Author Archives: Nora

More on Fridges vs Freezers

05 Thursday Nov 2015

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Some time back I wrote about the virtues of fridges vs freezers and their relative capacity.  In summary, I know lots of folks have second freezers, but for us a second fridge is far more relevant.

For example, I largely cleaned out our fridge before we went on vacation.  Our second fridge primarily holds drinks so I didn’t worry so much about that one.  (At this point it also had lemons, limes, and apples.)  Here’s the pictures I took upon our return (note I bought one gallon of milk just before we left specifically so the expiration date would get through the first two meals or so when we got back).

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Upon our return I promptly went to BJs, among other places, and both filled up again.  But, the freezers.  No.  They stayed pretty much the same through the entire process.

Anyway, as I was thinking about this I realized that The Frugal Girl had posted about something shockingly similar just before we went on our trip.  Specifically, she had cleaned out her chest freezer (I think she only has one fridge.) and found a variety of VERY old things, including three frozen turkeys.  Now, I thought, if someone who tracks their food waste so well (she admits this tracking started after the chest freezer was purchased) can have so much old stuff buried in their freezer, what hope is there for the rest of us?

This is not to say that I don’t use our freezers.  I keep meat in there temporarily.  They almost always have bread.  I do freeze some extras/leftovers.  I keeps some flours/nuts/butter there.  But, I can pretty much always see everything.  So, every time I open it I’m faced with the mental note of what I should maybe use up.

The downside to this is the upcoming months when turkeys (and other roasts) go on excellent sales.  If I had more space I could freeze lots of them to eat over the rest of the winter.  I even noticed BJs has a frozen turkey purchase limit this year.  But, I don’t want to be roasting in the oven come summer.  Nor do we want to eat turkey every weekend.  So, I think I’m going to stick with buying fresh items as best I can and save the freezing for someone/something else.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Halloween 2015

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

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This is the second week where I had set out a few goals for myself.  Despite four people getting sick, I did get most of it done.

  • Finished the bill paying.
  • Finished dealing with the wedding present.
  • Went to the dentist.
  • Carved our pumpkins.  Since I do most of the carving, I decided four was enough for this year.  The boys drew the designs and I attempted to follow them.

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  • Went trick or treating.  We were supposed to have Bumblee (the transformer), but it got left at school after the party so going through our costume closet he chose a storm trooper instead.

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  • I finished gathering price info at BJs.  I still haven’t been to Wegman’s and probably won’t go until next week.  Since this is the store I most need info from, the price book update will take another few weeks.
  • I got the reuseable Halloween decorations put away.

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  • I went to both the soccer game and baseball game for my oldest.  I don’t get to many of his games, so these were nice to see.  They won both.
  • I did some crazy grocery shopping at Stop & Shop.
  • I went to parent/teacher conferences for my older three.  All is well.

October Grocery Review

02 Monday Nov 2015

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The numbers are low this month largely because we were traveling for a large chunk.  But, we’re also getting into stock up sale season so we’ll have to see how that affects things through the end of the year.

I wanted to take some extra space to talk about my crazy Stop & Shop shopping the last week in October.  Because of that, and because with the hectic schedule this week its not very interesting, I’m going to skip the menu for this week.

  • October TOTAL: $608.28
    • Stop & Shop: $208.52
    • Wegman’s: $98.88
    • BJs: $219.70
    • Other: $81.18
      • Local: $23.22
      • Star Market: $42.83
      • Trader Joe’s: $15.13
      • Target: $0
      • Other: $0

I only went to one grocery store this week – Stop & Shop.  But, because of transaction limitations I went through 7 times!

I went twice on Tuesday.  It wasn’t super efficient because I actually went morning and afternoon because I had very small time windows, but I was only two blocks away to start each time.  Here’s purchase #1:

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Here’s purchase #2:

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Notice their shocking similarity!  Yes, the only change is cheese instead of grape tomatoes.  Ever other item is transaction limited and I only had one coupon for free grape tomatoes.  Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have gone back in the afternoon except that I realized that I needed the cheese Thursday morning for the boys’ preschool Halloween parties (that’s why its orange), and I wasn’t going to shop again until after I dropped them off.

