Stretching the food dollar

Thursday before we made our trip to Sam's Club, I had a long talk with myself.  You see, any trip that involves our being in the metropolitan Kansas City area is fraught with temptations to eat out, at least for me.  Cliff prefers home cooking, but he's always glad to oblige me when I want to eat out.  
We're losing weight around here, both of us.  We're also budgeting, practicing for retirement.  So before we left, I gave myself the following pep talk.
"Self," I said, "we are going to be in the vicinity of an Olive Garden restaurant.  You know very well that the soup, salad, and breadsticks meal will cost fifteen bucks for the two of us, plus a $5 tip (If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out).  Twenty dollars would buy a lot of beans and rice or chicken leg quarters.  Also, foolish Self, you know that the Zuppa Toscana you always order is 170 calories per bowl, and you always have at least two bowls.  Furthermore, dear Self, one breadstick is 140 calories, and you never stop at less than three." 
We won't even talk about the sodium involved.  Probably three times as much as we should have in one day.  If you eat out ANYWHERE, you are getting too much sodium.  It's a given. 
The talk did me good, but while we were in Sam's Club I realized I had not prepared anything ahead of time for our dinner at home; by the time we got home, I wouldn't have time to fix much of anything before Cliff had to leave for work.  So I bought one of their roasted chickens for five dollars.   
Back home, I microwaved a baked potato and cooked some frozen vegetables, and dinner was ready within twenty minutes.  
Friday I used 2 1/2 cups of the leftover roast chicken in a new recipe, "Healthified" chicken tortilla casserole (very yummy!).  That was our main dish both Friday and Saturday, as well as Cliff's lunch for work Friday night.  Today there's just enough of that roast chicken left for a chef salad; that will be our Sunday dinner.  
A five dollar chicken can go a long way, baby.

Family eat-out, followed by shopping at Sam's Club

Cliff, his sister Rena, and I met Charlene and Pat for barbecue.  We beat them there by about five minutes, and I took this picture of Cliff and Rena waiting patiently.  

I think I embarrassed a couple of these folks by asking the waiter to take our picture, but that's OK.  It's a good picture.  
Charlene had their dog, Mindy, in the car with them.  We women (including Mindy) headed for Sam's Club and the guys went to Gail's Harley-Davidson to look at full-dress bikes.  No, not for us; Charlene and Pat are strongly considering trading their Harley in for the top-of-the-line.  
I didn't need anything at Sam's Club, but Charlene and Rena don't have a membership; there were some things they wanted to stock up on.  I did find the almonds that weren't there on my last two visits, and I got some fruit.  I brought home some of the best oranges I've ever eaten.  They're so big that Cliff and I share one.  
Not only did Charlene and Rena have some stocking up to do, but Rena found a television like she's been wanting.  So that came home with us.  Needless to say, Charlene's car was really full.  

Yeah, really full.  The only thing I see in this picture that's mine is an orange peeking out at the far side of the picture.  
Mindy seemed a little unsettled at being crowed out of her usual spot by the purchases.  She was only trying to get comfortable when I took this picture.

However, it looks like she's trying to stare down the lion on that television box, doesn't it?  
We had a good day indeed.

We finally got out of the house

The roads are treacherous, but our old pickup is a four-wheel-drive. Even with half-worn-out tires, it took us up the hill to our daughter's house in style. Rachel took this picture of us arriving; notice Hawkeye, the wonder dog, running around the front of the pickup to greet me. I'm pretty sure if you asked Rachel and Kevin to name the best dog they ever had, they'd say Hawkeye. How many dogs will howl at the slightest suggestion, just to entertain his people?

Speaking of best dogs, someone got the impression from my previous entry that I was calling Suzy a terrier. Believe it or not, when my sister-in-law bought her at a pet store, they claimed she was part terrier; I don't think so. I always figured she had some sort of spaniel blood in her, but you know how it is with mutts: you never really know, unless you're personally acquainted with their parents.

