Santa Cruz Organic Juice Stockpile

 

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Contrary to popular belief,  there are coupons and deals on healthy, organic food. I present to you this picture as evidence. In my Day 18 post I wrote about trying new stores to find deals on organic food. I visited my local Coop store here in Cambridge and was excited to find an organic food coupon booklet filled with high value coupons. One coupon that caught my eye was $.75 off 1 Santa Cruz Organic product.

Since they were manufacturer coupons and not store specific, I took them to Shaw's where they were on sale this week for $1.50. Since Shaw's doubles coupons, I got all these pretty bottles for FREE!

Today Boston hit 103 degrees, first time in 85 years...perfect timing for a juice deal!

How to Tenderize Cheap Meat?

Meat is often the biggest budget buster (say that 10 times!).  High quality steak and beef comes at a premium price. Usually you read to put it in a slow cooker and the 5-6 hours will often soften up any cheaper cuts of meat and make them tender. However, for those of us that are not big on a slow cooker, or decided 2 hours before dinner they want to make beef, slow cooker is not going to work.

My mom (are you reading) always taught me to put the meat in water, turn up the heat until it starts to boil, cover and turn down the heat to a low simmer for about 1 hour. Add fried onions, garlic, ginger (all natural tenderizers). After an hour, turn up the heat and let the extra water evaporate and add salt, pepper and any spices or flavor you want. It works so well!

Since I always have frozen spinach on hand, I'm going to add spinach to mine. Remember to add salt and pepper at the very end, as salt inhibits the meat from getting soft. Do you have any tips or tricks, other then the slow cooker for tenderizing meat? I'd love to hear them!

Cheap Eggs

 

I got cheap eggs, so what right? Well, yes and no. There is this idea that reduced dairy must be expiring that day or the next. These are Land O Lakes, cage-free brown eggs, usually cost around $3.xx, and their expiration was 8 days from the day I bought these...plenty of time to use a dozen eggs!

The lesson here is don't count out reduced dairy..check the expiration date, it may not be any earlier then others, the store might have just gotten overstock on them. 

So, now you're thinking, where do I find them? In our local Shaw's (Super Valu family) they keep the reduced eggs in the milk fridge on the bottom most shelf. People don't like to bend...I don't mind. :)