Memorizing the Circulars

The day the grocery store circulars arrive in the mail is one of my favorite times of the week. I have a friend in Knoxville—we went to grad school together. One time she confessed that she liked to read stolen restaurant menus while soaking in the tub. That is how I feel about recipes and grocery store circulars. But substitute the tub for bourbon—or maybe I could just soak in a tub of bourbon.

I’m currently developing my grocery store attack method. There are two, sometimes three, people who live in my house. When we just bought whatever we wanted, I usually spent more than the grocery budget every month. I bought organic things sometimes, and the pricey local dairy flavored milk and butter, and the *good* frozen pizza. I would compost spoiled, shriveled, moldy, and otherwise gross vegetables. I know we can do better.

And the thing is—I like doing better. It somehow brings me joy to win at the grocery store. I’ve always been proud of a good deal. Complement me on something I’m wearing, and my likely reply is, “Thanks! I got it on sale!” or “I’ve had this since high school.” (Although the things I still wear that I wore in high school are few and far between, by now—almost fifteen years later.)

Sidebar: You know how some people shop for shoes or handbags or clothes or electronics, whatever and call it "retail therapy." In grad school, grocery stores became my retail therapy. J'adore grocery store, not Dior.

So my first step in my grocery store attack is to sit down with the circular (and bourbon) and figure out what’s on sale. I write down everything that I might be interested in and how much it costs, and check it against my price book. Heh, price book: Total nerd alert!

Then I check my coupons for what is expiring soon and what can be combined with any sales at the grocery stores for an extra-good deal. I add these to the list.

Then I check what we already have and make my shopping lists. Generally anything that makes it to the shopping list has to be something that: a) we’ll eat; b) is needed to be combined with something we already have for a recipe/dinner; c) is a good deal.

Then I make two lists. One is things I’ll buy on Thursday or Friday—when the special sales are happening. The other is things I’ll buy on Sunday. I prioritize the lists and write the amount I want to stay below when I go shopping.

At the store, I keep a running total in my head as I put items into the cart. If something is on the end of the list but I’m over budget, I put it back. My Thursday/Friday trip also lets me scope out things that aren’t listed on the circular, but might be a good deal to consider for my Sunday trip.

And because I’ve done all this work, my mom and select co-workers are also alerted to the good sales at the grocery store! So, for example, if my co-workers pull a banana out of their pocket, I’ll say, “Bananas are on sale today for 33 cents a pound!” Everyone wins!

____________________________________________
Note: This accounting for the food I eat is a bit embarrassing. I'm not a light eater although I may pretend to be sometimes. As you will see below, I can eat a whole medium french fries on the way home AND have a girl-sized dinner. I guess if you're reading this blog, you either know this about me, or have inferred it from the number of times I go to the refrigerator during the work day.

Breakfast: Egg omelet: 1/2 egg, 1/8 c egg white, 1/8 c cottage cheese, 1/4 can corn, green pepper: The pepper was free! 34 cents

Snack: Granola Bar 47 cents
Lunch: Sweet potato patties, Celery and tapenade $1.07
Snack: kiwi 44 cents
Fake Dinner: McDonald's French Fries FREE
Dinner: Sweet potato patty, smoked sausage 73 cents
We're going to get some FREE desert from McD's right now.


Total: $3.05

Sweet Potato and Leek Patties

The best thing ever is free food, no? It doesn't matter if I have to suffer through awkward work lunches or birthday doughnuts, I'll do it. I don't care if I have to like Kraft on Facebook or promise to get junk email from Oscar Mayer, I'll do it. I'll even go to McDonald's on four separate occasions between now and Monday to redeem all the french fry coupons the husband accrued during his working days--drive thru, here I come.

Free food is awesome. Even if it is something I would avoid on a normal trip to the grocery store (Deluxe Kraft Singles? I would turn my nose up at you, were it not for the free coupon I have.), I'll indulge. Not that we're that hard up, but *win*, right?

What's even more awesome is free produce from someone's garden. For this particular recipe, it's my parents'. They had a bounty of sweet potatoes--which means we have a bounty of sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are delicious on their own. I eat them cooked with bananas for breakfast, microwaved with some butter, and, of course, mashed. No marshmallow topped casserole dishes for me. But I wanted to try something different. These patties are good and make a good main dish. But, for us, I don't know if I'd go to the trouble again.

Sidebar: My husband was afraid I was ruining good sweet potatoes. As I think will become a theme of these recipe-post sidebars, he likes these patties.

Sweet Potato and Leek Patties--adapted from the 1001 Classic Recipes book my dad gave me for Christmas years ago. Unfortunately, too heavy to take in the bath with your juice glass of bourbon.

