Publix deals

Heads up to publix shoppers!! There's a few free and/or cheap things on sale right now after coupons. The only problem is I don't know what newspaper the coupons from since I don't organize them by date. But you could see if you have these coupons. And I don't have my receipt on me so no quoting me on prices but I think these are right. If not its right around there.
First off starkist tuna pouches are on sale for 1.00. A few weeks ago there was a .50 off 1 starkist pouch. Doubles to 1.00 so it's free.
I had some .50 off 1 pepperidge farm snack which doubles and some 1.00 off 1 pepperidge farm cracker chip. Both are on sale for 1.75 making them only .75 each.
So if you shop at publix these are great deals!

Freezer Cooking!

Well I've been busy today! And after a night of no sleep I'm hopeing I can go to sleep tonight.
Brenden FINALLY went back to pre school today. He was out since Christmas, went back last Wenesday, and then had Monday off for MLK. He only goes Monday and Wenesday mornings so in real he's been out for close to a month. And no, I'm not saying I was glad to get my kid out of the house. But when I'm use to being able to spend those 3 hours doing stuff around the house or errands and then I don't get that for a month, I'm glad to have it back.

Anyways, today I spent my morning cooking. As you know my goal for 2012 is to save more money. Well it also came at the same time that we decided to start earting healthier (I went back on WW as well. Thats a whole nother (is that a word?) post Il save for another day. But overall, eating healthy can be more expensive. But while laying in bed last night I got to thinking about how much money we spend on frozen breakfast food. Brenden eats breakfast as soon as he wakes up in the morning and isn't patient enough for me to cook anything that takes more than 3 minutes from start to finish. So most morning we alternate between cereal, Eggo waffles, frozen french toast sticks, and Pillbury pancakes. Did I mention he eats ALOT. Like 3-4 pancakes/waffles at a time? Followed by fruit/more cereal/yogurt/ect. We can go through 2 frozen boxes a week. You might think $3 a box is fine. But when you add them all up this is pretty costly. Not to mention SO unhealthy. So I decided I was going to spend my morning making fresh homemade waffles and pancakes. I made a double batch of each and ended up with about 30 of each and froze them. No more store bought! Then I got to thinking, his favorite is french toast sticks. Could I make french toast and freeze these? Why not? Except they wouldnt be sticks. Or could they??

They could! I combined my regular french toast recipe with something to make it a little sweeter. I'm sure you could do this with any french toast egg recipe you normally use, but here is my suggestion:

You'll need:

• Loaf of bread (I used whole wheat). Works best if you lay it out on the counter for 20-30 minutes to get it a little hard. This way it wont fall apart in your egg.
• Melted butter. I used around 1/4 cup.
• 8 eggs
• Cinnamon. Around 1 Tsp depending on your liking.
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk

This made 2 and a half large cookie sheets full. You can half it if you'd like less.

Step 1: Using a pizza cutter, slice your bread into 3 pieces.

Step 2: Mix together your ingrediants in a large bowl for your egg mixture.

Step 3: One piece at a time, dip your bread into your mixture and rub off the extra. You don't want it soggy.

Place your sticks on a GREASED cookie sheet. I used wax paper and sprayed with PAM.



Step 4: Place in oven on top rack at 425 degrees (depending on oven you might go a little lower) for 8-9 minutes. Take out and turn over each piece (if not browned on bottom put it back in for a few more minutes). Place your pans back into the oven for another 8-9 minutes until the other side is browned and sticks are cooked and no longer moist inside. (You know, the french toast consistancy).

Pull then out and they're done! You can eat them right then if you'd like a healthier baked french toast! But that wasn't my goal so now on to freeze them!

Step 5: Let them cool for 10-15 minutes. Then place the entire cookie sheet into the freezer for around 30 minutes. Basically until they're frozen. One of our freezers only took 15 minutes while the other took close to 40. The point of this is to freeze them individually so then you can put them all into one container/bag without then freezing together. This way you can pull out exactly how many you want at a time.

So now just put them into whatever you are going to store them in and toss them back into the freezer.

When you are ready to ear them you can either place them in the oven for 4-5 minutes on a low/medium heat or toss them in the microwave for 1-2 minutes.

*I added the cinnamon and sugar to the recipe to add sweetness. It's simply for taste since I use whole wheat bread.

I also pre cooked a bunch of chicken today. We make alot of recipes that called for shredded chicken. In the past I cook the chicken in the afternoon either boiling or bake it, then using forks shread it which takes forever! Someone gave me the idea of crock potting (again, a word?) a ton of chicken at once and shredding it then freezing it. And boy am I glad I did!? This is the only way to do it!!