Sale prices for the transaction limited items:
– granola bars @ $1.88/box, limit 5
– soda @ $3.00/sleeve, limit 3
Limit 1 with a total purchase over $25 after all coupons:
– bread @ $1.98
– OJ @ $1.88
– chips @ $4.99
– chocolate chips @ $1.99
– potatoes @ $0.97 (since this is for a 5lb bag, its just under 20¢/lb, which even the Prudent Homemaker would approve of)

Thursday I was more efficient, going through 5 times and stopping at the car to drop off items each time.  (Note: I bought the perishables last.)  This is where their self scanner option is very handy, because I had to make $25 after coupons on each transaction to get the single item per transactions as described above.  Since I haven’t been to Stop & Shop in a while, and there are a few items I can’t get anywhere else, it took a number of transactions to get this all done.  If I’d priced it all out I probably could have gotten away with one fewer transaction, but I’m really not complaining.

Here’s the total of my five rounds on Thursday:

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I got chocolate chips and potatoes all five times through.  I got one more OJ.  I got one more set of 5 granola bars (subbing in two boxes of cereal at $1.88 each since I’d bought out the shelf of granola bars and cereal was part of the sale too).  Most items were on sale plus I had coupons for the fruit cups and sugar on top of their sale prices.

Items that weren’t on sale:
bananas – Regularly 39¢/lb. I really can’t ask much more.
hot dogs – The store recently lowered the every day price to what used to be the standard sale price.
hot dog buns
egg noodles
salsa – yes, it does sometimes go on sale
store brand yogurt
parmesan cheese
bacon – Bummer that it went on sale this week.  I’ll buy a few more.
baby carrots – The smaller bags were on sale, but the larger bags were better per pound.

The total for seven rounds came to $179.57, which is pretty good given that I had to spend $175 after coupons to use all of them.  And, the machine didn’t balk at my many consecutive transactions, though the sales folks did find it funny.

Disney Review 2015 – the Resort

31 Saturday Oct 2015

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This is the second post about our trip to Disney World.

As a reminder, we’ve never stayed on property so we weren’t entirely sure what to expect.  We chose Port Orleans, French Quarter.  At Port Orleans we could get adjoining rooms without costing ourselves a small fortune.  The French Quarter side is smaller so things like the restaurant, bus, pool, etc are all closer, which was important to us.  By chance we ended up with a ground floor unit.  While I normally would not prefer this, the layout was such that we had very few people walk by our windows and no noise.  And, it was much easier to get the boys and stroller out every morning.

Our reaction was overwhelmingly positive.  (And, I’d request a ground floor again for ease of egress.)  True to description we were close to all the places we needed.  The rooms were plenty spacious, quiet (even to the adjacent neighbors), and reasonably well laid out.  There was no true closet, but there was plenty of high shelving to keep items from the two year old, which was wonderful.

We used the pool a few times, and the laundry once.  Neither was far.  Both were clean and modern.  My one issue with the pool is that the sight lines are terrible.  So, it was basically impossible to see more than one child at a time.  This seems to be a Disney thing as the same problem presents itself in the Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Dinosaur play areas.  But maybe they’ve figured this out because the sight lines at the newer Dumbo play area are much better.  But, the pool has lots of lifeguards who seemed to be very attentive.

We were particularly happy with the on-site restaurant.  It’s a food court which is a bit difficult with seven people, but by the second visit we had figured out how to handle this.  Also, being our first time on the meal plan we didn’t make “proper” selections the first time.  This was handled well also.  But, the food (specifically the ribs and fried chicken) were very good and a welcome break from the usual Disney burgers one finds in the park quick service restaurants.  We only ate dinner there so I can’t speak to breakfast or lunch.  We were so happy with it we ended up there two additional times when we decided to leave the parks early and swim after dinner.

Finally, the front desk handled all of our requests/questions well.  And, the store was both well stocked and reasonably priced.  We did not buy and souvenirs, but did purchase a few food items.  This got us through breakfast the first morning (before our order was delivered) and provided sandwiches and snacks for the plane ride home for much less than we would have had to pay in the airport.

Overall, I would try a Disney hotel, and specifically this one, again.

CSA Week #20, 2015

29 Thursday Oct 2015

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This is the last one.  And, while its fairly good for us, I was surprised that there weren’t more storage crops in it.  There are also a lot of duplicates from last week.

The good:  green peppers, grape tomatoes, apples, broccoli

The ok: buttkin squash, eggs (medium?, and really you can get eggs pretty much anywhere), carrots, spinach, scallions, leeks (again, really), red cabbage, escarole

The waste/donate: cilantro, kale

In a final attempt to add some variety, this week I’ll take the “good” category plus the spinach, scallions, and cabbage.

