Chicken à la King

Leftover Chicken Recipe 2: Chicken à la King

6 servings

• ½ cup margarine or butter
• 1 small green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 small red bell pepper, chopped
• 3 ounces canned mushroom slices or pieces with liquid reserved (or 1 cup sliced)
• ½ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp pepper
• 1 ½ cup milk (with mushroom liquid total amount is 1 ½ cup)
• 1 ¼ c chicken broth
• 2 cups cut up cooked chicken
• 3 cups hot cooked rice, OR 12 toasted bread triangles, OR 4 cups hot cooked noodles (preferably egg noodles)

Melt margarine in large saucepan (at least 3 quart) over medium-high heat. Cook peppers and onions until pepper is crisp but tender, stirring occasionally. Stir in flour, salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. Once bubbling, remove from heat. Stir in milk plus mushroom liquid and broth. Return to heat and heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute. Stir in chicken. Cook until chicken is hot. Serve over rice or bread triangles or noodles.

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill - Part 5

Yes, there are a few more things you can do.

Take advantage of rewards programs
I believe judicious application of rewards programs is the best course. With a bit of thought, you can decide if the rewards program is worth it or not. Usually incentives are introduced regularly to help you earn more rewards, however that usually means you must make certain purchases. Do not purchase items you will not use before they expire. Do not purchase items that are priced higher than elsewhere (unless the reward earned would justify the added expense). Do not purchase items you do not use. Some stores have built-in rewards that include sale prices and earned bonuses for nothing more than showing the card when you check out. I strongly advise that you apply all other principles before delving into rewards programs.

Purchase large quantities of low-priced items you regularly use
When the meats your family uses most frequently go on sale, purchase up to a 3-month supply. You will need storage for these and deep freezers are a good investment. Our family eats mostly chicken breast for meat however the price in Canada is steep. On a regular basis, chicken breast starts at $6.00 a pound. When it's available for $1.99 a pound, I purchase several month's worth and store them in my deep freezer.

Any other grocery staples that you regularly use can be purchased in large quantities to take advantage of sales. Milk can be frozen. Dry goods generally do not present a problem stored properly.

Check the unit price
If you're accustomed to buying convenience foods or convenience sizes, you'll find greater savings in purchasing family-sized items in their stead. Check the shelf tags as these will show how much you're paying per ounce, pound, or 100-grams. Quite often you're paying 100% more for a single-serve than you will for a family sized item. You can store extras in the fridge or freezer if it's more than you can use at once.

Purchase reduced items and freeze or use immediately
Fruit, vegetables, breads, and even meats are reduced for clearance near their best-by date. These dates often give some lee-way for home use and are still good even by their sell-by date. If you cannot immediately use the produce, clean, chop and freeze it. Breads and meats can go directly into the freezer.

Coupons
If coupons are available for your regularly purchased items, use them! Try to combine the coupon with a sale for greater savings. Consider whether the coupon for the name-brand product will offer greater savings than the store-brand product available. I haven't found many store-brands that I didn't like and often they are a much better value than the name brand is even with a coupon. For coupons to really work for you, you need to be judicious in their use. Do not purchase items you normally wouldn't simply because you have a coupon. That is not a savings for you. Full-value coupons or free offer coupons afford you the opportunity to try out a new product without having to purchase it. When it comes to items you would not normally purchase, only use a full-value coupon.

Purchase a deep freezer
In order to stock up on sale items, you need to have the storage. Deep freezers are a very economical way to stretch your grocery dollar. They are often available in the classifieds, on kijiji or craigslist, and I've often seen them on freecycle.

In my final posting on this topic, I'll review all the tips I've posted.

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill Part 1

When I first moved to Canada and began grocery shopping, the experience was traumatizing. Grocery prices in Canada are significantly higher than they were in the states. (Apparently a lot of those prices are beginning to align and Americans are having a tough go of it now.) I truly sympathize. This is hard. I was accustomed to spending about $400 a month feeding a family of five in the states. I come to Canada and our food bill was as much as our rent ($1,000). What the heck was I to do? I was already shopping at the budget stores.

It took me a couple years, but I got my grocery bill back down to $400 a month. When things are extremely pinched, I can get it down to $200 a month without sacrificing nutrition or variety even...but there isn't much fun stuff in it.

What is the process?

