This Week on the Dining Table

It's the "Nothing Much to Report" Edition.......

This shirt was seen on the way back from the family reunion in a WV Walmart we stopped at to stretch our legs and wander around(and Hubs managed to buy some beer he can't get here).
Cousin Sonya Ann needs this shirt! lolz

I've got nothing else to report in on.  I few trips to R-A/Weis/Target last week and nothing exciting got accomplished here at home.

Moving on......

Onward to the meal planning!

Here's what was planned last week--

1. Sunday--Cheese Steak Sandwiches with Peppers and Onions(requested)

2. Monday--Hamburgers on Rolls, Fried Green Tomatoes, French Fries

3. Tuesday--Leftovers(probably Beef Bourguinon)

4. Wednesday--Chicken & Stuffing Casserole(using leftover stuffing)

5. Thursday--Leftovers(Hubs and are going out/Kids on their own)

6. Friday--Crab Cakes, Cole Slaw, Broccoli

7. Saturday--Leftovers

And this is what actually happened--

1. Sunday--Cheese Steak Sandwiches with Peppers and Onions(requested)

2. Monday--Hamburgers on Rolls, French Fries

3. Tuesday--Leftovers(Beef Bourguinonover Leftover Rice or Noodles)

4. Wednesday--Pork Tenderloin Sandwiches, Fried Green Tomatoes

5. Thursday--Leftovers(Hubs and are going out/Kids on their own)

6. Friday--Crab Cakes, Cole Slaw, Broccoli

7. Saturday--Chicken Parmesan, Greek Salad

6/7 meals cooked at home, 2 of them a night of leftovers, 1 night Eating Out and 0 night of Take-Out.
Everything but the Chicken/Stuffing Casserole happened as I still haven't gotten a deal on chicken breasts.  I might make a trip to Maine Source this week and see if they have BSCB for a decent price.  I am almost out of onions as well and they have those in large quantities for a good price.(I like to buy onions in 10 lb. bags as that is the quantity I have found that I can use them all up before they go bad.)

As for the grocery spending.....1 trip to Weis and 1 trip to the Shursave grocery store brought my weekly spending to $64.71 and my October food spending Subtotal to $64.71.

Leftovers going into this week........rigatoni in sauce, small container of flavored noodles, cole slaw, 1 crab cake, broccoli, Greek salad.

Here is this week's "food plan".

1. Sunday--Chicken and Dumplings
2. Monday--Sausage Sandwiches w/Onions, Roasted Cauliflower w/Garlic
3. Tuesday--Leftovers(Rigatoni), Veggie TBD
4. Wednesday--Mac & Cheese w/Ham,
5. Thursday--Caesar Salad w/Chicken Strips, Baked Potato
6. Friday--Fend for Yourself/Leftovers
7. Saturday--Fend for Yourself(Out of Town)

This week will see 4 new meals cooked and 0 nights of Take-Out and 3 nights of Leftovers.
I have a whole chicken that needs using and a couple of ham steaks in the freezer I'll cube and put into the mac & cheese.  The chicken strips and Italian sausage patties are already in the freezer too.

What I need to buy for this menu? salad greens, milk, rolls.
I also need to get lunchmeat for the kids and breakfast sandwiches for the BF.

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten last week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?


Sluggy

More Rite-Aid From Last Week & Stolen Gift Cards

Well you can't replicate these Deals since they ended Saturday evening but here is a second trip/transaction I did at Rite-Aid on Friday.........

I did the M&M's double dip Plenti points again and the Spend $30 Vitamins/Get $10 in Points Deal.

3 x M&M's sale $3=$9.00
5 x assorted Centrum Vitamins sale $6.99=$34.95
2 x Herbal Essence shampoo sale $2.50=$5.00
SubTotal......$48.95

Coupons Used
1 x Spend $20/Get $2 off Transaction Rite-Aid CatalinaQ=$2.00
1 x $1.50/2 M&Ms IPQ=$1.50
5 x $4/1 Centrum vitamins IPQ=$20.00
1 x $4/2 Herbal Essence ManuQ=$4.00
Coupon Total........$27.50

$48.95-$27.50=$21.45 + .05¢ tax=$21.50 OOP

After receiving $16 back in new Plenti Points this transaction would "cost" me $5.50 + $16 in current Plenti Points.
So I wanted to use one of the 2 Rite-Aid gift cards I had bought last year right before Christmas.
Last Holiday Season there was actually a deal one week where buying a R-A branded card got you free Wellness/Plenti points.  They hardly ever offer points when buying R-A cards, just name brand cards for other businesses so I had jumped on this Deal.

