Best buy of the day!

I did my customary second day shopping at Target--the day after Target clears out all its Halloween merchandise at 90% off. I couldn't get to Target before 10:30 am yesterday so I asked a couple of friends to go there early and pick up some Halloween stuff for me. But unless one shows up promptly at 8am, most of the goodies would have been picked over by other Target "Queens". But that happened yesterday. I will talked about what happened today.

My son loved the Shrek costume I bought him yesterday at Target for $1.99. He wore it until dinner time. I was then kicking myself for not buying the Evil Knight costume because he would have enjoyed the mask, even if the costume was missing the sword and the shin guards. So I went back to Target today and tried to find that costume. The Halloween stuff at the Del Amo Target is pretty much picked over. The only thing left were bags of candy corns. I did find that Evil Knight costume, but it's now missing pants. So I took it to one of the cashiers and asked if she can give me a better price. She looked at it and said, how about $1.99 instead of $2.99 (regular price $29.99). I said OK immediately. The missing pants are black, so my son can basically wear any black pants and it would work. So I left Target a very happy woman.

I thought of hitting another Target in Manhattan Beach, but my car was low on gas, so I drove across the street and went to Toys R Us instead. I needed to get a copy of their Big Book of Toys. KOST 103.5 is doing a promotion where the winner of their call-in promotion can win all the toys on one page of the Big Book of Toys. Mark and Kim were talking about a specific page where there were over $1000 worth of toys. I had to see what was on that page. Not that I would have any chance of winning a radio call-in promotion, but I was curious.

Anyways, I went into Toys R Us intended to look at the board games they were advertising, but I couldn't find any of the rebate forms. So I started browsing the store. The first thing I saw was their Halloween rack. It said 70% off. I didn't see any costumes that appealed to me. But there were 15 Power Ranger Overdrive Treat Bags just hanging there. It was marked $0.10 each (regular price $0.79). I grabbed all of it since my son's birthday party is coming up. Whatever we don't use for the party, I can use it as a gift bag.

I went through the store and didn't see anything appealing except some great backpacks for $10 each. Not a bad deal, but I don't need any backpacks. At $2.50 each, I would have bought a lot.

So I ended my shopping at Toys R Us with $1.50 worth of treat bags. Then at the checkout, the lady said, "they are giving you more discount!" Surprised! My total came to $0.49 with tax. I think these treat bags were $0.03 each. So these treat bags were my best buy of the day.

What to cook for dinner?

With my kids' busy schedules, it seemed necessary that I find something easy to make and/or ready-to-serve, as well as good tasting. So I searched Costco, Sam's Club, Trader Joe's for more non-traditional grocery fares. What I found are food items that are too spicy to serve to kids at a moment's notice.

My kids likes food that are less "traditional" kids meals. They don't like Mac and Cheese and chicken nuggets, so I try to find food items that they would find appealing as well as tasty for adults too.

I was excited to find at Costco a box of Chicken Portobello (32 oz/2 lbs) with 4 servings of Boneless skinless chicken breasts with hand-stuffed mushrooms and smoked gouda cheese. It was easy to bake from frozen and all I have to do is the side dishes (noodles or rice) and some vegetables.

Oven Bake: from frozen: Preheat oven to 375F. Remove stuffed chicken breast from plastic package and place on baking sheet. Bake uncovered for 45-50 minutes.

But this dish turned out to be a failure because it was spicy in an unpleasant way, even for adults. No where on the package said it was spicy. It did mention that it was "Enhanced with up to 15% of a seasoned solution." My kids struggled with eating it by picking at the chicken breast part, but it was not tasty.

At $10.29 a box, it's not a good deal if the kids won't eat it. I would give it a thumbs down. We are better off with the $4.99 pre-roasted roast chicken from Costco.

While at Sam's Club the other day, I found Bacon Wrapped Chicken (Rotisserie Breast Appetizers) $9.08 for 35-38 handmade pieces (1.5 lbs total weight). It's grill ready (5-7 minutes per side), but I baked them in the oven. Using conventional oven, I baked them at 425F for 30 minutes. These are delicious bites, but again, the chicken bites are spicy. So my kids didn't like them. These bacon wrapped chicken appetizers are great with Trader Joe's fettuccine alfredo. These $3.29 (1 lb) fettuccine alfredo is ready in 7 minutes. It's very tasty and quick to make. The bag says it serves 3, but I would say it's enough for 2 adults. I usually add 4-6 oz more of cooked fettuccine to this batch because the bag contains lots of sauce. By adding extra pasta, I was able to serve 4.