2 pounds of sweet potatoes Free! One sweet potato was two pounds. How do I know? I weighed myself on the scales holding the sweet potato and then without it. Trying to figure out how much food weighs is generally the only time I get on the scale.
2 teaspoons plus 3 tablespoons olive oil $1.39
2 medium leeks, thinly sliced $2.00. Yikes--you can totally reduce this cost by using onions--maybe one small onion. They were organic and I splurged without thinking. Oh well, this way I could say, "no," when the husband asked if there were onions in it.
1 clove garlic, minced 5 cents is what I guessed last time.
7 ounces corn 25 cents
2 tablespoons plain yogurt 7 cents. Buyer beware--I love plain yogurt. I happened to buy the store brand because it was cheapest. When I opened it and licked the lid I discovered it was sweetened. Nothing on the carton indicated that it was sweetened except the ingredient list. But it worked ok for this recipe because of the natural sweetness of the potatoes, corn, and cooked leek.
1/2 cup flour 4 cents
some shakes of ginger I'm not going to be anal and try to figure out how much some shakes of ginger costs. Same thing applies to salt and pepper--we're actually using free salt and pepper because it came in our wedding gift salt & pepper grinders. It's probably too old now but the pepper is still spicy.

Cook and mash the sweet potatoes. Meanwhile heat the 2 teaspoons of oil and cook the leeks and garlic. Add some shakes of ginger to the pan.

Stir corn, leeks, and yogurt into potatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

Form patties and toss in flour to coat. Chill in refrigerator. I cooled them overnight simply because I can't sit around and wait dinner for some potato patties to cool.

Brush patties with oil and broil 6ish minutes. Turn over and broil another 6ish minutes. I like them to look a little bit brown and feel dried out.

This recipe made fifteen patties. One makes a good side and two would be a good meal. That equals about 26 cents per patty.

There is a fancy sauce but I didn't make it. It called for things like ginger wine and stuff. I like them plain. The husband plans to use a lot of butter. He cannot be tamed.

*Note: I made these yesterday. That's why they're not in my food count for today.*
________________________________________
Breakfast 1: 1/2 banana with sweet potato. I ate this before I ran. 12 cents
Breakfast 2: English muffin, Laughing Cow Cheese Wedge, Pear: 81 cents
Snack: Chewy Granola Bar: 47 cents
Lunch: Pulled Pork Sandwich and cup of soup--I had a working lunch today, but not one of those awkward ones. $8.95 but not because expense account!
Dinner: Pumpkin polenta; bacon, 1/3 leek, Brussel sprouts: 71 cents

Total: $2.11

Devilish Health Insurance

One thing that sucks about losing your job is losing your health insurance. Especially if you have a pre-existing condition and had back surgery less than a year ago. You just know, without even checking, that no one is going to give you individual insurance.

There is a natural inclination to just slide. What’s the worst that could happen? Surely you’ll get a job soon. Just stay away from power tools and you’ll be ok.

Except when you’re not. On Monday, we found out my step-daughter has pneumonia. Sometimes these things just happen. I wonder what the $75 cocktail of medicine would have cost without insurance—not to mention the doctor’s visit and chest x-rays.

A sidebar that could be a post all on its own, my step-daughter concocted a nirvana alternate universe in the car on the way to the doctor’s office. No one ever gets sick. Your skin is too strong to get hurt. You don’t need surgery on your back like Dad or on your shoulder like Aunt Dolly. And doctors and nurses and other medical professions only exist for when you’re going to have a baby or when you need a check-up…but that’s just for your weight and stuff. Also? No need for health insurance or those ugly brick office buildings. Those were added due to my prompts.

Being my mother’s daughter (read: a worrier), I asked my boss how much it would cost to add my husband on my insurance. For the both of us it would cost—get this—$666.

I think that says it all.

We don’t know if we can afford it or not. But maybe the question is: Can we afford not to?

________________________________________________

Breakfast: Sweet Potato & Banana with nuts: 54 cents
Snack: 7 ounces of plain yogurt, blueberries, old granola leftover from a McDonalds's fruit and yogurt parfait: 49 cents
Lunch: Pumpkin Polenta with Beans & Greens: 70 cents
Snack: 2 stalks of celery, 1 triangle of Laughing Cow & some tapenade: 98 cents
Dinner: 1/4 chicken breast, sweet potato patty: $1.50
Total $4.21
There is a lot of hold-over expensive food (tapenade, cage-free chicken) that I'm trying to account for here so I'm probably not extremely accurate. But it is my best guess while not trying to under-estimate.

Pumpkin Polenta with Beans and Greens

One thing I’m wholeheartedly embracing about being poor is eating poor. I like trying out recipes and figuring out how to use what I’ve got and what’s on sale in a way that will taste good.

Also? I like math. So whenever possible, I’ll try to include what things cost.

