money-saving-in-the-works

This week’s United Budget Meal is quick, easy, & cheap. LOL

United is doing a summer game, similar to Albertson’s Monopoly game, called Road to Riches. Each game piece includes 3 ‘mile markers,’ 1 internet game code, & 1 store coupon. I have dozens of these coupons, from the game pieces & the internet codes. I will be using some for this week’s meal, but you don’t need them to keep this around $5.

This week is going to be Tuna Helper with corn on the cob, with honeydew melon for dessert. Depending on how hungry your family is, you’ll need to buy:

2 Food Club Skillet Classics for Tuna (0.99 x 2 = 1.98 - 0.25 c/o) - 1.73
2 Food Club Chunk Tuna in Water - 1.00
1 Food Club Corn on the Cob, Mini Ears - 1.67
1/2 Honeydew Melon - 1.50/2 = 0.75

Grand total after my coupon (I think I actually have 2, but I’ll have to check) is $5.15. And that should feed all of us, including my trucker husband. If he’s not home this weekend, we’ll have some leftovers to put in the freezer for our Restaurant Night. Of course, you can forget about the melon if your family doesn’t like them. My girls LOVE melon, so I’ll definitely be getting at least 1 for them.

Well, I’m finally back! I’ve had a bad couple of weeks, no energy, sleeping all day, etc. I’m still trying to get everything back on track, but the past 4 days, I’ve actually gotten up before the crack of noon. LOL

Yesterday, I was doing my PTR’s (paid to read emails) & came across this site . Its free, and since I can always unsubscribe later, I went ahead & signed up for it. I’ve printed the Blogger’s Cheatsheet & will be studying it tonight & tomorrow. If the information is good, I may start doing those steps, which may take me away from Today.com. I don’t know yet. I may end up with 2 blogs, with lots of links between the two. LOL

If I do the Cheatsheet, I will have several work at home gigs; Today.com blog, Cheatsheet blog (don’t know what else to call it yet), PTR’s, ChaCha, Bum Marketing, mTurk, & PayToSurfs. That means I’m going to have to really buckle down & get my schedule figured out, quickly.  Since summer’s here, that means the monsters will be outside playing for a good chunk of each morning. That’ll give me a few hours to work, and then after their 8pm bedtime. So I’ll have about 6-8 hours each day to work, hopefully. I’ll keep y’all posted on how things are going with the Cheatsheet work, along with all the others.

The only meat that United has on sale for under $2/pound this week is 93% lean ground turkey. It is $2.19 for a 19oz package, which comes out to $1.83/pound. Some of you might be wondering ‘What do I do with ground turkey?’ Well, its easy… Use it in place of ground beef! My favorite thing to make with ground turkey is Pinwheels! I got this recipe from HillbillyHousewife.com

I’m going to link to the recipe, so y’all can wander over there & check her goodies out! But be warned, they are in the middle of moving things around the site right now. My math says its about $2.75 for the pinwheels if you follow the recipe exactly (I like to substitute the milk in the dough with water), so that’s what I’m going to be using to do the math for tonight’s dinner.

Pinwheels (2.75)
2 boxes Velveeta shells & cheese (my kiddos love their mac & cheese, in any form) - on sale for $1.67 each, plus use the coupon here for 1.50 off 2 (1.84)
1 bag Food Club Steamin’ Easy Veggies (corn or green beans are good choices) - $1.25

Grand total is $5.84, but its an easy meal & its kid friendly. Whenever I make it, I always end up with extra Pinwheels for late night snacking or lunch the next day. So its more like a meal and a half for a little less than $6, not bad if I do say so myself.

This week, Albertson’s doesn’t have much meat for under $2/lb. That’s the most I’m willing to pay for any cut of meat, that’s why Hubby doesn’t get steaks very often. LOL.  They do have 2 pre-seasoned meats buy 1 get 2 free, but I’ve never bought pre-seasoned meat before, so I have no idea what that’ll cost. But if its not too bad, say $3-4/pound, that would come out to about $1-1.35 per pound. Their B1G2 meats are ’supreme beef petite sirloin steak’ & pre-seasoned boneless pork loin chops, with coupon. So, depending on the prices (which I will be checking tomorrow & updating this post with), I might be making up a couple of dinners with those meats. But on to the meats that I know are under $2/pound; fryer wings, 1.49/pound; boneless pork loin roast, 1.99/pound; & 85% lean ground beef (Fri-Sun only). Since there’s not much to go with the hamburger, I’m going to work with the pork roast.

This recipe isn’t something I found, its just a trial & error experiment I did when I first got my crockpot.

Ingredients:

1    lb   pork loin (1.99)
1/2      onion (.50), sliced
2          potatoes (1.00), cubed
seasonings to tase (.10)

Toss all of it in the crockpot & cook on low for 6-8 hours. Dinner is done!

If you want more veggies to go with this one, you can heat up some frozen corn or sweet peas. I use about half a 16oz bag, which is 75 cents.

Grand total is 4.34, and you might even have enough left over for lunch tomorrow. It all depends on if you make those extra veggies or not.