The farmer’s markets also close this week.  Though, we have a holiday version prior to Thanksgiving to give everyone one last chance to stock up for the holiday or whatever they can store for the winter.  I fully expect to buy a large supply of apples, if nothing else.

Last Week’s Accomplishments – Catching Up from Summer

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

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Last week I wrote about what I hoped to get done over the following two weeks so first, let’s see where that’s gone.

  • I have cleared the email & snail mail backlog.  I haven’t paid the bills yet as they’re not due, though that will happen this week.  I’ve read some of the backlog – certainly anything important.
  • I’m still working on the wedding present; shipping is causing no end of hassles, but I made some progress.
  • I had the doctor appointment; the dentist is tomorrow.
  • We have Halloween costumes.  Pumpkins have been procured.  Three have been carved; one more will be done tomorrow.  Decorations have been put out.
  • I started on the price book info.  Specifically, I got about halfway through BJs before I ran out of time.  I haven’t been to another store yet to start the comparisons.  At this point I’m not sure it will be done in two weeks for two reasons.  BJs took me longer than I expected.  And, I’m not likely to go to Wegman’s before next Tuesday.  So, we probably need to add another week or two for this item.
  • I did make it to the rummage sale and had some reasonable success.  I was looking for shorts, which I didn’t find.  But, for $22 I got a bunch of books and clothes.  Definitely the best deal was the size 12 Gap chinos in the center of the clothing picture, although the branded items, Red Sox pjs, and Mark Jacobs shirt for me were obviously well under their standard list prices also.

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  • I only made a small dent in the decluttering.  The mudroom is almost done, which would sound like a huge accomplishment except that its not nearly the worst room in the house, just the easiest.

Anyway, other things happened also:

  • We got our front walk and steps replaced so I graded around them and put down some grass seed.
  • We did lots of socializing with various family members who were in town.
  • We got back into the swing of school, sports, and activities.

Grocery Update & Menu Plan

26 Monday Oct 2015

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Since we emptied the fridge (largely) before going on our trip, I had some restocking to do this past week.

First I went to Wegmans.  Nothing particular out of the ordinary here, except that the bananas are organic.  I had a coupon for $1 off organic produce and while I would have preferred to use it on strawberries (couldn’t find organic ones) or tomatoes (price difference was too high), the bananas made the most sense.  So I got this batch for $0.19.  We can’t tell the difference other than they spoil very fast.

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The next day I went to BJs.  Again, most is self explanatory and things you’ve seen before.  The Skittles are for Halloween; the Hershey’s kisses are for winter baking.  There are three beef roasts because I bought a primal and had them break it down and trim it.  I’m actually going to break it down further to make one batch of beef stew this week, and one batch of beef chunks I’ll freeze for beef stew sometime in the future.

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Then, over the weekend I took the older four boys to the farm stand for pumpkins and the hay maze.  Plus we got some in season produce.  Obvious exception is the bananas since they don’t grow around here.  This farm stand is a big one, open year round, and imports produce from all over.  The green beans are no longer local either (sigh); they’re from Georgia.

The two bags of green are broccoli and green beans.  There is some local apple cider.  The two paper bags are seconds bananas.  I took them out and sorted them in the second picture.  Those on the left could be eaten if its done fast enough.  Those on the right will be turned into banana bread more quickly.  It turned out there were 30 bananas at $3.00, or $0.10 per banana, which is pretty good.

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Here’s the menu plan for this coming week.

Saturday:
leftover beef stew

Sunday:
Chinese take out

Monday:
Kids: leftovers (mix of pizza & Chinese)
Adults: homemade pizza

Tuesday:
tacos

Wednesday:
succulent braised pork
mashed potatoes
green beans

Thursday:
Kids:  shrimp, green beans
Adults: homemade mac n cheese

Friday:
Kids: hot dogs
Adults: homemade pizza

Disney Overview – 2015

23 Friday Oct 2015

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This is the first of what will be many Disney review posts.  I’ll try to break things down by topic over the next few weeks.

For perspective, this was our third trip to Disney World.  That being said, it was the first time we’d stayed on property or used the meal plan.  We also were there for nine days, which is a very long time.  Because we’d gotten the stomach bug on both previous trips our original intention was to take a few days off (TBD based on illness) over the course of the week.  But, (YEAH!) this time nobody got sick so we had nine days in the parks.  We used all this extra time to not drive ourselves to exhaustion.  Every day (except one) the boys ate dinner and were in bed on time, the adults were in bed early, and we woke reasonably easily in the mornings.  I think staying on schedule was crucial in keeping everyone sane.

