Living off the Coupon Bounty

Now that I have been hardcore couponing (as I have learned that serious couponers prefer to be called, NOT Extreme) for a full month, I am evaluating my progress. I know May isn't completely over yet, but my food and household budget is spent so I am calling it done unless there is a freebie deal next week. I have entered each and every trip into my Excel Savings Tracker and I did pretty darn good. I spent about the same dollar amount I usually do but in a manner that I got WAY more stuff and built a pretty healthy stockpile to take us through the summer. And I saved 56%. Next month, I intend to cut the budget in half, only buying the Super Deals and milk and produce. I should have enough toiletries and cleaning products until fall. This week's CVS deal on Purex (50 oz. for $.98) took care of that!

Being creative with the deals I find is part of the fun. I'll share a few things we did with this week's bounty already. Monday morning early is a great time to hit the clearance bins in meat and dairy so I make that my first stop after our workout at the Y. This week was a lucky one. The meat bin was full of turkey products: turkey breakfast links and turkey cutlets. I picked up some salmon filets and a pound of stew meat that I vacuum packed and stashed in the freezer immediately. All of that was 50% off. When I got over to the dairy bin, there was lots of yogurt and some lowfat buttermilk, also 50% off. I immediately sent Bethany to pick up some Ritz crackers for our favorite homemade chicken nuggets (with the turkey cutlets - guess they were turkey nuggets). I'll share that recipe below. We also picked up 5 cans of Grands refrigerated biscuits half off and Becca turned two of those into homemade donuts as soon as we got home, too. We had been to workout, remember? :) Edited to add: I forgot all about the BUTTER I found for $1.50/lb. I got about 8-10 of those in the freezer as well! That was a super surprise.

Dinner last night was grilled sliders and turkey burgers, both from the meat bin. Today for lunch we ate the leftover sliders on biscuits. That was good! Then tonight's dinner was Red Beans and rice, a B1G1 deal from HEB last week, and since I had two boxes, I prepared one with chicken/chipotle sausage from the meat bin, and the other without since I have two vegetarian girls. I sauteed some red cabbage and sweet onions to have with that and it made a colorful and flavorful dinner. The thing about the meat bin is that I don't always find quantities to feed all of us, but if I mix and match I can usually stretch it. The stew meat in the freezer will wait until more is found in the bin and then I'll make some kind of meat dish with it.

We are eating well and still able to put lots of stash away for later. I am anxious to see if I can cut it in half next month. Then in July, I plan to see just how low I can go living totally off the stockpile. I'll keep my statistics going and share.

As promised, here is the chicken/turkey recipe:

Boneless skinless chicken cut into strips, or turkey cutlets
buttermilk
crushed Ritz crackers

Marinate the chicken in buttermilk for several hours to overnight. The acid in the buttermilk will tenderize the meat. Drain. Coat with crushed crackers and lay on a cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, turning once to crisp both sides. We had very thin cutlets so they only took 12-15 minutes.

That's it. The crackers are buttery and salty so it makes a delicious coating.