The combination of the fettuccine alfredo and the bacon wrapped chicken makes it a great adult meal. The adults enjoyed the meal with a bottle of Pinot Noir. Unfortunately, I would have to rule it out as a possible dinner option at my household because my kids won't eat spicy food.

Getting Ready for School: Buying Lunch Supplies

Thanks to Shannon at http://bentolunch.blogspot.com/, I went to the Dollar Tree and scooped up some Hello Kitty Lunch boxes (bento boxes) for $1 each. I did check to see if these lunch boxes were made in China. They were made in Indonesia, so I felt OK buying them. I would think twice about buying lunch boxes made in China because of the recent product recalls. The Dollar Tree I went to didn't have any more pink lunch boxes, they only have the blue and green ones left. So I bought 2 each. I found these lunch boxes in the Back-to-School section at the Dollar Tree near the front of the store. I figure if my son doesn't like Hello Kitty, I can always find some Power Ranger or Spiderman stickers to put over the Hello Kitty.

There is another Dollar Store I can go to in the next few days. If I'm lucky, I'll find some pink Hello Kitty lunch boxes.

These lunch boxes are 2-tier lunch boxes, the bottom lid sometimes sticks to the top tier box when I tried to separate the 2 tiers, but I don't plan to put any liquidy food items in any of these boxes. The 2-tiers fit nicely on the top compartment of the lunch bags that I bought at the Disney Store last year for $2.50 each. My son has a Power Ranger one, a Dash one (from the Incredibles) and a Pirates of Caribbean one. He is pretty much set, in terms of lunch bags, for the next 5 years.

My next stop was Sam's Club. I usually go with 2 other friends so we can split the bulk snacks that we buy into 3 portions. But both friends were on vacation and I needed to buy some snacks so the kids will have something to take to school on Tuesday. There weren't any bargains at Sam's Club. Just reasonably priced items. If I had time, I would go through my coupons and shop accordingly.

NOT MUCH OF A BARGAIN--

Funyons (50 ct) $10.18 [note: I know Costco doesn't have these.]
Kellogg On the Go variety packs (32 ct) $9.68
Sanitizer wipes (100 ct) $9.88
Quaker rice cake snacks (20 ct) $6.76
Sesame Street (Apple & Eve) Juice Boxes (40ct/4.23oz) $7.83

All the Halloween stuff are out at all the stores I went to today--Dollar Tree, Target, and Sam's Club. I saw lots of toy gifts (for Christmas) and Halloween candies galore at Sam's Club. I actually went to Kmart to find some Ant Killing Gel, but they didn't have it in stock. So I was in and out of there within 5 minutes. I don't like to shop at Kmart--things are badly organized and merchandises are not streamlined. It's not a comfortable shopping experience. I would put up with it if their prices are competitive with other stores, but that's not the case.

Getting Ready for School: Buying School Supplies

Staples has consistently come through for me when it comes to bargain school supplies. I believe we need to thank China for these bargain imports. School supplies are so much cheaper now than when I was in elementary school 30 years ago.

I have been checking Staples' on-line weekly circular page which incidentally has both the current circular ad and the circular for the following week.

http://staples.shoplocal.com [I'm not sure if this link works, but you can always go to www.staples.com and click on "Local Circular" under "Special" at the right side of that page.]

School supplies I bought this week from Staples:

BARGAINS!!!
3 packs of pencils (8 pencils per pack) for $0.03 @ $0.01 per pack (limit 3 packs per customer).

12 Staples® 2-pocket plastic folder with fasteners @ 20¢ each (limit 12 per customer).

8 Staples® 2-pocket plastic folder without fasteners @ 20¢ each (limit 12 per customer).

4 Simply® 1" assorted poly (plastic-looking) binders @ 20¢ each (limit 4 per customer).

School supplies I bought this week from Target:

40 Elmer's Glue Sticks (0.21 oz/6g) @ 10¢ each (2 sticks per pack). The same glue sticks that were packaged in 6 per pack cost a lot more.

4 reams of multipurpose paper (92 bright/20 lbs) @ 2 for $5.

NOT MUCH OF A BARGAIN--

My daughter needed a zipper pencil pouch. So I got a cheap plastic one while we were at Target for $0.69. Hope it'll last until I find a good quality one on clearance at Target near the end of this month.