My 2 cards were totally unused(by me)until this moment.
So I swipe the first card and the register tells the cashier this gift card has no money on it.
Tried again, same result.
So I swipe the second card and the same result.....no money left on this card.

I am stymied.
The cashier says I'll have to call corporate and find out what is going on.
Ugh!

So a call on Saturday happens.  The CS person runs the card numbers and says these cards were used in full this past March at a store in California.
WTF?!?
She is told we haven't been to California since 1969 and live in Pennsylvania so these charges are fraudulent.
Evidently the card number was stolen and put onto a new fake card where they were used on the left coast.

She continues to say that they had a large batch of R-A gift cards with stolen information last Christmas season.  It looks like it was either an inside job within Rite-Aid(shipping/distribution area before the physical cards were sent to individual stores)or someone got a hold of the information at the facility that manufactured the cards.
Anyway, a new card with both amounts combined is being mailed to me and hopefully this time the card information is secure.

*Rite-Aid has since last year changed their gift cards to include a pin number(under scratch-off material)on the physical card which you need to use the card online and these cards are harder to fake with that feature.

As for my transaction above, I also had a prepaid Visa gift card so I put the $5.50 due on that card and used $16 of my Plenti points to cover that $21.50 in charges.
Getting $16 in new Plenti points meant this transaction cost me $5.50 in gift card coin for 2 bottles of shampoo, 3 bags of candy and 5 containers of vitamins.
Still not a bad deal, right?

Have you ever had gift card information stolen?  Tell us about it.

Sluggy

Target Freebies!

Using some coupons that expire today and Cartwheel discounts that came out on Friday I had Hubs take me to Target this morning.

Here is what I brought home.....

2 x Head & Shoulders shampoo reg. $4.99=$9.98
2 x Bic Silky Touch razor packs reg. $2.97=$5.94
SubTotal.......$15.92

Used Spend $15 bath/body/shave/etc. toiletries Get $5 Target gift card Mobile Q
Used 1 x $4/2 Head & Shoulders ManuQ=$4.00
Used 2 x $2/1 Bic razor ManuQ=$4.00
Apply 30% off Head & Shoulders Cartwheel Discount=$3.00

Total Discounts=$11.00

$15.92-$11.00=$4.08
I used a free Target $5 gift card to pay and it now has .08¢ remaining on that one.
Received a new free Target $5 gift card.

4 free items and this is a .08¢ moneymaker.

I'll tell y'all all about my second Rite-Aid trip tomorrow.  Oh boy, you won't want to miss that! lolz


Sluggy

September To-Do List......Update

Here's the update on my September To-Do List.  I post a To-Do list on the side bar of my blog's homepage every month.
Let's see how ol' Sluggy did this month on her list, shall we? ;-)

This Update has to be reconstsructed as I blew away my To-Do List before copying it to post my October list. sigh
I hope I remember most of it.

* Pay Bills  DONE  
Everything got paid and on time, as per usual.

* Bike Something  FAIL  
Well I did do 4 mile. lolz  Must get back on this in October.

* Read 2 Books  DONE
Finished the first book, "Growing Up" by Russell Baker, then Lena Dunham's "Not That Kind of Girl" second and resumed a biography of Katherine Anne Porter by Joy Givner(which is slow going and massive in length).

* Pick Produce and Use it  DONE  We hit 39.775 lbs. of tomatoes picked and used by September, among them this interesting little fellow. lol

I've frozen all the tomatoes we haven't eaten fresh or used in the relish making.
Since I didn't get a massive amount of tomatoes to can I've been putting them whole into the freezer........

This is a super great way to keep them for the short term until you are ready to use them.
Don't boil and peel, just pop them after cleaning off into the freezer.
Then you take them out to thaw when you have enough to make sauce or use in a recipe.  When they have thawed they slip easily out of their skins, just squeeze them out. You might have to cut the core out with a small knife after squeezing but it beats heating water and your kitchen up, boiling them to skin them.  Less energy used if you have the freezer space to park them for awhile.  8-)

* Get Farm Veggies  DONE  I even ended up picking most of the peppers myself when I stumbled onto a PYO farm down the road from the Farm Stand I go to.

