Shop for Groceries to Save on Gas

If you shop at Giant, there is a way you can save on gas without trying too hard. Just shop. That’s it. Seriously. It wasn’t too long ago that ridiculously fluctuating gas prices sent many of us online to find competitive gas prices. A membership to BJ’s boasts a pretty competitive price for gas too. But this little deal can rival discount gas prices, and you can use it at any Shell station in the Maryland Giant shopping area.

Here’s how it works: For every $100 spent at Giant, you can save ten cents per gallon of gas at any Shell station. If you spend $300 in a month, that results in saving thirty cents per gallon! That’s as good as what I can get at BJ’s! The points do expire and last only 30 days, but you can track your points on the Giant Food website after registering your Giant Card.

Getting to the savings may not be initially obvious. To use the discount at the Shell station, look for the “Use Giant Card” prompt BEFORE you pay for the gas. You will have a chance to scan your Giant Card or enter your phone number. After this, you can then pay for your gas using your credit or debit card. If you swipe your card for payment first, you will not have a chance to apply the Giant discount. (Yes, I’ve actually cancelled a gas transaction or two if I’ve forgotten the Giant Card prompt). If there are Giant savings, the pump will show the gas savings after you have prepaid for the gas.

To maximize your savings, use Coupon Mom to find coupons get the best deals at Giant. Giant will also have coupons in their circulars for gas friendly items and even more gas savings. In one shopping trip, I only spent $50 dollars, but managed to get 300 gas points because of the coupon in the circular that week.

I have even checked my savings totals on Giant website using my smartphone to see if it would be worth the trip to BJ’s instead. On weeks when I have a lot of savings, I fill up the tank. For weeks when my savings points are low, I pump less gas. Now you can save money at the grocery store and getting there too.

Maribel Ibrahim always has her eyes open for easy savings. Subscribe to this feed or follow her on Twitter @TheFrugalWriter to find great deals around town.

Frugal Food: English Muffin Pizza and Protein Packed Tuna Melts

You may have read my previous post about doing battle with your kid’s school lunchbox. Here are two great recipes that make great, healthy, filling snacks when your crew comes home hungry:

English Muffin Pizza

Ingredients:
1 Whole Wheat English Muffin, split in half (two pizzas)
1½ T Marinara sauce
½ mozzarella stick

Directions:
Spread the marinara sauce on each muffin half. Grate the mozzarella stick over the pizzas. Note, you can double the recipe (2 English muffins to make 4 pizzas) in order to use the whole stick. (You could grate any mozzarella, but I always have mozzarella sticks on hand to pack in lunches…) Now, place it in your toaster oven or convection oven or broiler and heat through until the cheese is melted.

I started doing this with bagels, but when I realized that I could buy English muffins for cheaper and that the muffins had less calories, I made the switch. My son devours these! DO NOT microwave these. It is faster, but the bread will get rubbery.


Protein Packed Tuna Melts (4 sandwiches)

1 can Tuna packed in water, drained
1 can Sardines, drained
1 T Ranch Dressing (or Mayo)
1 t Season All Spice (or our family favorite, Adobo, a traditional Spanish spice)
8 slices Whole Grain Bread
4 Cheddar Cheese slices (the real stuff, not the processed cheese food)

Combine the first four ingredients together in a bowl and mix well. Be sure to break up the sardines to disguise them! Spread the mix on a slice of bread and top with cheese slice. Top with another slice of bread and place in your sandwich maker or Panini grill. I actually use my George Foreman grill. If you don’t have any of these, you can go old school and just grill it in a pan spritzed with cooking spray. Use a plate to press the sandwich and repeat after flipping the sandwich with a spatula.
Many thanks to Missy Chase Lapine, The Sneaky Chef, for the idea of adding the sardines. Mixed in with the tuna, it is a great way to boost protein intake and Omega 3 fatty acids and it only subtly affects the taste.

If you are watching calories, you can use less filling or half a slice of cheese for each sandwich.

I enjoy eating these quick meals just as much as my kids do after a long day at school!

This post originally appeared in Maribel's Frugal Families blog for Chesapeake Family in October 2010.

Use Your Neck to Try on Pants

The weather is still great for taking advantage of yard sales and gearing up for the fall. What’s a mom to do when she wants to outfit her brood without the luxury of a fitting room? A tried and true method of checking whether a pair of pants will fit you is to zip and button the front and wrap the waist around your neck.

