
Value of all Items.....$561.18
A Savings of 97.4%

I probably could have gotten more but I didn't jump right on this deal & I didn't get more coupons. And I didn't wipe out any store of product in a single trip, even though I had the coupons to do so. I spread the procurement out over 5 Weis Stores & over an 11 day period, so plenty of time to restock between shopping trips.

I had found some coupons I hadn't cut from the inserts yet a couple of days ago, including 2 more razor and hydra gel coupons, so I had some last minute shopping to do. I had a very hard time using those last 4 razor/gel coupons. I would find a store that had razors, but no hydra gel....then I'd find the gel in stock and no razor. I did finally find both in the same store yesterday and finished using the last 4 coupons. I didn't get any razor/gel coupons off of eBay(like I did the b-wash & 'poo Qs), first, because sellers wanted way too much for the razor Qs and second, the tax here on those razors raised my OOP more than I wanted to spend. I tried to stay away from the 'poos that had conditioner in it too becasue here, in WACKY PA, 'poo is NOT taxed but if the 'poo has conditioner in it, you DO pay tax on that!
Like I said.....WACKY.....
'

So how did you do on the Weis/Gillette deal?
Give us your totals/figures.
Did you get any other great deals last week at Weis? I'd love to hear!!

Sluggy

KFC FREE CHICKEN Throwback Can You Smell the Fowl?

So after I sent the CLEANSEFEST/EXTREME HUNGER Post, the mail arrived.
And just to prove that the gods are up there laughing at me, here is what arrived.

Can you see the return address??


Ok, here is what was inside.....


Remember all those bazillion Free Chicken Coupons everyone in North America printed out and tried to use on the same day a few months back, forcing KFC to run out of chicken?

Yep, it's the KFC FREE CHICKEN RAINCHECK COUPON!
Actually it's FOUR of them.

Taunting my non-eating body with Free juicy chicken........oy, the pain!
At least the coupons can't be used until July 20th through August 3rd, so I should be able to use one or two as I'll be eating by then.

Did you get your FREE KFC Coupon yet?

Sluggy

Please Sir, I Want Some More......gruel, swill, anything!!

Day Two of the Cleansefest is over & in the books. I am feeling sort of like poor old Oliver Twist here, but I look more like the Orphanage Taskmaster holding the ladle......thus the need for a Cleansefest in the first place.lolol

Wednesday was a rough one to get through gastrointestinal-speaking. My schedule of 'meals were'--1 glass of orange juice with 2 big spoons of a fiber supplement & assorted vitamins and medications for breakfast, a SF shake for lunch, a SF shake for dinner & a Glucerna snack bar for a snack.
Fresh-brewed iced tea with lemon and water rounded out my fluid intake for the day.

Having things to do took my mind off of food, which helped. I had Gillette coupons to finish using. Then we had running the daughter to the Orthodonist....AGAIN! While we were out at their distant office, I ran into some CVSs & a WAGS to grab a few deals(or TRY to!)& rolls some RRs & ECBs. All totaled, I think I spent $7? yesterday for everything(including the iced coffee I had to buy daughter). I'll post the shopping and what I got later tonight or tomorrow.
Hubby was a doll and made his own dinner-frozen burritos and canned chili-so I wouldn't have to cook in my psychologically 'food vunerable' state.

The only bad thing about having errands/shopping to do yesterday was having to drive by aaaaaaalllll those fast food restaurants and smell aaaaaaaallllllll those wonderful MEAT COOKING SMELLS, which made my olfactory organs send signals to my digestive tract via my brain to CRAMP MY STOMACH UP INTO KNOTS!
Serious.
Hunger.
Pains of Death.

I think I actually blacked out for a moment at one point at a red light after passing a remarkably fragrant Burger King(must have been that flame-broiling!).
I came to, gnawing on the steering wheel.

I have 2 more days of this phase of the Project to get through, as we start the Lemon Flush phase on Saturday. We had to step up the timeline a few days, as daughter may be returning to camp the following Sat.(yes! there is a God)when we go to pick up #2 son, instead of in August. If she leaves next Sat. we have 7 days to get the Flush phase done with her here if we begin Sat., but wouldn't be able to fit but 3 or 4 days of Lemon Flush in otherwise.

So I have 2 more days of living on shakes & such before we go onto the Lemon stuff. I hope to stay out of the car(and thus off the roads driving by Food Temptations) today. I'll be digging out something from the Freezer in a bit for Hubby's dinner. This will be my temptation highpoint for the day, seeing all those cold blocks of food.
Yummmmmm.....

Sluggy