It was good to get away for the first time in three days, and our daughter lives less than two miles away. They still had plenty of Christmas junk food, and Rachel made some hearty soup from a home-made soup kit someone gave her for Christmas.

I don't know what it is with me, but after I've eaten dinner, around one o'clock, I get really sleepy. It doesn't matter where I am, even on the back of the motorcycle; my eyes get heavy and I fall asleep (that sounds more dangerous than it is). So yesterday I reclined on Rachel's couch and drifted off as usual. I awakened to snide remarks about my snoring, my husband telling them I always snore like that, and my daughter saying I sounded like her coffeepot.

Oh well, I got my nap in, didn't I? I can take the abuse.

If Cliff thinks we can safely get out in the pickup today, I'm wanting to go to Sam's Club. We'll see how things go. Those of my readers who have tried both, I'd like to know whether you prefer Costco to Sam's Club, and why. I'll make a poll on my sidebar, but would appreciate hearing the reasons for your selection in the comment section of any entry.

I took the Christmas tree down yesterday; there were so many needles on the floor that my Dyson got plugged up several times, but we finally got the worst of them. I'll leave my Avon Christmas plates up through the month of January, because I enjoy them so much. I'll also continue using holiday mugs for that length of time. Then I'll remove all traces of Christmas until next year.

I wanted to put a nice, wintry picture on the header of my blog, and I'm happy with the picture of Sadie running toward me down in the "holler"; however, I have tried every color of the rainbow for the wording on there, and nothing works very well. White seemed to show up better than any other choice, but it's not really satisfactory either. Until I change pictures, that will have to do. I changed where I put my usual quote because it was totally illegible on that particular picture.

Is there something I should know?

I saw these books at Sam's Club today. Looks to me like someone is expecting times to get really hard!


I was certainly glad to see these two, since Cliff and I have crossed off everything on our bucket lists. Perhaps if we read these, we'll get some new ideas.

Sam's Club sucker (that'd be me)

As I mentioned in this post, we went to Sam's Club yesterday. We go there once every six or eight weeks, and I always stock up on certain items: three-pound bags of almonds, our favorite healthful snack; huge containers of Era laundry soap; four-bottle units of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner. We only have one bathroom, but when I'm flying with Flylady, she insists I swish-and-swipe my toilet bowl each morning. Not to mention that no product gets rid of hard-water deposits on my bathtub, kitchen sink, or anything else as good as that Lysol toilet bowl cleaner. I also got a four-pack unit of disinfecting wipes, which are handy for the "swiping" part of my morning toilet bowl cleanup.

All those things are incredible buys, and I'm glad I came home with them.

Now let me tell you about my love of popcorn. Being frugal-minded when it comes to groceries, I find popcorn to be the most economical snack ever. Not microwave popcorn in bags, mind you. Plain old popcorn, which I prepare in my microwave popcorn popper, for pennies a serving. It's air-popped, so it's low-calorie. I do add a little melted butter and Molly McButter when it's done. I have an excellent caramel corn recipe, so I can even make a sweet popcorn treat as good as, and cheaper than, anything you can buy... when I'm not trying to lose weight, that is.

That's my faithful popcorn popper on the left, and my backup (in case the old one ever has a melt-down) on the right.

So I mentioned to Cliff that we should find a big bag of popcorn at Sam's; it's already very cheap, so imagine how much money I'd save buying it in bulk. I was envisioning perhaps a ten-pound bag.

"I'll store it in the freezer so it won't get old," I told him.


What we found was a fifty-pound bag. How could a bargain-minded popcorn fiend pass up such a buy?

Once I got home, the enormity of my purchase hit me, and I realized I probably now owned a lifetime supply of popcorn.

Today I resolutely put most of the contents of that bag into a big "Topsy's Popcorn" can from the year 2000 and put it in a corner of my freezer. I poured what remained into a gallon glass jar to be kept handy here in the kitchen.

I can't believe I bought that much popcorn.

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