This is a really tasty and hearty dish. Perfect for autumn. I like the salt of the bacon (who doesn't?) and the stickiness of polenta. The pumpkin and Parmesan add the smallest kick of flavor.

Sidebar: Husband’s Comments on Polenta
Husband: What’s that? Cornbread?
Me: It’s polenta. It’s kind of like cornbread.
Husband: Why are you always making weird stuff? Why can’t you just make something normal like cornbread?
Note: He now likes polenta.

Pumpkin Polenta with Beans and Greens—This is adapted from a Rachel Ray magazine recipe

3 cups chicken broth Free—I made it myself from old chicken carcass.
2 tablespoons of butter 14 cents
2/3 can pumpkin 66 cents—It calls for a can but I only had 2/3.
1 ½ cups corn meal If you figure about $2 for a 5 pound bag (per Google) then this costs about 19 cents—The recipe calls for instant polenta but I can’t figure out who thought it was so hard to make polenta from scratch that they had to make it easier.
¾ c Parmesan cheese 56 cents—Again the recipe calls for a whole cup of Romano, but I use what I got.

Bring the broth and butter to a boil. Mix in the pumpkin and boil. Turn down the heat or else hot cornmeal mush will splat up on you. Whisk in the cornmeal a little at a time. Cook 10-15 minutes or until thick. Stir occasionally. It should get difficult to stir (Bonus: arm workout). Mix in the cheese.

3 slices of bacon, chopped up I don't remember how much I paid for the bacon. Maybe $3. So probably 56 cents. Two would have been enough. You can substitute 2 tablespoons of oil for the bacon.
½ onion, diced Totally guessing: 16 cents. I buy the bags of onions when they're on sale.
1 clove garlic, minced 5 cents. I'm guessing. Garlic is usually 50 cents for a bulb and there are probably 10 or more good cloves in there.
10 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeeze out the water 99 cents
1 cup beans 25 cents. This isn't really what I paid because I used dried beans that I had bought a while ago, but half a can of beans would be about 25 cents.

Chop up the bacon (use a kitchen scissors) and cook it for a few minutes. Add the onion and garlic. Add the spinach, separating any big chunks, and the beans and heat through.

Serve the spinach over the polenta.

The polenta makes about 8 servings and the spinach about 4. I halved the spinach because I didn’t think my husband would be too interested in eating it.

If I did my math right, that was $1.55 for the polenta and $2.01 for the beans and greens. So $3.65 for four complete meals plus four servings of leftover polenta.

I ate lunch for 70 cents today.

My New Catchphrase

My new catchphrase is, "I can't afford it." This started out as irritation about being nickel-and-dimed at work...insurance goes up and it comes out of our paycheck, we're moving offices and going to have to pay for parking or hike three blocks in the Kansas winter...that kind of thing.

But this Friday, shit just got real. I found out on my commute home that my husband just lost his job. So what did I do? Well, I'll leave out the part about texting a friend at 70 miles an hour and skip to when I made it home.

We crunched numbers. We figured out who owes us money and how to get it. We talked about severance and unemployment benefits. We talked about health insurance. We returned the expensive, awesome mattress we purchased for my step-daughter but had not picked up yet and picked out a model that cost $250 less. We considered if there were any other recent purchases we could return. (I haven't returned my new coat, yet...technically it is a Christmas gift from my parents who gave me the money to buy it. And it is awesome. And my old coat is OLD and very "Almost Famous" furry. And it was half-price, anyway...It's like I'm making money.)

Then it was time to read the saving money articles on the internet. I've been reading these for a long time and following their tips as the mood hits. I'm pretty good at being poor, if I have to be. I paid off outstanding credit card debt while on a graduate student stipend, after all. So even though I knew what would be in them, I was disappointed.

"Take your lunch to work," "Cancel premium cable channels," "Cook meals at home." Who are these people talking to? I already take my lunch to work and it's not because I love leftovers. Premium cable? How about no cable--and we haven't had it since 2005. A fancy dinner out for us involves hitting the drive-thru and sitting on the kitchen floor. (Why the floor? I don't know--because it's like a picnic?) I guess fast food carpet picnics are out of the question, now.

My next internet stop...the grocery store circulars. And boy, I hit them hard. Yesterday night my husband opened the cabinet and said, "Why do we have four jars of Peter Pan peanut butter? Don't you know I just lost my job?"

"Yeah," I replied. "Peter Pan (his favorite) was on sale for 98 cents. Do you know how much it regularly costs?" So, of course, he knew he lost that argument.

Anyway, I hope you can live vicariously (and I mean that, I don't want anyone else to lose their jobs...I already know too many people who have) though me as we wade through this era of the dwindling middle classes, many of whom, like us, can't afford it.