Money Saving Apps (Flipp)

There are many techniques that will allow you to save money on stretch your food dollars. The we use every week and I get the most questions about is 'comparative shopping' or 'comp shopping'. Simply put 'comp shopping' is taking the various grocery adds from your area and looking for the best deals on items you have on your shopping list and or staples that you can stock your pantry with. Finding a grocery store in your local area that will accept competitors adds is a major money saver. Love them or hate them, Wal-Mart accepts all local competitors grocery ads so we do a lot of our grocery shopping there. In fact, it is pretty safe to say that a large percentage of Americans now have or live in an area in which there is a Wal-Mart. This is not an endorsement for Wal-Mart, just simply the way that it is.

In the past, on every Wednesday we would purchase a bundle of the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) grocery ads from a local beautician for $4.00. The printed ads lasted for a week and we always saved more than the $4.00 it cost us to purchase them so it was a no brainier. Then about 8 months, while standing at the check out, someone mentioned the 'Flipp' shopping app that they had on their smart phone. A quick download of the app, and after adding in a DFW area code, and I had most of the major grocery store chains ads on my smart phone. At the time most of the Mexican markets were missing, but the app has a request feature so that they can add more grocery stores and within 3 weeks the Mexican markets began to appear on the app as well.

As I mentioned, we have been using 'Flipp' for more than 8 months and we no longer have to spend the $4.00 each week to purchase grocery ads for shopping which leaves us with $4.00 more to shop with. I realize that it does not sound like much, but over a years time (52 weeks) that's a savings of $208.00.

Flipp On The Smart Phone

It does a lot of things besides display grocery ads, it also collects circulars for general merchandise, sporting stores, department stores etc… However, our primary focus in this article is saving you money add increasing on your families food budget. I do not usually review or endorse any particular item on this blog, but I believe that they features of this app are of such value to our readers that I felt compelled to write my thoughts on using this smart phone app.

Flipp has a lot of features, one of the best is that when you find an item you want, your simply tap the screen and the app circles the item on the sales circular and adds it to a separate folder called “clippings”. You can then access all your clippings through a specific menu so that when the cashier wants to see the sales price you can show them on your phone without having to scroll through each ad.

You can setup the application to show only your favorite stores, a feature which we use. This will save you from having to look through ads from stores that either are not in your area, or ones in which the grocery store in which you shop will not accept. Once you have all your favorite stores then performing a search for an item will give you results only for the grocery stores you choose. You can of course search all the stores on the app, but the more specific the search, the better the results.

In addition, the app is pretty intuitive or setup to know when a particular grocery ad is expired and will notify you by placing the word 'expired' on any clippings that are out of date. Hitting a button on the right side of the screen brings up a pull down menu that allows you to delete expired and sent items. A very handy feature.

The app is not prefect. Some grocery ads on occasion are slightly blurry. My personal opinion is that it is the grocery store or whoever scans the ads into their respective computer that is at fault and not the app, but I could be wrong. It is a small inconvenience and usually you can figure out what is displayed in the ad, but not always. In addition, under the clippings button you have the option to delete 'expired or sent items.' I am not sure what 'sent' items means. It should mean that you are able to send or share your clippings with another smart phone. I use a Galaxy Note 4 (Android OS) and I do not see a way to send my clipping to another user. The option may be available on the IPhone, but as I do not have an IPhone I am unable to verify this minor issue. This may an added feature for the future and they have simply not implemented it yet, I honestly do not know.

Flipp On The Computer

If you do not have a smart phone, you can also use Flipp on your computer by logging onto their website (www.flipp.com). Simply enter the area code you want to use and you are off an running. It is obviously not portable, and I see no way in which to link or send items from the computer to your smart phone (a future feature that would be nice). The computer makes it easier to see the ads, but the major disadvantage is that there is no print option at this time and about 50% of the time the cashier wants to see the ads, and they have the right to do so. So if you need to show your clippings to the cashier, you need the mobile app.

Conclusion

Just remember that each Wal-Mart is different. Our Canton Wal-Mart takes competitors adds from up to 70 miles away (DFW Metroplex), including all of the Mexican markets. While I current have 25 grocery stores listed in our Flipp app on our smart phone, we probably only use about 8 to 10 on a regular basis. Your store may accept less. In fact, they only have to take local competitors adds, which in our area is Brookshires, and Dollar General, but they amazingly take all corporate grocery ads within about 70 miles as I mentioned earlier.

Flipp is not perfect, but it is pretty darn good and the fact that it is free is even better. In fact, I never pay for apps on my smart phone or tablet, but I would definitely purchase this app if there was a way to share clippings with another phone, or sync the computer with my phone, and or print the clippings from the phone or computer to take to the store.

The bottom line is that if you are not using this tool to help stretch your food dollars, you might as well throw your hard earned cash out of the window. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and don't forget to send us a friend request on Facebook and Google+ so that you will not miss out on any of our new articles.

