Weekly Menu - July 17, 2011

I hope everyone had a great week and a nice Shabbat. We hosted lunch this Shabbos and I tried something a little different. Usually I make cholent and also buy chicken to make a whole separate entree. Definitely not budget friendly! So, this week I took out one of the bag's of marinated chicken on Friday morning and cooked it in the slow cooker. I took 2 breasts out for our dinner Friday night, and sliced the other 4 into strips for a big Italian chicken salad. Paired with cholent and sides, I think everyone left satisfied!

This week's menu is pretty simple as I work through stuff in the freezer. What's on your menu this week?

Sunday: Spinach cheese Filo Pie (from Trader Joe's)

Monday: Southwest Rollups from freezer

Tuesday: Egg Roll Lasagna from freezer

Wednesday: Parents might be in town, if not, some type of stir fry

Thursday: Homemade pizza

What's on your menu this week???

New Osem Printable Coupons - save the link!

Thanks, Kosher on a Budget for pointing me towards these Osem (read awesome, haha) coupons. They are valid until May 2013 so you shouldn't have to buy a full price Osem product for a long time! Save the link, or download to your desktop, to print at your convenience!

How I Stretched an $8 chicken

This week, I picked up a couple of whole chickens at one of the local Kosher grocery stores for $1.99/lb. What a great deal! I also came across a new blog with a post on how to stretch a chicken into many different meals. She worked with a 7lb chicken, and the biggest I could find was 4 lb, so I wasn't able to do quite as much, but I'm pretty proud with everything I did!

The main reason I loved this idea is because I'm letting my slow cooker do all the work. If you know me, you know how much I love my slow cooker, so this is really a perfect match. Here's how my day went:

7:00 am: Placed the whole chicken in the slow cooker and seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika. I wanted to keep it bland so I could use for other recipes. I set the slow cooker to low, got the boy ready and off to daycare/work we went.

12:00 pm: Got excited that I had a whole chicken cooking in my slow cooker and it would smell so good when I got home!

5:00 pm: Sent hubby a text message to ask him to shut the slow cooker off and take out some chicken for ds (dear son - I'm going to start using blog lingo because I'm that cool).

6:00 pm: Got home and enjoyed the lovely smell from the kitchen. DS surprisingly ate all the chicken that DH (figure that one out) put out. I took the chicken out of the slow cooker and started separating some of the meat from the bone. It was literally falling off the bone.

6:15 pm: There were a lot of chicken juices in the crock pot so I used some as a gravy and a couple of cups to cook some quinoa for a dinner side tonight and tomorrow. Also cooked up some green beans.

6:30 pm: I was starving so I ate my portion of chicken, quinoa and green beans for dinner while DH and DS played downstairs.

7:00 pm: DS eats what seems like a cup of quinoa and then goes to bed. DH takes out what he wants to eat for dinner. Basically what was left of the chicken were some side bones with meat and the breast portion.

7:30 pm: I separated all the meat from the bones and put the bones in the crock pot. I decided to take the meat and freeze it for a later date. I think I will probably use it for a big pot of chicken soup at a later date.

7:40 pm: Now the best part. I put all the bones back in my crock pot, added an onion, a bay leaf, some seasoning and 8 cups of water and set to low to cook a chicken stock overnight. I have never made homemade stock before so I'm really excited to see how it turns out!

So, that's how I stretched my $8 chicken. How do you stretch your food? I would love to hear your ideas, especially because I have another 4 lber in the freezer!

Weekly Menu Plan: July 11, 2011

I wrote out my whole post, but I accidentally deleted it, so sorry this will just be a recap of the menu plan!

Monday: Taco pasta. We have leftover taco meat so I am just going to mix it with pasta and sauce...what could be bad.

Tuesday: Mushroom barley soup.

Wednesday: Pineapple cranberry chicken - ended up not making it for Shab so still have all the ingredients ready to go!

Thursday: Homemade pizza

Friday: Marinated chicken

What's on your menu this week? Please share your ideas with me!

My First Target Coupon Trip

Can you guess how much I spent at Target? Here's what I bought:

1 Up and Up Dishwasher Detergent

4 boxes Market Pantry Cereal

2 boxes Barilla Pasta

2 boxes Morningstar products

1 Colgate Max Fresh Toothpaste

1 Oral B Floss

The retail value of all these items is $26.87 and I got them all for $15.18! Go me!

Ok, so it's definitely not extreme couponing, but let's be honest, those people get JUNK! All of these items we use on a regular basis, so I might as well buy them with cuopons than paying full price.

Here's the key to my success. Let other people do the work for you! There are hundreds (maybe even thousands) of blogs out there that give you weekly deal match ups for all different stores. They tell you what's on sale and where to find the coupons. For example, check out Hip2Save.

For instance, the Colgate Max Fresh Toothpaste is on sale this week at Target for $2.49. There was a $1 off manufacturer coupon in the newspaper and an additional $1 off coupon that I could print. That means I got the toothpaste for only $.49! If you ask me, that's a pretty great deal!

Now, I'm not about to go around digging through people's garbage to take their newspapers, but these sales happen all the time. I don't care what kind of toothpaste we use, so I can just buy whatever's on sale when we need it.

So, over all - it was a great experience and I suggest you give it a go, too. Good luck shopping!

Weekly Menu Plan: July 3, 2011

Sorry I'm a little late with the menu plan - I don't even know what day it is! Anyway, here's my plan for this week. What are you planning on making?

Sunday: Barbecue

Monday: Leftovers from barbecue and Shabbos

Tuesday: Black bean burgers - I love these, they are super easy to make and delicious - you will love them, too!

Wednesday: Spaghetti Pie - we have a lot of cheese to use up so I am going to make 2 - one for now and one for freezer

Thursday: Pizza using homemade pizza dough

Friday: Pineapple and cranberry chicken - just throwing it together. I have had a can of crushed pineapples for awhile so I wanted to find a way to get rid of them

The Cash Envelope

I want to start by saying I love using my credit card! It's so simple and quick that you really can't beat it! But...it is not helpful to budgeting. It is too easy to shop, shop, shop and swipe and go. So, we are starting something new this month. It's a tip I learned from Money Saving Mom. The idea is to have cash envelopes (literally, an envelope) for different aspects of your budget. For example, you would have different envelopes for groceries, gas, household items, etc. At the beginning of the month (or week), you will take out the budgeted amount for that envelope. We are going to begin with just a groceries envelope since that is the part of our budget we have the most control over. On July 1, I went to the bank and took out cash for our groceries this month. I will update how the envelope goes at the end of the month! Oh, just heard ds, gotta go - have a great day!