This is really cool! Thanks for sharing.
Discovered canned catfood is .11 cheaper at the cheap market than my expensive one. We were out, so I only had bought 3 cans for $3… other market had the same brand/type for .89 a can, bought 6.
2 Likes
For those who live in the USA and have insurance that won’t cover at-home Covid tests, the cheapest I’ve been able to find them is at Costco.
https://www.costco.com/flowflex-at-home-covid-test-kit,-5-test-pack.product.100825502.html
5 Likes
I’m not really a black friday shopper, but one of my favorite things to do every year is stock up on a lot of really inexpensive food on sale right after Thanksgiving! I feel like I scored some great deals this year, and I also used my days off for the holiday to do a lot of food prepping
Costco had pork loin on sale for 99 cents a pound, which is an incredible price especially right now. I prefer chicken personally, but for that price I won’t pass it up. I don’t ever cook pork loin like a roast because it’s too dry IMO. I cut it into super thick pork chops, marinate and grill them, and they come out really good! I got about 20 pounds of pork chops packed up and frozen over the weekend
I also got an incredible deal on an organic turkey…it was like 60 cents a pound, so I paid $9.00 for a 16 pound turkey! I spatchcocked and dry brined it, and then roasted it, deboned it and now I have frozen dark meat for soup, white meat for salads and wraps, and bones for broth.
Another thing I wanted to get done this weekend was to make some soup for the freezer. Especially during the winter, I love to have soup frozen in individual servings so I can grab it for a quick meal. Next semester is going to be super rough for me, and I’m trying to prepare ahead of time with a lot of convenience foods. I made two soups that are more ingredient/time intensive, so they feel special and not like things I have all the time. It will be such a treat to grab these in the coming months! I also got a bunch of veggies on manager’s special this weekend, so these were pretty affordable meals!
I made a (heavily adapted) Tom Kha Gai and a chicken/veggie green curry. I roughly follow this recipe for the Tom Kha Gai Best Ever Tom Kha Gai Soup (Thai Coconut Chicken Soup) - 40 Aprons but I quadruple the curry paste and add enoki mushrooms and spinach because I like it like that. The curry recipe is one that was kind of made up and is probably extremely inauthentic, but I’m attached to it because a friend made it for me many years ago and I love the way it tastes.
All in all I got 12 servings of soup for the freezer, and a few extra for me to finish this week. Not the most appetizing looking soups but they turned out SO well. I finally found galangal and frozen chopped lemongrass at the international market, and it made a huge difference in both soups!
Anyway, that was my little “money saving mindset” cooking weekend. I’m really happy I was able to find such good deals, especially with how much grocery costs have been expanding lately. My freezer is completely packed, so I feel like I could live off of it for quite a while at this point, which always helps my inner “must have 6 months of food at all times” brain to feel good.
25 Likes
Wow! Amazing work.
5 Likes
Stopped at the grocery store this evening to pick up some drinks for a friend’s birthday party and got there as they were putting out the scratch-and-dent fish. Got two good size salmon fillets (3-4 servings each), 4 smaller mahi mahi (2-3 servings each), 4 lobster tails, and 2 bags of scallops for just under $90. I don’t normally cook fish unless it’s my turn to host cooking club since while I like it for the first meal I don’t particularly care for it reheated so this should set me up until sometime next summer (and lets me save the chicken and pork I have for the weekly-type meals since I was visiting family and missed the best of the post-Thanksgiving sales).
ETA–TC that prices have way jumped up even on scratch-and-dent stuff…the discount looked about the same as always for stuff about to expire, but even so this would have been non scratch-and-dent pricing a year ago
6 Likes
That is also my favorite Tom Kha soup recipe! I always double the mushrooms and usually add some cubed tofu. I’ll have to try spinach next time! The hot tip my friend showed me is that if you have somewhere to get a little packet of the lime leaves, you can just pop the whole thing in the freezer and the leaves keep for a really long time.
5 Likes
Do I use local time to call the month over, or do I use home time, which has a full extra day where the shadowy one is going out with a friend for lunch? I should use home time.