All I did was stick 8 boneless skinless chicken breast into the crock pot. I didn't trim/flatten/nothing. I filled it half with water/half with low sodium chicken broth. Enough to cover the chicken. And left it for 6 hours on medium-high. After 6 hours I just poured the entire thing into a large strainer above the sink to drain the broth and let it cool for about 25 minutes. The chicken was alraeady half shredded just from the crock pot cooking!!! Talk about easy!



After it cooled, me and brenden spent about 15 minutes shredding the chicken. It was so 'fall off the bone' (without the bone) that all I really had to do with pick it up and pull a few peices and it shredded itself.

After it was all shredded I used my food saver bags and put about 2 cups in each bag. You could use regular freezer ziplock bags as well. Labeled and tossed in the freezer. Now all I have to do is defrost when we're ready to use them with dinner! No cooking required!!!! This is going to make life so much easier! It actually looked so good I kept some out and mixed in some BBQ sauce and had a sandwich for dinner since Jake's not home tonight.

I can tell you spending 2 hours of cooking was SO worth the amount of time and money it's going to save us. Not to mention a TON healthier!  I mean look, the one on the top is homemade, the one on the bottom is frozen store bought? Which looks better to you??

So little time

So as I'm laying here not being able to sleep for the second night in a row (from my phone so excuse the typos), all that is running through my head is what I need to do. It seems like there's never a day where all the laundry is done or the sink is empty or there's not stuff stacked all along the hallway needing to be put away. Suggestions?

My number one problem is laundry. It seems like I do at least a load a day. We go through so many clothes it's ridiculous. Jake works in a warehouse so on most nights he comes home an showers and then changes. So that's 2 outfits a day. Scratch that, we started working out after brenden goes to bed so he goes from work clothes, to workout clothes, to pjs after his shower. So 3. Brendens very into layers at the moment and always wants to have 2 shirts on (usually a long sleeve with a tee on top). So that's 2 plus his pjs. He eats breakfast in his pjs so they get dirty and only get 1 night wear out of them. I'm problem the worst of all. I always wear at least 2 shirts. (tank top under neith). And then change into sweatpants to work out then pjs and a Tshirt after my shower. So total for ONE day we are talking about like 15 items of clothing plus socks/underwear. And then 4 towels if we all shower. How in the world do you keep up with that? I use one of those 4 sectioned baskets in te laundry room. Maybe that's my problem, I seperate our laundry TOO much? I wash; towels, colors, whites, underwear, and brendens laundry. Thats 5 loads. Plus bedding ams randoms. And I wait a few days until there's enough for a decent size load so then I have five loads to do! The dryer takes an hour, so that's at least 5 hours of laundry plus folding/hanging! I try and throw a load in anytime I have a chance. But then it sits in a basket on the floor until I get the time to put it away. (by then there's usually 3 clean baskets and another 3 worth of dirty).

Ahhh anyways, enough venting for tonight. The dishes are another story. I finally have time to load the dishwasher tonight and there's too many to fit! So now I feel like nothing was accomplished because I still have a sink full of dishes. And not only do I have to unload it (which I hate more than loading. Sometimes I just wait until we've used half the clean dishes), now I have to reload it.

Well that turned into more than if needed. Now I'm off to watch another episode of house hunters so I can find another thing I wish we had in our house. ;)

Christmas Card Book

Okay I'm back to show yall the idea I had to do with all of my Christmas cards. If you're like me, you don't want to throw away all those photo cards you get every years, so I just take them down and throw them in a drawer. Well I saw an idea similar to this on Pinterest a few weeks back and decided to try it out. Cost me nothing to make.
You'll need:
Wrapping paper
Cardboard (I used a box from a Christmas gift that still hadn't made it all the way to the trash.)
Hole punch
Binder rings-2

Step 1: Trace your largest Christmas card on the carboard. Then cut out 2 rectangles that are a little larger than the card.

Step 2:  Wrap each board in your favorite left over wrapping paper.

Step 3: Choose your smallest card and decide where you want to punch holes. I hole punched 1 card, then used it as a template to hole punch my cardboard.

Step 4: I organized all my cards by size, then hole punched each size a few at a time. I used a sharpie to make the dots through my template card and then hole punched. So they will all line up.

Step 5:  Place your binder ring first through your back piece of cardboard, then through each picture. ( I had cards from the past 2 years, and organized then all by year. I also placed the larger cards on firsts so they will be towards the back of my book).

Step 6: Repeat this with the 2nd ring in your other holes. Then place the 2nd piece of board, your cover, on. Close both rings.