Grilled Chicken Drumsticks

While we live in a rural area, we are only about sixty miles form the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) metroplex which has a multitude of supermarkets including many ethnic markets. What this means for us is that our local Walmart actually price matches all the sale ads from the DFW area. Almost every week someone has chicken thighs and or drumsticks on sale. As I am writing this article 'Save-A-Lot' supermarkets has chicken drumsticks and thighs on sale for $0.69 per lb, while the Mexican market 'Rio Grande' has drumsticks regular or marinaded for $0.39 per lb. Chicken breasts on the other hand were $1.69 per lb on sale. The drumsticks I am cooking for this article we comp'd at our local Walmart for $0.49 per lb a few weeks ago. While not as nutritious as chicken breasts, legs and thighs can help you to put good quality food on your table for a quarter of the cost ($1.69 / $0.39 = 4.33). And I do not have to tell you if you are cooking on a budget or fixed income, every little bit of savings you can find helps to stretch your food dollars.

Cooking chicken on the grill is pretty easy, but my brother-in-law “bless his heart” just cannot seem to get the hang of it. His chicken either looks like it is cooked but ends being raw and bloody in the middle, or he cooks the bejesus out of it and it is so burned on the outside that it is not only unappealing to look at, it's not very tasty either. The sad thing is that he thinks he is a grill master, but everyone is just to polite to say anything. It is not all his fault, part of the problem is the equipment he uses. The recipe for this chicken is quite simple, season the chicken with salt and pepper and grill it for 36 minutes and then apply the sauce of my choice and cook for another 5 minutes. No rub, no marinade, simply put, this grilled chicken could not be easier.

The Grill Matters

Multi-burner gas grills are great for cooking foods, the old single burner type of gas grill (which is 20 years old) that my brother-in-law uses is terrible. It is simply to hard to regulate the heat effectively without either burning the food or having it be undercooked. The problem with single burner grills (as well as cooking directly over charcoal) is that you have to stand there and constantly monitor the cooking process and most often you have to grill with the lid open to be able to manage flareups and keep the food from burning. This not only causes you to lose heat, but it uses up more of your valuable gas and or charcoal costing you money. So why is this important? Well the key to cooking moist and delicious chicken on the grill is indirect heat, regardless of whether you are using a gas or charcoal grill.

Gas grills with multiple burners help you to maintain an even heating and cooking source, as well as allowing you to cook foods throughly while using less gas. Your gas grill does not have to be fancy. I cooked for years on a small two burner Char-Broil grill without a temperature gauge with amazing results. All you need is the ability to turn off the burner that is directly under the food during the cooking process. Have not fear, if all you have is a charcoal grill you can still cook fantastic chicken. While the process for cooking with indirect heat on a charcoal grill is slightly different, it is not difficult, and I will quickly cover how to do so later in this article.

Saving The Sauce For Last

Before we get into the actual instructions for grilling the drumsticks, there is one key thing that you must do to keep your chicken from burning, and that is saving the sauce for last. When it comes to grilled meats, the sauce that you apply will not absorb into the meat, rather the sauce is used as an additional flavor component to the poultry. Almost all sauces contain sugar which when heated will burn and increase the number of flareups during the cooking process.

Properly grilled chicken only needs to have the sauce applied during the last five minutes of cooking. Apply the sauce liberally to one side, then turn the chicken and apply the sauce to the other side and cook for 5 minutes. Adding multiple applications of sauce during the grilling process does nothing but waste sauce, increases the chance the chicken will burn and does not add any additional flavor to the chicken. It simply falls down into the bottom of the grill. If you want to add an additional layer of sauce, then when you remove the chicken from the grill and place it on your tray or plate add another light coat of sauce. Then allow the chicken to rest for 5 minutes before serving. This not only allows the additional layer of sauce to slightly thicken, but keeps you and your guests from burning your mouths when you bite into your hot and juicy grilled chicken.

Grilling The Drumsticks

A lot of people prefer the flavor of cooking meats on a charcoal grill, and I must admit I do like the flavor of charcoal, but to be honest it is down right inconvenient when you have a group of hungry guests or family members and you need to quickly throw something on the grill. The biggest disadvantage to using a charcoal grill is that it is more difficult to cook on consistently using indirect heat. It can be done, but you have less control of the temperature range of the grill so it requires a more experienced hand managing the grill.

