Friday, February 27, 2009

Chicken Enchiladas

Today I'm posting a recipe for chicken enchiladas. My daughter in Florida asked for the recipe so I figured I might as well post it.

Chicken Enchiladas

1 chicken, cooked and cut into small pieces (no bones)(or the equivalent amount of leftover chicken, or cooked cut up chicken breasts, whatever you have)
1/4 large onion, chopped
1 lb. cheese, grated (ok with any kind of cheese, but Monterey Jack or Mexican blend is best)
12 oz. diced chilies
1 doz. flour tortillas
Mix first four ingredients. Place some of the mixture in each of the tortillas. Roll up tortillas and place close together in a casserole dish. Cover with sauce:

Sauce:
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 cup chicken broth
1 pt. half-and-half cream (can use milk, but use less, because it will thin it out more)

Bake, covered, at 350° for 15 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with grated cheese, and bake for 10 more minutes.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

My Shopping Deals for This Week, 2/24-3/3

Today I'm going shopping at a few places. Here are the deals and coupons I'm using:

Albertson's
Nabisco Saltine Crackers for 97 cents using in-ad coupon
Eggs $1.19
General Mills cereals and Betty Crocker Fruit Snacks, $1.50 each when you buy 4. I'm going to buy 8. I've got a $1.50 off 4 cereals coupon that the store gave me last week, plus a coupon for $1 off 2 that I printed from bettycrocker.com (I've got 2, the limit that it will let you print), plus a 75 cents off coupon for fruit snacks from the same site. These coupons cannot be doubled. But I will end up paying $7.75 for 8 items in the end.

Walgreens
Reynolds Wrap 89 cents with in-ad coupon, plus a $1.00 off coupon from this week's Sunday paper coupons, I will either get it for free, or get 11 cents back, depending on what the cash register will allow.
Oust air sanitizer $2.99 on sale, plus coupon from Sunday paper a few weeks ago that is Buy One, Get One Free (BOGOF), I will pay $2.99 for 2. Then I will send in for a rebate from the Easy Saver catalog (found at the store) for $1 for each one, so I will end up with $2 back, meaning I really pay 99 cents for 2 Ousts.
Hershey's candy bars, BOGOF with in-ad coupon, plus manufacturer's coupon BOGOF, I will get two candy bars for free.

Safeway
2 Crush 2-liter sodas, with in-ad coupon BOGOF and Manufacturers coupon for $1 off, plus double, I will pay 19 cents for 2 2-liter sodas
1 Mini-Wheats cereal, with in-ad coupon for 99 cents, Manufacturers coupon from Sunday paper a few weeks ago, plus double coupon, I will make 31 cents.
2 boxes Wheat thins on sale, manufacturers coupon for $2 off 2, plus double, I will pay $1.24 each.
Safeway brand butter, 99 cents with in-ad coupon

I will update you on how much I spent and what percentage I saved on each trip when I am home tonight.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Updating My Websites

This morning I spent some time updating my personal websites in FrontPage and posting them onto Comcast. I had had them on Geocities, but it seems that a while back they decided to "inactivate" sites that weren't getting a lot of visitors. I tried to "reactivate" it, but even with their "suggestions" I was unable to delete my site and re-post it. So now they're on Comcast, and since I pay to have Comcast internet every month, I assume they won't get rid of my website no matter how many or how few people visit them.

So here are the new URL's for my websites:
http://home.comcast.net/~meadclan/ (Mead Family Website) This one has Primary Helps and the Beaverton 1st Ward Cookbook from 1997 (slightly incomplete) and my genealogy stuff.
http://home.comcast.net/~meadclan/worldkrahenbuhl/index.htm (World Krahenbuhl Website, a genealogy website for the original spelling of my maiden name)
http://www.geocities.com/giftsinajar/ (Gifts in a Jar website. This one's still at Geocities, because evidently it was getting enough visitors to warrant it staying. I might move it later though.)

I'll be adding these to my favorite links on the right later, but for now if you're bored you can poke around in them from here.

Monday, February 23, 2009

My Project for Today

Today my let's-waste-time project was updating all my scrapbook page albums on my computer. So just to make it seem like it was something worth doing, I have posted them on Picasa web albums and I'm sharing them here:

2008 Disney Album


2007 Disney Album


2005DisneyAlbum


2004DisneyAlbum


2002 Disney Album


2001 Disneyland Album


2000 Disney Album


1999 Disneyland Album


1997 Disney Album


You'll notice my scrapbooking style has changed over time. In fact, I went back and re-did some of my very earliest pages because I hated them.

I take pictures of the pages I do because I'm on scrapping e-mail groups and I share my layouts with those groups.

I also have non-disney scrapbook pages, but I haven't worked on very many non-disney pages lately due to limited time. When I first started scrapping, I would spend a couple of hours every day doing scrapbooking (maybe more)--I was a little obsessive. Now I've been able to let go of the obsession but still keep the enjoyment. Disney pages are what I love to do the most.