Today, I’ll do a quick review of Disney Transportation.  I’ll talk about the resort, meals, Fast Passes, and parks in later weeks.

Our first experience with Disney Transportation was the Magical Express, which takes you from the airport to your hotel.  We used the yellow stickers to send our bags all the way through without our having to grab them at the airport.  Since we’d been warned that this would mean that we might not get our bags until 3-4 hours later, we put the boys’ pjs in our carry on bags.  As it worked out, we landed about 5 pm and the bags were in our room when we got back from dinner.

The Magical Express was clean, comfortable, and pretty efficient.  The bus was ready to go when we arrived in the depot area and we were the third or fourth stop on Disney property.

The trip back to the airport was a bit trickier.  First, we had a 9:30 am flight so we had to board the Magical Express about 6:30, which is early for us.  But, we made it.  This time we did not have them handle our luggage since we’d been told it needed to be dropped at 5:30 (before we got up).  But, as it turned out the distance from the bus depot to baggage check was very long.  Since we were able to print our boarding passes at the resort, it would have been easier to check the luggage also.

Our experience with the internal Disney buses was similarly positive.  We had no trouble getting to the parks by 8:30/9:00, even in the few cases where we had to wait for a second one.  About half the time we were able to get seats.  And, when the bus was quite full it didn’t make extra stops on the way to the parks.

The one exception was when we had dinner at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and needed to get back to our resort.  Disney has no internal mechanism of getting from one resort to another (unless they’re both on the monorail).  Because we had to take two buses and transfer at an intermediate destination (Downtown Disney in our case), it took over an hour to get from the Lodge back to our resort.  I think as Disney puts more of the branded restaurants in the hotels they should consider an internal taxi service.  Especially since one is making dinner reservations anyway, it would have been no problem for us to identify way in advance that we would need to move x people from A to B hotel following a x:xx dinner reservation.  I’d even pay a few extra bucks for that, especially if it was as good or better than the Magical Express, meaning 2-3 stops max on your journey.

In advance of our trip I’d read a lot about what a pain Disney Transportation was and how we should rent a car even for internal trips.  We did not find that to be the case at all.  Maybe it was the season, but we would use the buses again.

CSA Week #19, 2015

22 Thursday Oct 2015

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Well, we’re holding and maybe moving backwards.

The good:  broccoli, green peppers, grape tomatoes, apples, leeks

The ok: buttkin squash, escarole, red cabbage, spinach, carrots

The waste/donate: cilantro, kale

This week I’ll take the “good” category plus the buttkin squash.  Not sure I’ve ever had that one, but I’m assuming its a winter squash of some sort.  Frankly, this time of year I’d prefer to have beans, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and lettuce vs the “ok” and “waste” categories.  I’ll have to track some of those down on my own.

Goals for the Next Two Weeks

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

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Yes, usually on Tuesday I post what I have done for the past week.  But, last week we were on vacation!  Hence, no post yesterday with groceries because there were none and I haven’t fully planned meals for this week yet either.  But, now that I’m back there’s much to be done.

We were in Disney World and I’ll review various aspects of that over the next few Fridays.  Unfortunately we were welcomed back with unseasonable cold weather and ice.  (It’s a bad sign when ice melt is being put out before Halloween.)  Check out the little icicles.

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I’m listing these goals for the next two weeks because some of them require multiple stops and really can’t be done this week with the standard stuff we have going on.  And, this is on top of the usual school, grocery, meals, laundry, sports, etc.  I already cleared the laundry backlog from the trip!

  • Review email backlog.
  • Sort snail mail; pay bills; read backlog.
  • Deal with one wedding present.
  • Go to one doctor and one dentist appointment.
  • Go to parent/teacher elementary conferences.
  • Decide on/acquire Halloween costumes.  Buy pumpkins & decorate for Halloween.  Go trick or treating.
  • Update grocery price book.  This hasn’t been done since Wegman’s opened about a year ago.  Note that my goal is not to determine the lowest ever price for a given thing, but to determine the standard prices for things at the places I shop so I can evaluate sales and otherwise purchase items at the best location.
  • Go to a local rummage sale.  This one happens once a year and I’ve meant to go before but either missed it or had kids to attend to.  So, I’m interested to see what’s there.
  • Continue de-cluttering that was abandoned last spring with the arrival of summer (ie, no school) followed by the consignment sale and vacation trip.