Breakfast for Supper

We love to have breakfast for supper, especially now that we have chickens who produce about 10 eggs a day!  Every once in a while though I want breakfast but not the normal pancakes, waffles, eggs, biscuits.  This week I decided to try something new. 

Years ago I bought these great breakfast recipe pamphlets from here and I use them all the time.  I thumbed through those and found a few recipes that inspired this supper.

We made a baked oatmeal that was 3 cups of oats and 1/3 cup of coconut mixed together.  Pour 4 cups boiling water over top and bake.  For fun, I added 1/2 cup of butterscotch chips.  It made the recipe and was a huge hit - even to my coconut hating Man!! 

I also found a recipe for Hootnanny Panckaes.  It's 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of milk, 6 eggs and baked.  I cut it into squares and put a scoop of apple pie filling on top.

Last I vaguely remembered seeing on a cooking show once (or maybe it was in a magazine) where they cooked eggs in muffin tins lined with ham.  I gave it a shot and sprinkled cheese on the top.  They were wonderful and all Fish Sticks and My Man gave them rave reviews.

Not your typical breakfast supper but definitely one to repeat!

Great Deal this Week

Here's a deal I got today that I have to share because I happened upon it accidentally.

This week at CVS, you can get $4 Extra Care Bucks (ECB) when you buy $12 worth of Suave products.  In the Red Plum coupon insert on January 8 there is a coupon for buy 2 get 1 free.  The clerk at my store knows me and worked with me on this deal.  I bought 6 Suave body wash for $2 each, totaling $12.  Then I used 2 coupons of the buy 2 get 1 free.  That took off $6 (regular price was $3).  Then the register printed out $4 in ECB bringing my payment to $2 for 6 body washes.  That comes to 33.3 cents each!!  The clerk told me that the ECB's print out based on my purchases, not on my savings through coupons.

Go grab that deal this week.  Who doesn't need body wash??

Oh and by the way, while you are there, grab some Zarbees Children Cough Syrup.  It's $6 with $6 in ECB's so it's free.  It's a great, natural cough syrup for kids and the Fish Sticks say it works!

Generous Couponing

As you begin to coupon, you might encounter times when something is free but you don't really think you will use it.  When I first started several years ago, I passed those items up.  Just couponing itself was hard enough for me to keep up with and do well and I wasn't interested in getting things I really didn't need. 

Over time though I've realized that it doesn't take much time for me to stock up on those items and give them away.  One of the wonderful things about couponing is being generous with your deals and sharing them with others.  I do have a stockpile, not near what you see those crazed woman on Extreme Couponing have, but one nonetheless.  My biggest one is the toiletries.  I have boxes stored under my bed, much to my husband's dismay (he says that beds are not for storage - sorry Sweetie!).  Almost once a month I love to share some of my deals with others.  Single moms.  Families in financial need.  Food pantries.  Friends for their birthday or just to show appreciation to someone.  I know it sounds like a weird gift but it always seems well received.  Who wouldn't want a huge bag filled with personal items that we all use?

So as you get the hang of it, grab the freebies and think of someone you could bless it with.  Can't use a $30 blood glucose monitor?  Give it to a diabetic friend.  Got a curling iron, but don't ever use one?  Pass it to your sister who goes through one a year.  Have 10 bottles of shampoo already?  Then grab them anyway and donate to a friend who is struggling to make ends meet.  Use your fun in couponing to be generous and bless others.  You'll be glad you made the extra effort!

Fun Snack

I get tired of the same ole same ole snack foods around here.  Here's a favorite that I made this week (using a box of my cheap Triskets from Kroger).  Triskets with cream cheese, bacon bits and a sliced cucumber on the top.  They went through the entire box of Triskets for this snack.  They look prettier with the cucumber between the cracker and cheese, but spreading the cheese on a moist cucumber was more labor intensive than this Mama was willing to work!  You like how I lifted the cucumber lid for you to see the bacon?  I thought you'd like that.  :)  So what fun snacks do your crew like?

Just to Clarify...