While you may look silly pretending the pants have turned into a cape, this method really works. If you can get the sides of the pants to meet comfortably, the pants fit! If the sides don’t meet, the pants will be too tight. 

How does this work? It might not be scientifically precise, but the size of your neck does tend be approximately half the size of your waist. Additionally, as a person gains or loses weight, the proportion remains consistent. A body builder or a really thin person might not fit these sizing parameters, but for the rest of us, this is a great way to ensure that a good deal on pants is really a good deal.

My sister has known of this method for years and has advised her yard sailing buddies about it. In fact, some of the sellers in the New Jersey flea market she shops at are now dishing out this advice - because it really does work.

This article first appeared as one of Maribel's blog posts on Chesapeake Family in September 2010

Saving Money with School Lunches and Snacks

Lunchbox battles start early on in the school years, but here are some tricks of the trade that keep my first grader happy and decently fed without too much hassle.

Many school cafeterias offer healthy options, but that’s not really helpful if he can still choose to have hot dogs with those chips for lunch. I’ve decided that it is worth the effort to pack the boy’s lunch, save a few bucks and make some attempt at giving him healthy choices.

Here are my lunch packing rules of the road. Based on your child’s preferences, some of these may not work for you. The key is to find what does work and use that to leverage healthier eating options at a fraction of the cost.

1. Don’t pack the fruit! Let’s face it. It’s too easy for kids to just dump unwanted food in the garbage can and trust me, they are doing it. So, since I know my guy won’t eat the fruit while he’s at school, I don’t even bother to put it in there. Instead, I pack raisins, dried fruit, granola bars, dried cranberries or yogurt covered raisins. Yes, there is a high amount of sugar, but the kid is also getting the fiber and carbs from the fruit also. Apple & Eve Fruitables are the juice box of choice in our house because I can buy them in bulk at BJ’s, they have no high fructose corn syrup and contain 2 servings of VEGGIES, that’s right, veggies such as carrots ingeniously disguised with berries, banana, orange or other fruit.

2. Pack snacks you know they like, even if it’s not a meal. Great options here are cheese sticks, dried cereal, pudding (calcium!), portable yogurt and a favorite sandwich. Some kids hate bread, so flatbread is a great way to make many interesting sandwiches with whatever filler they prefer. Pack crackers and lunch meat and they can assemble their own sandwiches. Again, the name of the game is to get them to eat the food you actually pack. The next tip will allay your fears that your child is not properly fed.

3. Flip the script. My son has a nice hot snack as soon as he gets off the bus. Some great ideas are tuna melts, grilled egg salad sandwiches, leftover spaghetti, and homemade bagels pizzas. The key here is that I can see that he is actually eating the food. Also, since I packed snacks that are not too hateful and that I know he loves, I’m sure he’s eaten those also. Here is where the leverage comes in – he’s already had all his “goodies” for the day, so now you can clamp down and serve hearty food at home. Again, when the boy says he’s hungry, I offer the fruit, whole wheat, protein and the other “good stuff” that was missing in his lunchbox. Wham…. Got him!

4. Dipping sauces are magic! Peanut butter, ketchup or ranch dressing, hummus are condiments that can encourage a picky eater. I will slice an apple and arrange it on a plate with peanut butter in the center. This does not pack well for lunch, but is great for an at home snack. Chicken and veggies may also be tastier with a bit of dressing. Again, for our crew, these things don’t pack well, so I make sure to serve them at home after the portable snacks have been polished off.

5. Prepackage it yourself. Those 100 calorie snacks are convenient, but they are nothing but a portion controlled size of the regular thing. Save a few bucks by buying snacks and prepacking them yourself in snack bags. Doing a week’s worth of bags afterschool one day makes lunch packing a snap. Also, you have a wider variety of snacks to choose from this way.

This article originally appeared as one of Maribel's Frugal Families blog posts on Chesapeake Family.

Make Your Own Microwave Popcorn

I love a good deal and it’s even better when it involves healthier eating and improving the environment. But when my hubby suggested popping popcorn in a regular paper lunch bag, I was skeptical. He’d read a tip online and decided to give it a try.

Armed with regular popping corn and paper bags, we did our first test run. The first time, he used 2 tablespoons of corn. Expecting the bag to be bigger, we kept letting it pop until we realized it went too long. Although the popcorn was approaching the “cooked too long” phase, there were not too many kernels left unpopped. For Round 2, we used half a cup of popping corn and it came out great. In our excitement, we just watched the microwave and added minutes as needed until the popping slowed down. We forgot to keep track, but it was probably 4 minutes and change.