First, you must take inventory of all you have. You may think you've got nothing, but everything counts. Pasta in the pantry, a few cans in the cupboards, frozen foods. While you're inventorying, toss the old stuff. You must organize your freezer if you plan to cut your family's food costs. Luckily this is easy and relatively painless. It took me about three days to go through everything, inventory everything, and clear out anything that was past its expiration date. I was still taking care of a home and five other people and I also washed all the cupboards and storage containers, otherwise this would have taken me one full day.

The Inventory
The great thing about the inventory is it enables you to organize items by their use. I have certain spices I use quite frequently--almost daily. These get placed front and center of my spice shelf. I have staples that I use quite frequently. These are placed between eye and shoulder height on pantry shelves. Doing this keeps things tidy. You don't want to have to move things out of your way to get to the things you always use. If I organized my spices alphabetically I would continually be knocking others over to get out my most frequently used ones. Less frequently used items go to the far sides of my spice shelf or the highest and lowest of my pantry shelves. (Very infrenquently used items go to the highest shelves as they're at about 6' and require a stool to reach.) We end up with everything where I need it to be. Here is how my inventory looks:

Baking staples:
Almonds -- 2 cups
Baker's Chocolate -- 1/2 bar
Baking Powder -- 1 full can
Baking Soda -- 2 full boxes, 2 open boxes
Bread Crumbs -- 4 cups
Bread Flour -- 3 cups
Brown Sugar -- 1 full bag, 1/2 bag
Cake mixes -- 0
Chocolate chips -- 0
Cocoa Powder -- 1/4 can
Cornmeal -- 0
Corn Starch -- <1/2 box
Custard Powder -- 3/4 can
Evaporated Milk -- 0
Graham Crumbs -- 2 pie shells' worth
Honey -- 1 pint
Icing (canned) -- 0
Icing Sugar (Powdered Sugar) -- 4 cups
Kosher Salt -- 4 cups
Lemon Rind -- 1 cup
Molasses -- 1/4 pint
Olive Oil -- 2 quarts
Oats -- 2 large bags full +
Pancake Mix -- 1 full box
Powdered Milk -- 1/2 cup
Raisins -- 1.5 cups
Salt -- 1 cup
Sea Salt -- 3 cups
Shortening -- 0
Splenda -- 1 large bag, full
Splenda Brown Sugar Blend -- 1/2 cup
Sweetened Condensed Milk -- 0
Tapioca -- 1/8 cup
White Flour -- 2.5 kilograms
White Sugar -- 2 kg
Whole Wheat Flour -- 1 kilogram
Vegetable Oil -- 2 quarts
Yeast -- 1/4 cup +

Do you get the picture, or do you want the whole thing?

I inventory my cooking staples (these are not the same as baking staples), my freezer (deep freezer), and my refrigerated items that last a long time (like salad dressings, condiments, etc.) I do not inventory milk, butter, margarine, etc., because items used so frequently are self-inventorying just by their frequency of use. Show me a mom who doesn't know how much milk she has in her home.

The bottom line with the inventory is that it will prevent you from making unnecessary purchases. Even if you can't see behind the giant cannister of flour, you can look at your pantry inventory and know that you do indeed have oats and raisins for the oatmeal raisin cookies your child needs in class tomorrow. If you first shop at home, you'll save money.

I find the baking staples inventory the most valuable since I do not bake frequently. I keep the inventory posted inside my pantry door and jot notes when I use a lot of something. As you can see I have a lot of zeros in that list. I know I will need to purchase those items before October, November or December when I'll do some holiday baking. (We've been known to bake several hundred cookies in November and December.....that's what we call "some holiday baking.")

Step two of cutting your grocery bill will be in the next installment.

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$160 in FOF -- But A & P has met their freshness standards!

It seems frightening to me that A & P is reporting they've met their freshness standards and are ending the Fresh or Free program effective September 4, 2008.

Let's see what was not fresh yesterday:
It was a $38 spiral-sliced honey ham that was not fresh which I replaced with this bone-in ham shoulder. I'm seeing lots of soups this fall :) And ham and fried cabbage. The puddings were a replacement for refrigerated strawberry shortcake cups. For crying out loud, the egg beaters expired in July! More axe deodorant. My son will never stink!