Other than core staples (produce, noodles, rice, meat, eggs, yogurt, cheese, granola, pop and coffee) we have bought soy sauce, fish sauce, sweet chili sauce, coconut milk, peanut butter, a taco seasoning packet, yellow curry paste, and lime juice in order to make interesting and edible meals. I initially thought I could make do without fish sauce, but I gave in yesterday. Sesame oil is being considered. We have another full month here, and making meals is substantially cheaper than takeout or HMR, but also we also don’t want to recreate a full cupboard or buy a dutch oven.
There is also a jar of laksa sauce and one of a chutney which may be opened or may come home with us.
8 Likes
What sauces do you always buy? What do you always DIY?
I’ve been working on my food plan for next year and realized all the sauces I make are green herb based (pesto, zhoug, chimichurri, etc.) or gravies.
I’m looking to expand my sauces as they are usually much cheaper home made, take little space to store in the freezer, and elevate blah food.
Recommendations please?
4 Likes
I recently discovered sun dried tomato pesto at the grocery store and always buy it because I’m lazy. That’s my go to for elevating blah food.
I’m looking forward to what suggestions others have.
2 Likes
DIY peanut sauce is pretty easy. Peanut butter, coconut milk, sriracha to taste. Sometimes I add sesame oil if I’m going for more of an asian thing.
I grew jalapeños this year and had a huge crop, and I found hot sauce to be pretty easy. Of course, now I can’t find the recipe I used but it was super simple. Jalapenos, vinegar, garlic… maybe some lime juice? I don’t remember. Puree. Done.
3 Likes
Dang that’s so much prep work!! You’re going to reap the benefits of that for months!
2 Likes
Fantastic post! Gotta love those post holiday sales. That soup sounds delicious. I also love enoki mushrooms. Nature’s noodles.
4 Likes
I make stuffed jalapenos or use them in salsa. Stuffing = bread crumbs, melted butter, grated Monterey Jack cheese.
2 Likes
Thank you for the peanut sauce recipe. I forget about peanut sauce!
The jalapenos I use are stuffed OR put in salsa. Sorry for the sloppy writing, the way I wrote it I used the stuffed peppers in salsa. Not so.
2 Likes
Of sauces people buy, I always make homemade gochujang sauce, Thai sweet chili sauce, and tahini sauce (I don’t know if that one really has a store bought equivalent). I have also in the past made homemade black bean sauce but I can’t find my recipe (it was a good one), and I make stir fry sauce for twice cooked pork and for Mongolian beef (I do meatless versions), but those I do on-demand.
I almost always make salad dressing also, which is a lot cheaper than store bought, but those aren’t really sauces that can be frozen.
5 Likes
I make my own: salad dressing, marinara, salsa, bbq sauce, honey mustard sauce, chick-fil-a sauce, alfredo, hollandaise, mayo, teriyaki, roasted pepper sauce, and several curry pastes.
2 Likes
Could you share your recipe for gochujang sauce? I’ve always bought mine at the supermarket. It’s too spicy for my wife, but I love it!
3 Likes
I feel like I don’t use as much sauce as some people here. LOL
Sometimes I make spaghetti sauce from scratch, sometimes not.
I always make Alfredo because it’s so easy and tastes completely different from jarred.
I hate mayo so anybody who wants that can get it out of a jar. I’m not really crazy about salad dressing. I don’t like gravy, either.
I make salsa during tomato season, but I feel like that’s a whole different thing than jarred salsa.
I did buy a jar of some sauce for a Mexican chicken dish at Target recently. None of us had ever heard of this dish and the sauce was really meant to be used in the InstaPot and I just cooked it on the stove and made tacos. It was good and super easy since we were sick all weekend. Then I saw this actual dish online someplace this week and noted that it’s usually served with a layer of refried beans, so on the odd chance that I ever make it again I’ll do that.
We use like one bottle/ketchup/year, so not worth making. I make all our jam from scratch, though, and chocolate syrup.
3 Likes
What was the Mexican sauce? I’m very curious now.
1 Like