Thursday, November 18, 2021

Thursday, Thrifty Thursday, hot spots


I know there are food shortages on some things.  But this idea that we all were going to be going without Turkey was nonsense.

Since I watch food prices closely, I had noticed and complained about the prices of fixings this year for Thanksgiving.  I am particularly jealous of Linda and her ability(Practical Parsimony) to get sweet potatoes in bulk at good prices.  Here fresh are $1.69 a pound and that may be just one sweet potato.  I refuse to pay that much and I bought a can of them as there are only a few of us that eat them.  

Well all the turkey shortage crap is for naught as there are plenty of turkeys and at good prices now. In fact I bet it is like pumpkins and they will be trying to give them away after the holiday.  I went into Wal mart where in the past we have gotten sweet potatoes for .10 a pound after Thanksgiving every year.  That is when I stock up. So after seeing them for $1.69 everywhere I saw them marked down to .65 a pound the week before the holiday.  All of those who panicked and bought them for the outrageous price or bought a can like me now could have bought them at a somewhat reasonable price.  I bought 4 and will go back after the holiday for the real marked down ones.

I guess what I am saying is be careful of all the naysayers and shortage screamers, as they may be wrong. Buying your things for the holidays with the idea that they are going to run out and paying top dollar is not necessary.  Wait a while and you will see those prices go down the closer we get not up the closer we get.

For some reason my phone will not download pictures to the computer today.  I wanted to show you all my clean surfaces.  By the way it did not take long for me to get them straightened out.  Fly Lady called these places our hot spots. It is just that every flat surface for me is a hot spot.  Last night as i was watching TV late and enjoying the clean surfaces, I woke this morning to several things on counters where Hubs had made breakfast.  It just took a few minutes to put everything away and now it is clean again. I think this is why she was always having you stop and do a ten minute hot spot clean.

I had hubs eat leftover salad and hashbrowns and chicken for lunch and then made him a large chicken salad for dinner and boned out the rest of the chicken for sandwiches.  I had a sandwich and will have another today.  I also took some chicken skin and giblets I had frozen from the last two batches of chicken thighs and added it to the bones of this chicken and boiled in down into a nice quart of yummy broth which I froze for my dressing. Tonight I am going to make my bean hot dish for dinner.  Hubs is out hunting (please lord don't let him get anything) and he will like a hot meal.  I will also whip up some corn bread and a salad. I am sure this will take us through tomorrow for meals.

I have found out that if I pull out three kinds of meat I can usually get through 6 days and then do something special on Sunday.  I still have not made up my piecrusts so I can make a quiche with that ham I pulled, but we have been nibbling on the slices.  Will probably do that tomorrow.

Today I sew, sew,sew.

Thrifty Thursday:

1. saved all my spare change in my pig bank  18 more days until I open it!

2. saved all my $5.00 bills now have $2415.00 in fives with $60.00 saved this last week A lot of clients paid in 5's drat which means I have to save them.

3. cooked all meals from home scratch, with foods from pantry

4. did quite a bit of Ibotta shopping with a savings of things I needed or use of about 30%.

5. earned a free butterball turkey from Ibotta

6. received a dozen large delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies from church.

7. received many items of fresh food from daughter from her food bank that they were going to throw away.

8. finally found a good price on sweet potatoes.

9. used a 20% off promo code for some gifts for my daughters that about paid for the shipping a tax on two items.

10. used Amazon prime for some Christmas gifts for free shipping

11. Made up 8 bags of pumpkin from two free pumpkins and one I bought for pies and muffins and things for the year.

12. Cooked, scones and rolls, and  a large salad all with what I had on hand while company was here.

13. gas is sometimes .45 cheaper at some stations here so we always use gas buddy to check before we fill up.

14. finally found hubs a used 4 wheeler that he wanted for a good price.  It pays to wait and look.

15. picked up butter for 1.77 a pound limit 2. I will need a lot more for Christmas.

What did you do this week to save money? Have you noticed price gouging on holiday things and then seen the prices go down?  DO you beleive the media scares us into thinking we are in a shortage situation to help retailers make more money off our fear?

I have to get into the shop.

Have a great and productive day staying positive while you are in the negative.

Kim

13 comments:

  1. Well, this was the subject for a post I just started. But, my post is a bit different, just same subject.

    Sweet potatoes at the farm are twice what they were when I first found them in 2008. I even mailed some to my daughter in NYC. But, the price is not the point for me. They are a variety that is delicious. I baked 20 last night for use in bread and pie. Just sub for pumpkin. I paid $0.49/lb and saw them at the store for the same price, but more at all the rest of the stores.

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  2. Our prices have been up and down. I don’t often buy sweet potatoes, once or twice a year; squash about the same. The texture makes me gag. Same with anything like that; bananas, mashed potatoes etc. My son works at amazon. The shelves are so full where he is that they may have to ship the overage to another facility. They’re paying double time if anyone works overtime. So, shortages or not, people are buying, buying, buying.
    Debbie

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    1. Isn't that amazing, like we are all in a frenzy and are so afraid it will disappear.

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  3. I think that shortages vary by region. I couldn't find pumpkin pie at Sams earlier this week. They were completely sold out. I decided to go before the lunch time crowd hit today and the parking lot was packed. Got my pies, but there were only about 9-10 pies. The same thing happened last year. My location also hasn't had Sams brand t/p for weeks now. Sometimes there's no t/p at all. I've seen shortages on many other things around here.

    We don't care much for sweet potatoes, so I rarely buy it. Same with turkey. We eat a non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner, cause none of us want turkey.

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    1. Well we do have the toilet paper factory here so running out of tp isn't likely to happen. And you are right shortages do appear by regions.

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  4. Our prices here are high Kim ... the tins of catfood that I used to pay 99c each for are now $1.50. Also you can only buy 10 tins at a time - there are restrictions on lots of items. I think it is going to continue over to Christmas & into the next year. I grow as much as I can so we are lucky but I feel for the folks with large families to feed.

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    1. Our dog food has gone up by almost a third. What I used to pay $21.00 for I now pay $32.00 just in the last year. I do feel for large families here also.

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  5. Like Ms. Goose, we don't eat some of the traditional items (we have steak instead of turkey), and none of us enjoy sweet potatoes. We are potato traditionalists. :-) We haven't noticed much in the way of shortages, although certainly prices are higher than they've been. We buy most of our items at Costco, which typically maintains stable prices, at least for a while, when they permanently raise.

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  6. Yes, be careful of the naysayers. They said salt was going to be hard to get this month, but it’s not. I don’t know who starts these rumors!

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  7. I am always very skeptical of anything I hear, as I know most suppliers are out to make the most they can.

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