Dear Readers,

It has been brought to my attention that my post about collecting coupons made some of you think that I might be swiping my neighbors newspapers.  This is not the case and I will re-write what I said in that post to clarify. 

There are several homes in my area (we live in the country, not a neighborhood) that are uninhabited and for sale and have been for some time.  These papers that I collect from their driveway are never picked up by anyone including their real estate agent.  Over time they pile up, get totally soaked and nasty.  I wait until there are several weeks worth of papers before I pick them up.  The ones that are unsalvagable, I trash.  The ones where the coupons are still in tact, I keep.  Sometimes that means drying them out by the fireplace.  These newspapers are not purchased by my neighbors.  They are free and only small, local papers with one reading section and the rest are ads and coupons.  There is one or 2 other neighbors who allow their papers to do the same....stack up in their yellow, plastic bags and make a huge mess at their mailbox.  I clean up their mess for them also and take the coupons that are able to be saved, but most of it needs to be thrown out.

I'm sorry for being unclear and sounding like I was stealing my neighbors papers.  I've heard of folks doing that and I would never do that.

Thanks for hearing me out and I'm so sorry I was unclear.

Drug Store Couponing Review

 Did anyone shop for the Walgreens freebies this week?  The Iron supplement, aspirin and eye drops were all free after you receive your Register Rewards (RR) and no coupon was necessary.  What a good week to start.  The Alka Seltzer came to 74 cents each after RR so my total before tax for these items was $2.96!!

This is what I got at CVS and I'm gonna share a little secret with you so lean in closely. 

The 2 Pantene products were $1.48.  Not totally cheap but a good price if you like Pantene.  The Tom's toothpaste came to 99 cents after Extra Care Bucks (ECB) and the 3 greeting cards were free because I chose only cards that were 99 cents. 

The deal on John Frieda products was this:  you could get $5 ECB if you purchased $15 worth of John Frieda products.  The only coupon available was for the Precision Foam Colour.  I have never colored my hair and don't have plans to anytime soon so you might think this deal wouldn't be one I was interested in.  I have found though that many coupons that claim they are product specific can actually be used for another product of the same name brand.  The shampoo, conditioners and stylers were $5 each.  The foam colour was $12.  I purchased 3 shampoos/conditioners (and even ventured out to try the one that said it would lighten my hair with highlights...we'll see) spending $15.  I got $5 ECB, taking my total to $10 and decided to try 3 coupons for the foam colour that were $3 off each.  They rang up at the register with no problem and so I got all 3 John Frieda products for $1 total!! 

Worst case scenario is that the coupon won't go through and you can just tell the cashier to take the items off.  So far, it hasn't happened to me.  Try it!

Creative Leftovers

I don't know about your families, but occasionally usually when I say "leftovers" to the Fish Sticks, it is followed by moaning.  It's not that they didn't love it the first time around, but for some reason, it doesn't sound so appealing the 2nd time around.  This calls for a bit of creativity on my part.  Now some leftovers are just leftovers and there's no 2 ways around it.  Some though I have found I can re-create into a new meal and no one has any clue that they were leftovers.

Last week I made a great pork roast in the crock pot on Sunday with carrots, potatoes and onions using Italian salad dressing as a marinate.  We had it for meal #2 on sandwich bread and then I had 1 cup leftover.  My job was to feed it to them for the third time, stretching one cup of meat into a meal for 8 and preventing them from ever recognizing it.  The best way was fried rice.  A handful of frozen peas, half of a chopped onion, 2 eggs, a tad bit of oil and rice in the rice cooker.  Voila!  They never knew that the yummy pork fried rice was just pot roast leftovers.  It was my one-dish meal with a side of cucumber slices and baby carrots.

I'm not always full of good ideas.  My friend, Amy, will attest to that this week when I served her leftover chili on top of leftover fried rice because cooking rice for 20 minutes didn't seem a good option as we tried to visit with 6 little munchkins to tend to.  It wasn't that bad, but when Amy left and I actually thought about what I had done, I got pretty embarrassed.  Sorry Amy.  I'm so glad we're still friends.  I owe you one of my Martha Stewart lunches.....next time.  :)