If you want to cook your chicken over direct heat regardless of the type of grill you are using, you need to get yourself a cold beverage because you will need to stand outside and monitor the grill as there will be multiple flareups due to the fats released from the skin of the chicken during the cooking process. Now, depending on your house guests and your cold beverage of choice, standing outside by the grill cooking over direct heat just might be considered an advantage. Anyway, when cooking over direct heat, the outside of the chicken tends to cooks quickly and while the drumsticks may look cooked on the outside, the inside often remains raw and bloody. So keep in mind that if you are cooking your drumsticks over direct heat you may need to turn them every 5 to 7 minutes to keep them from burning. Cooked drumsticks are fantastic, burned and blackened drumsticks not so much; and no one I know likes to eat bloody chicken.

So the million dollar question is at what temperature do I grill my chicken? My basic answer is somewhere between 325 to 400 degrees. That may seem like quite a temperature range and it is, but to be honest when I used my old Char-Broil gas grill, it had no thermometer so I just cooked the chicken with one burner on high and the one under the chicken turned off. My new Char-Griller has a temperature gauge that reads a consistent 400 degrees (if this is accurate) when it comes up to heat and one burner is kept on low. The optimum temperature would be 350 degrees. For this recipe the gauge on my grill was always at 400 degrees. If cooking at a slightly lower temperature 325 to 350 you may need to increase the overall cook time by about 10 minutes.

Using A Gas Grill – When using a gas grill, heat with both burners on high for 5 minutes, then turn one burner off and place the meat on the side of the grill in which the burner is off and cook for 12 minutes. Then turn on both burners and turn the meat and place it on the other side of the grill and turn the burner under the meat off and cook for another 12 minutes. Repeat this process for three times or a total of 36 minutes. After 36 minutes, baste the chicken with the your sauce of your choice and then turn and move the chicken to the opposite side of the grill and baste the other side (at this point you should have sauce on both sides). Cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Using A Charcoal Grill – If you are using a charcoal grill heat the coals until they turn ash white. To cook the chicken indirectly on a charcoal grill you will need to move the coals either to the middle of the grill and cook the chicken on the outside of the grate away from the coals, or push the coals all to one side and cook on the side away from the coals. Follow the same cooking process as if you are using a gas grill.

Conclusion

Buying meat and poultry when it is on sale and freezing them for later use can be a valuable way to stretch your families food budget. At our house, we rarely any purchase meat or poultry unless it is on sale. Having purchased chicken when it was on sale is only half the equation, if you cannot grill it correctly, you are simply throwing your money away. The great thing is that grilling chicken thighs and drumsticks on the grill is easy and anyone can learn to grill juicy, delicious chicken, all it takes is a little practice. Just because I did not use a rub or a marinade for this recipe does not mean that you cannot. I have several recipes such as jerk chicken in which I use a marinade, and I have my own barbecue chicken rub that I also like to use. Rather my goal was to show you just how easy you could cook great grilled chicken with just a liberal amount of salt and pepper and a quick grilling sauce of your choice. Heck you do not even have to use a sauce. I grilled a couple of pieces for the wife without the sauce because she likes her grilled chicken with just salt and pepper. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and don't forget to send us on friend request on Facebook and Google+ so that you will not miss out on any of our new articles.

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Plastic Pantry Shelving: A Great Choice For Canners

 

I you have a garden of any size, raise livestock on the homestead, or just like to buy a lot of stuff on sale for your pantry, you are eventually going to need some proper shelving. I realize that this is not the typical type of article I write here on CulinaryYou, but this is part and parcel to the 'minimalist pantry' series. One of the first things we started doing when we wanted to cut down on our food bill, was raise our own livestock (rabbits and chickens) for meat. In addition, we plant a pretty good size garden for the two of us. This spring alone we have harvested over 100lbs of tomatoes, and about 40lbs of cucumbers so far, in addition to about 40lbs of blackberries, yellow squash, green beans, and peppers; you get the idea.

Well I have always been a canner and if you have been reading any of my articles on this blog, then you know that I can a lot of vegetables (tomatoes, green beans, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, squash etc...) as well and meats, jellies, and jams. The great thing about canning your harvest is that is is shelf stable, so if the power ever goes out as a result of a natural disaster or we ever have our power cut off, we will always have food to eat. Are we preppers? No, we are homesteader's or farmer's which in many ways are the original preppers. We strive to be as self-sufficient as possible, however I still hold a full time job as a registered nurse, because farming just doesn't pay the bills...[GRIN].

Anyway, if you can as much as we do, and/or buy a couple of extra food items to stock your pantry at your local grocery store when things go on sale, you will eventually need more shelf space. Most shelves that you can buy for your pantry, simply are not pantry friendly. What I mean by that is there is a lot of wasted space between the shelves. Yes you can stack some canned goods, but stacking your home canned meats and veggies is not a viable option. So in this article, I am going to show you how to purchase inexpensive shelving units and convert them into the optimum canning shelf.

Plastic Shelving

We purchase 'Plano' brand (model 950500) plastic shelving from our local Walmart for $29.49. This five shelf unit is stackable and interlocking which can be a blessing or a curse. A blessing when assembled correctly on a flat, stable surface; but they can be a curse if you do not set them up correctly. I learned the hard way, but I am going to share my experiences with you so that you do not make the same mistakes that I originally did. Please, I beg you, learn from me, or you will regret it, mark my words.