* Can Produce/Make Relish  DONE

5 quarts and 18 pints done!  I had picked so many peppers I could have made/canned another batch(if not another double batch).  This is just too much work to do alone anymore so I don't know if/when I'll make relish again.  Next year I do want to get to that PYO farm in time to pick tomatoes to put up.

* 1 Doctor's Appointment  DONE
Went to a medical nutritionist type educator as directed by my new dr.  Diet changes will be ensuing shortly.

* Go to Family Reunion  DONE
Yep, we went and came home.  The weather was good and as a bonus I got to spend time with my oldest son too.  Win/Win!  We are finished traveling in 2016 now.  Hubs has time off in October but between things going on plus money issues(I just can't see spending any more on travel this year with our increased expenses this year).  We may go on a few day trips in October and there may be a quickie during the Holidays to Virginia but that is it for the year.

*  List items on eBay FAIL
I didn't get around to doing this yet.  If it's going to happen it must happen in October to catch the Holiday Selling Season as most of what I have left to unload is new in the package merchandise.

* Shred Papers  FAIL
I just didn't get the time to drag out the shredding and do this.  Mostly because the pile of shredding isn't very large yet so why drag all that out and do it? lolz

* Sew Something  FAIL
Nope didn't have the urge to sew in August.  Perhaps September will see me pull out the supplies and have a go at making a shirt.  I really need to.....

4 items I didn't get to.  It was another low energy month for me(plus it was still hot here which is unusual)plus I've been fighting a touch of depression which I always seem to catch this time of year.

Onward and upward to October!  I am still compiling a To-Do List for this month so it may grow a bit longer as we go through October.

How did you do with your To-Do list for September?

Sluggy

Garden & Yard Update......Still Producing!

Even though it's a week into October with our unseasonably warm weather so far this Fall, my garden is still in production mode.
The plants are looking long in the tooth now and things are winding down but I've still got tomatoes growing out there......

You can see some pops of red and there are quite a few green fruits still on the plants.

Next week won't climb out of the 60's and Monday night we will be flirting with temps in the 30's so I think we'll be taking down the netting and pulling up the plants on Sunday.  I'll either pick all the maters or hang the plants upside down on our front porch until the last of the green ones ripen.

I made my first fried green tomatoes this past week and for some reason they just didn't seem sweet enough.  Maybe it's the variety of tomatoes I grew or something in the soil but they just aren't that awesome to be prepared that way.  

I could always buy more peppers and use the green maters left in a small batch of my pepper relish but I don't think I am up to that ordeal again.  Pickled green tomatoes instead?......maybe.  Or I can just wait them out until they turn red and eat them fresh.
So many decisions........lolz

The progression of tomato color. (And no, that Keurig on the counter does NOT belong to me!)


Anyway, since my last update on September 22nd I've picked 46.40 more ounces(2.9 lbs.)of tomatoes for use in meals here.
This brings my Total Harvest to 682.80 ounces or 42.675 pounds of produce for 2016.

Not bad for a haphazard effort and we've still got tomatoes left to pick and use.

As for my Morning Glories..........

Still blooming as of this morning but the plants are looking a bit rattier.  I'd give them another week and they'll be dying back and by US Thanksgiving I'll be able to harvest a butt ton of seed pods.
Let me know if you want some free morning glory seeds.  8-)

And this is laying in the backyard too since Sunday evening, when some moderate wind passed through the area........

A view from an upstairs window before Hubs moved if off of our fire ring.....

That baby's 20+ feet long and had we been having a fire that night it might have fallen on us!

We need to go out this weekend and inspect all our trees and see if there are any other dead branches that we need to pay someone to have taken down before Winter sets in.
Kaching goes the money out my wallet again........sigh

In other yard news, these flowers/plants I planted in the front flower bed the last Summer before the current one reseeded themselves and we still have colorful stuff going on there.

I don't know what they are called but if you don't disturb/pull out the dead plants in the Fall and don't remulch the following growing season they will reseed.
Yes, we never got around to remulching and making the flower bed pretty this growing season.  Heck I stopped weeding it by the end of July so it's just a hot mess.
Hey, don't judge.......

Another free plant next to the retaining wall.

So what's happening in your yard/garden now?

Sluggy