I also participate in scrapbooking "swaps." In a swap, there is a certain topic, and several people sign up to do various parts of a scrapbook layout on that topic. For example, say there was a swap for the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin ride at WDW. I might sign up to do the title, someone else would sign up to do a fancy photo mat, someone else signs up to do "deco squares" (a decorative element), someone else might sign up to do borders. I love to do the swaps because I do my best work for them, and so do others, so I end up with ready-made scrapbook elements to make pages with, and all I had to do was make one of the elements, several times over.

So that was my project for today. Now I'm off to fold the clothes that I should have been folding earlier.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Sunday Musings

I am thankful for so many things. That we have a roof over our head, that we are able to pay our bills, that my kids are healthy and growing, that we don't have a business anymore. I am grateful for the gospel and want to work toward becoming more Christ-like.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Crockpot Recipe Sharing

Last night some women from our church got together to share Crockpot recipes. It was a fun night and I got some good new recipes. Here is one of my favorites:

Hot Crab Dip

SERVINGS: 20

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/3 cup salsa
  • 3 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, cubed
  • 2 packages (8 ounces each) imitation crabmeat, flaked
  • 1 cup thinly sliced green onions
  • 1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies
  • Assorted crackers

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine milk and salsa. Transfer to a greased 3-qt. slow cooker. Stir in cream cheese, crab, onions and chilies. Cover and cook on low for 3-4 hours, stirring every 30 minutes. Serve with crackers. Yield: about 5 cups.


I hadn't made this in years. Cooking it in the crockpot tones down the spiciness of the salsa and the chiles quite a bit, so it is not really spicy at all. But quite delicious.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

My Coupon Deals for Today

Today I went to Albertsons armed with my list and a bunch of coupons. They were having a deal that if you bought any 10 of a certain list of items, you would get a $10 coupon that you could use like cash on anything you bought on your next visit to Albertsons. So, I bought the following:

2 General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal 2/$5
1 General Mills Lucky Charms Cereal 2/$5
I had a coupon for $1 off when I bought 3 GM cereals
Plus a double coupon took off 50 cents more.
Total paid for 3 cereals: $6

2 Betty Crocker Warm Delights mixes, 3/$5
I had 2 50 cents off coupons, plus double coupons took off another 50 cents each.
Total paid for 2 Warm Delights: $1.34

1 Pillsbury Crescent Roll, 2/$4
I had a 25 cent coupon, plus a double coupon to take another 25 cents off
Total paid: $1.50

1 Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll, 2/$4
30 cent coupon plus double coupon
Total paid: 1.40

1 Toaster Strudel, 2/$4
35 cent coupon plus double
Total paid: $1.30

2 Cheerios Snack Mix, 2/$4
2 60 cent coupons, plus doubles for 50 cents each additional
Total paid for 2: $2.80

Total paid for all items: $14.34
Then I got the $10 coupon to use on my next visit, so it was like I paid $4.34.

In addition to that, I also bought 2 Romano's Macaroni Grill dinner mixes to try. They were on sale for 2/$7, and I had 2 $1 coupons plus the doubles gave me 50 cents more off each box, so I paid $2 for each box. We tried one tonight, it was pretty good. Duncan ate it even though it had visible tomato and mushroom pieces, and had 3 helpings. He said he "couldn't taste" the mushrooms. LOL He's a vegetable-phobe as well as a fruit-phobe. He stopped eating any fruits when he was a baby and used to eat some vegetables, but has gradually eliminated veggies until the only one he really eats is potatoes.

My other purchase at Albertson's was the Campbells Soup at Hand. They were on sale for 10/$10, so I bought 5. These are a good hot lunch when in a hurry and I lived on these when I worked at Norm Thompson one Christmas. We only got a 15-minute break, so I would spend that stretching my legs and heating up my soup, and then take it back to my station to eat as I worked.

My total at Albertsons was $23.84. I saved $24.29 by using my Albertsons preferred card (to get the sale prices listed above) and an additional $9 using coupons. Total savings percentage was 58%.

I feel pretty good considering that some of the experienced coupon users whose blogs I read to read about the best deals this week, seemed to have felt that the best scenarios for getting the most savings involved getting multiple coupons from ebay or whatever. I just used coupons I'd gotten in one copy of the Sunday paper (a few weeks back) and a few coupons that I printed from the Internet. I was able to print multiple copies of a couple of them and the store accepted them. I am vowing to never buy coupons from anyone or to buy more than 2 or 3 copies of the Sunday paper if there is a really good coupon. I want to use the system, but not abuse it or spend all my time in search of saving a few pennies.

My First Blog Post

So here it is, I am finally joining the world of blogging. We'll see if it's interesting or if I remember to keep it up on a regular basis. I do enjoy reading my friends' blogs, and blogs about topics that interest me, so maybe this blog will be useful or interesting to others as well.

I'm planning to post my weekly coupon expeditions on here. I've just started discovering the fun of using coupons with double coupons and sales to get groceries for barely any money! Hopefully I'll get better at it as I go along. One thing I've decided I won't do, is buy coupons from e-bay or other sources. I might buy multiple copies of the Sunday paper, but no more than 2 or 3, if there are some really good coupons in it. There are so many places you can get coupons, and limited storage space, even for the greatest deals.

I'll also post an occasional recipe, and maybe some pictures of scrapbook pages or other crafting I've done.