Wednesday, February 19, 2014

What I Ate Wednesday


It's sunny today! Temperatures are still below zero and there is supposed to be another winter storm on Thursday, but I'll take the sunshine while I can get it.

This What I Ate Wednesday I'm taking a look at what I ate yesterday. It was the day after the Family Day long weekend and there were few groceries to be found in our house. I wasn't sure what I could even pack in the kids' school lunches so I got up (relatively) early and made fresh banana chocolate chip muffins. We always have ingredients for those (except I was short half a banana). I also gave them veggie hot dogs, orange slices and snacks. This is a long way of saying that my breakfast ended up being banana muffins with half of an orange left over after I prepared the kids' lunches.



At lunchtime things were looking desperate. I scanned the fridge. Nothing. I scanned the fruit cellar. Nothing. I finally found a can of Amy's lentil soup at the back of the pantry cupboard and I ate that with toasted spelt bread.


I picked up a giant box of Glutino Gluten Free Cereal Bars at Costco last week. I had one of those for an afternoon snack. The box has a mix of strawberry, blueberry and apple. These cereal bars are great for a quick pick-me-up snack and they don't have any distinctive "gluten-free" taste. My daughter actually likes them, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. Good because they make a convenient snack to pop in my purse for her. Bad because they may well be gone next time I go to eat one.


After school, we took the kids to the orthodontist and then the grocery store. The store had been closed for Family Day the day before and, oh my gosh, I guess we all can't survive with a 1-day closure, because that store was packed! Long lines of people with blank faces staring back at me as I pulled out my pile of coupons.

You see, I organized my coupon folder this week and discovered that many of the coupons had expired in 2012. Plus, a whole bunch of them are expiring in March and they are for products I buy regularly. So, yeah, I planned to use up a few of them yesterday. It was bad timing, I'm afraid, but you can't stop a woman with coupons.

By the time we were done shopping it was almost time to get the little gal off to hip hop class. So we cooked up a quick dinner of Yves faux chicken burgers, curly fries (yum!), asparagus and Cookin' Greens Designer's Mix (a frozen mix of collards, rapini, spinach, yellow beans and onion).

How about you? Do you use coupons?



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10 comments:

  1. I use coupons whenever I can and when I can "price match" at the same time, it's even better!

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    1. I also price matched yesterday too! I'm sure the guy behind me was thrilled! ;)

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  2. Jo
    I have had my coupons organized for years. What is wrong with you?
    Now ask me if I remember to use them often? NO I DO NOT.
    By the way having such a frugal Scottish
    Daddy you think would use them more.

    Love Nancy

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    1. You are more efficient than me. Remember when dad used to occasionally pick up some groceries? He would always buy the fanciest of cookies but little that was practical. So funny. He wasn't frugal at those times. :)

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  3. Everything looks so pretty and delicious! I rarely use coupons because I mostly only buy meat and produce. BUT, when I DO have coupons, I always forget to use them. Haha!

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  4. I'm intrigued by coupons, is it just a North American thing? What do coupons get you? Here our supermarkets have weekly specials, where things are marked down automatically so when you go to the checkout there's no need to present anything. My understanding was that there are items that are full priced but IF you have a coupon, you get a discount. Is that right?

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    1. That is fascinating to me. You don't have coupons? Usually they get us 50 cents to a dollar off a particular item. I hear they have double coupon days in the U.S. where you get double the value. I don't think that happens in Canada. We do have the weekly specials like you, but you can usually use the coupons on those items as well. The specials are the store's discount, while the coupons come from the specific manufacturers.

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    2. ahhh that explains it-- the supermarket discount vs the manufacturer discount!

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  5. I have apps on my phone with some coupons, & we have those silly shopper cards, but that is it-- we really should though. Sigh. Pass that banana chocolate chip muffins down here please!!

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