Because we can meats and vegetables in both quart and pint jars, it was important that the size and height of the shelving met these specific needs. In order to do this we cut the legs of the shelves down to 11 inches. Then when assembled the actual space between the shelves is 9 inches (you lose two inches in height as the legs sit in a recess on the shelves). This is the prefect height for both quart and pint canning jars. There are two big advantages to cutting down the legs to 11 inches. The first is that it actually makes the shelves more stable, and the second and maybe the biggest advantage is that is allows you to place twice the usable shelf space in the same area.

Cutting The Legs

Essentially the legs that come with these shelves are 1 ½-inch thin wall plastic tubing. The are actually the same size as thin wall PVC of the same diameter. Because they are thin wall, they are difficult to cut with some types of PVC cutters as the cutters tend to squash the legs rather than cut them evenly. Now you could try and use a hacksaw to cut the legs, but if you do not cut them straight your are going to have a lot of problems as you begin to stack the shelves. Any small off-set will begin to become exaggerated (get worse) as the shelving gets taller. Take it from me you, you want your shelves to be as stable as possible.

I personally cut the legs of the shelves on my miter saw (aka chop saw). I measure 11 inches from the blade and place a stop block on my fence and hold it in place with a couple clamps. It makes repeating the same cut over and over go fast and keeps the cuts accurate. If you do not have the ability to use a stop block with you mitre saw, then measuring each leg and marking it will have to do. Just remember, measure twice and cut once.

So what happens if you screw it all up? No problem, just go down to your local hardware supply store and buy a 10 or 20 foot piece of thin wall PVC and cut it to any size you wish. It will not be as pretty as it will have writing on it, but who cares, we are taking shelving. However if you do not like the writing you could sand it off.

Putting It All Together

So I am going to tell you upfront, we live out in the country and we live in a 'double wide palace', that's a manufactured or mobile home if you didn't get my drift. Although it is a very nice one, it is still a manufactured home. Having said that I am not keen on screwing my shelves to the wall. If you live in a conventional home then I would suggest that you attach every other shelf to the studs in your wall (they come with pre-drilled holes). I especially recommend this if you have to place your shelving in a room that has carpet. I was unable to do so and paid the price. So best recommendations is place your shelving on a flat, hard, level surface and attach them to the wall and her follows the reason.

Builders Note: We always leave the legs on the first level there original length so that we can place larger totes on the bottom shelf that contains dry goods such as flour, sugar and other bulky supplies.

These shelving units lock together, this in turn makes them very sturdy and gives them strength. It also means that if one shelving unit fails, then all the interlocking shelving units fail. It is an all or nothing proposition. My point, my shelves were interlocked together (which I recommend) and then placed on a carpeted floor in our spare room we call the pantry. Because we live in a manufactured home, I was leery of attaching them to the wall. Well one of the shelving units was beginning to lean, and before I could get the situation rectified, it fell over taking all of the shelves with it. To say it was a mess was an understatement. This was not a fault of the shelves, rather a the fault of the user. The solution to the problem was quite simple. Because I did not want to attach the shelves to the wall and I have to place them on carpet, I placed a 1x4 board under the front edge of each shelf. This in turn give the shelves an ever so slightly unnoticeable lean towards the wall, problem solved. So if you have to place your shelves on carpet, this simple solution could save you from a massive headache.

Built To Last

These particular shelves are quite heavy duty with ribbing that runs underneath the shelf to give it both strength and stability. The box states that the 5 unit shelf can hold a total of 375lbs (75lbs per shelf). Unlike other shelves they do not bend or buckle under weight. In the picture below you will see that I have 20 quart jars of pasta sauce on one shelf (49.7lbs total weight) and the shelf is nice and straight. Because they are made of plastic they will last for a very long time if taken care of properly. Even when my shelves fell over, none of them sustained any damage.

Conclusion

So this is the simply shelving solution that we use on our small homestead to store or canned and purchased goods. They have really worked out well for us now that I added the small spacer board (1x4) under to front lip to give the shelves a slight lean towards the wall. At less than $30, they are fare cheaper than trying to buy and or build shelves from wood. The fact that they snap together easily is also a bonus. Best of all if you decide later that you want the shelves area taller, you can purchase inexpensive 1 ½-inch thin wall PVC from your local building supply and cut them to the size you desire.

If hope that you have found this information helpful. It was my goal with this article to not only show you how to add simple inexpensive shelving to your pantry, but to help you to avoid the mistakes that I made when I first started out. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and do not forget to send us a friend request on Facebook or add us to your circle on Google+ to get notifications regarding our latest recipes and articles.