FINISHED :)

 Now you have all your cards in one place and can pull it out every year and look through them! You can always use nicer looking wrapping paper and add decorative things to your rings to make it look nicer.

Busy week

Okay okay I know I've been totally slacking lately. I went back to work temporarily last week and it totally kicked my butt. Made me appreciate so much more being able to stay home with Brenden. I'm filling in a few days a week at the day care I use to work at. It's not horrible, I love the center and co-workers. For a second I actually contimplated going back permenatly. Brenden was able to go as well and stay in the 2 year old room. Just had to pay a small highly discounted rate. So even though I was working 930-630, I saw him off and on all day, and spyed on him through the windows of course. But not getting home until almost 7 was totally killing both of us. And then I'd let him stay up until atleast 830 (normally in bed at 7) so he could play at home and spend time with us. Anyhow, wasn't horrible. And I made some extra money. I have a few days this week as well.

So aside from my excuses, I was busy enough not to do any shopping this week. I did buy a few grocerys last week and not post them, but it wasn't anything major. Just enough to get us through the week. (Bread, milk, fruit). Anyways, me and Brenden did venture out to go to 2 stores today. Normally I only shop at Publix because most of their sales fit what I need and I dont have the time to hit Kroger for just 1 or 2 things. But this week was worth it. Now my total will seem really high. BUT I've decided to go back on weight watchers so some of what I bought isn't stuff I was buying before. And we all know eating healthy is much more expensive than eating junk food. But I guess I picked good timing because WW stuff was on sale at both stores this week. (On sale=still expensive compared to what I usually pay).

Sooo. My total for the week was $71.19
I used around $33 in coupons and then store sales. EVERYTHING I bought was atleast on sale beside the bananas.
*Chicken on sale for $1.99/lb at kroger so I stocked up. One other reason the bill was a bit higher.

Overall, my trip included:
2 paper towels (Free after coupons)
3 Huggies wipes (Were actually on 'closeout' for $1.19 each. Had $.80 each off coupon).
2 WW ice creams (Pricey. Had $1.00 each coupon but still paid around $3.00 each).
2 Yogurt 4 pks ($1.00 each after coupons).
1/2 gal milk
Lunch meat-Ham, turkey, 2 peperonies
Fritos
Quaker chips
4 packs of chicken breast, and 3 packs of chicken tenderloins
2 packs cheese
Chicken broth & beef broth (2 each)
2 PB
2 Smuckers jam
2 Ritz bits
Rits thin crackers
4 quacker chewy bars
WW snack cakes (Again pricer, but were on sale and I had a coupon so it was as cheap as it was gonna get).
2 packs gum (Both free)
Stir fry seasoning (Free)
salad mix
bananas
strawberrys
celery
3 ears of corn
cantaloup


Anyhow, I have a cute project to do with all those Christmas cards you need to take down but don't want to throw away! So keep looking. I'l try and get it up by tomarrow.

Monterey chicken!

Well today was a busy day. 2 doctors appointments, brenden had baseball this morning and speech this afternoon. I had not even thought about dinner and when 4:30 rolled around the only option was to eat takeout or run to the store. So I made a quick trip to publix and picked up a pack of chicken (which is on sale so il be getting more when I head back to do my grocery shopping this weekend). I got home and decided to make this. It's super easy and you probably have the ingredients in your kitchen (luckily I did).
You'll need (amount based totally on how many your cooking for).
Chicken breast
BBQ sauce
Shredded cheddar cheese
I can Rotel- tomatoes and chilies
Bacon bits/pieces

1. Cook chicken as desired ( I seasoned with salt/pepper then cooked in a skillet. You can bake/grill/whatever).
2. Drain Rotel
3. Place chicken in foil lined baking dish and top with (in order) BBQ sauce, cheddar cheese, Rotel, bacon.
4. Bake at 400 for 7-10 minutes.
5. Enjoy :)

Chicken Fried Rice

No new deals for today. But I do have a recipe to share. This is what we're having for dinner. I'm trying out my new rice cooker I got for Christmas. So much more easier than cooking it in a saucepan.

You'll need:

• 3 cups cooked white rice
• 3 tbs sesame oil
• 1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)
• Small onion, chopped
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 cooked chicken breast, chopped.

1. Heat oil in large skillet and then add peas/carrots, onion, and garlic. Stir fry until tender.
2. Lower the heat to medium, and then push mixture to one side. On opposite side add egg and scramble.
3. Add rice, chicken, and soy sauce. Blend together. Stir fry for 5-10 minutes.

SOO good. and SOO easy. Let me know if you try it :) We have it alot but I never know what to serve with it. It has meat, rice and veggies. I usually just toss in some cressent rolls and fruit if I have any.