Juice, fruit salads and a chicken salad, english muffins, So good tetra (the out of date ones were from 2007!! They apparently just reshelve the darned things. They keep re-appearing.) Caramel dairy things. I like the chocolate but the chocolate was all out of date. The steaks were a replacement for a $20 box of chicken wings from the deli. (ewwwwww.) I was going to buy the steaks anyway as they're a pretty good deal and nice quality. Oh, that's right, I did buy some more!


The milk was a replacement for a 4L bag of Goat's milk which expired August 1. The yogurt tub was a replacement for a small Astro 4-pack of plain yogurts. I'd rather have the small ones but all of them were out of date. I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream all the time. In my cooking the small ones work perfectly so I can pop them in the freezer and pull them out as needed. More juice, Silk soy milk, Bertolli olive oil. Woohoo. I wish I'd subbed an extra virgin olive oil but there were fresh replacements of the same kind. Orange juice. There were three varieties of this juice out of date. We're not much for juice in this house, but with the heat I don't mind the kids getting a bit of vitamins with their hydration. Also, Roy works 12-hour shifts out in the elements. He needs all the hydration and nutrition he can get.

Speaking of Roy he had a nice little lunch today with the FOFed fruit salad, FOFed juice, and some of that lovely road-side jam we purchased this weekend during out fruit stand tour. I'll tell you later how to know if a fruit stand is worth stopping at or not.

So, A & P, now that you've met your freshness standard, how do you explain the $160 FOF above? Not to mention all the expires we left in the store! I see a hiring wave of stock persons and intensive stock rotation training for them. Hopefully along the way they figure out how to remove expired items from the shelves and have them NOT turn back up on the shelves!

A & P won't have any more of my business after September 4. Not only are their prices exorbitant, but their staff are surly and inhospitable most of the time. Even when I haven't FOFed, the staff are less than pleasant at best. That makes a difference for me.

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113.80 in Free Groceries

You really can't get a better deal than that. Coupons can't save me $113 in one trip. Besides, most of the coupons out there are for items I wouldn't buy (prepared foods, detergents, high-end shampoos or cosmetics, name brands that even with a coupon cost more than store brands.)

What's $113 of free groceries look like?



You just want to know how I got all this free stuff, don't you?

If you're lucky enough to live in Ontario, you can take advantage of A & P's Fresh or Free policy. A & P, Dominion, and Ultra Food & Drug in Ontario maintain that if you find any item in their store that is not fresh, then you may receive a free fresh replacement for that item.

I strongly suspect that this policy is A & P's way of employing fewer stockpeople. Instead, with this policy they get a few diligent shoppers to do their stock rotation at a fraction of the cost of a few full-time employees. As a great sideline they can promote their stores as having the freshest stuff around. As you can see from my pictures above -- a lot of their stuff is not fresh.

You would think there just isn't that much expired stuff in a store. That's what I said before I ever went fresh or freeing. When I buy groceries in any other store, I check the expiration dates on the items I'm purchasing and I rarely find anything expired. Not so at A & P. I find A LOT of things expired. So much so that it is worth the higher price one pays at A & P because of all the free stuff one can get.

As you can see above, I have 4 packages of cookies, 2 packs of snack cakes, a 6-pack of pop (all of these items my husband will use for work), 3 packages of lunchmeat, 3 packages of meat substitutes, 3 salad dressings, 2 cheeses, 2 bags of chips (oh the kids are happy tonight), 3 soy milks, Axe deodorant (yes, it does expire), fruit snacks (which made a soon-to-be four-year-old boy very very happy), squeeze mayo, Kool-Aid, fresh pasta sauce, Omelet/Pizza veggies, and broccoli slaw. There was much more I could have gotten in free fresh replacements but I did not want to spend anymore than I already had. There were coffees, teas and hot chocolates available, along with many more vegetarian meat replacements. I happen to have a 6-month supply of free coffee in my cupboard and enough tea to last at least that long as well!

Just to clarify: you do not get to keep the out-of-date items for free. You get to keep a fresh replacement for the out-of-date items. You do have to purchase an equal amount of groceries to match your free stuff...but that's okay. It's like having a 50% off coupon on your total grocery bill. I purchase my meats at A & P because they are good quality and they tend to mark them down dramatically several days before they're set to expire. They go right in my deep freeze and I've never had any problems. I also shop their sales. Add in coupons and their higher prices aren't so bad.

Odd thing is, free food tastes so good!

You can read up on the Fresh or Free policy here.

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