Hubby salted the popcorn in a bowl to taste and we ate it without butter. It was pretty good. Unlike the prepackaged microwave popcorn, there are no extra ingredients. Even the light popcorn contains partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Not only is it healthier than the prepackaged popcorn, it’s a lot cheaper after the initial $3 investment of paper bags and popping corn. Additionally, all the packaging is biodegradable. There you have it, a triple win – cheaper, healthier and greener!

For safety, you may want to add butter to the bag or spray with cooking spray before microwaving, since overheated paper could otherwise catch on fire.

Now, you can enjoy healthy snacking convenience and save a buck and the planet too!

Feel free to try out this tip and post your comments here. If you have any other cheap and healthy snacking ideas, please share!

This article first appeared as a post in Maribel's Frugal Families Blog at Chesapeake Family in September 2010.

Fashionably Frugal - An Introduction

Six years ago, my work friends thought I was insane when I told them I took out forty dollars every week. I took the train to work in Virginia and that weekly allowance was earmarked for train fare and lunch money. While I did get out for an occasional lunch out, most of my savings resulted from packing lunches and saving a little bit each week to purchase the monthly commuter passes I needed. (It didn’t hurt that I received a Metro credit as a work benefit).

I was always of the frugal persuasion. I remember saving for my first Walkman in high school. That big, clunky, gold (yes, it was gold colored, yikes) cassette player set me back fifty bucks. But I dutifully paid the store each week until I could take my baby home.
Being frugal was never glamorous. But I did what my mom always taught me: Always save a little bit and don’t spend more than you have. Wiser financial advice could not have been spoken. I’ve been ridiculed for being miserly and have pinched pennies to stay home with my children. Now, the world could not have prepared enough for the financial devastation experienced by our housing and banking industry.

Lots of folks are feeling the pinch and I’ve gone from cheap to chic. In order to save money, my husband agreed to one packed lunch a week and a reduction in his weekly allowance in order to get more satellite TV channels. Now, instead of getting surprised looks at the mall when I pull out lunch for the kids, others are wishing they did the same thing. Hubby now regularly checks out craigslist and brags about the reduced priced sales he gets at Macys. One friend actually spoke about getting rid of her cleaning lady and doing her lawn herself in order to save money. (I’ve always been my own cleaning lady! Thankfully, hubby does the lawn!) I have no shame in admitting that quite a few of my kids’ clothes have come from consignment shops and clothing giveaways held at neighborhood churches. My daughter has inherited her brothers clothing, as long as it involves solid colors and no construction tools or trucks.

This recession has been an equalizer of sorts. People are no longer afraid to admit they are having a tough time making ends meet. I have trimmed expenses and led a threadbare existence as a normal way of life. Now, I can be fashionable with my commonsense ways of spending (or not spending) money. Living within your means is going to become a matter of necessity since it will be harder to qualify for credit. With that, I leave you with 4 fashionably frugal tips:

1. Set up a weekly allowance for yourself and stick to it. If it’s good enough for the kids, it’s good enough for you.
2. If you must buy something, buy used: eBay, Amazon, craigslist. Never, ever pay retail!
3. Freecycle.org is a great way to inherit treasure for free!
4. Cook once, eat twice! Leftovers or lunches, this saves time and money.

Frugally Yours,
Maribel

This post was originally published as the Frugal Families blog on Chesapeake Family in September 2010.

My Top 4 Christmas Cookie Recipes

Those of you who know me know that I can cook as long as the recipe doesn't involve too many steps or ingredients.  The following are my Frugal Writer tested recipes that are pleasing to the pocketbook, easy to make and yummy too.  If you are counting calories, well, uh, just eat less.

My oldest elf dusting the Easy Chocolate Truffles

The Fab Four criteria for making this list:

• 5 non-exotic ingredients or less
• easy to do in 5 steps or less
• awesome tasting
• can be done with or around kids

So here goes....  

1. Fake Thin Mints
2. Easy Chocolate Truffles (thank you Kraft!)
3. Saltine Cracker Brittle
4. Reindeer Chow - aka Chow Mein Cookies

Even with only two more days 'til Christmas, you can whip up a batch of these cookies and look like a champ in the kitchen.

For fun, let's have a virtual cookie exchange!  Post a recipe here or or add your link to a recipe that adheres to the Fab Four criteria.

Merry Christmas and Happy Baking!