Chicken Veggie Soup

I totally cheated on this one, but it falls within the diet guidelines, AND the kiddos love it.

1 32 oz box of Low Sodium Chicken broth
2 cups of water
1 lb of chicken breast, fat trimmed (can even still be frozen, so long as the fat was trimmed before freezing)
1 bay leaf or two
Some Johnny's and black or white pepper

I tossed this on medium high heat while I diced veggies to get things started.

I added 2 thinly chopped celery stocks and a bag of frozen crinkle cut carrots, about a third of each type of onion: white, yellow and red. (Onion helps aid in the breakdown of fat before it can be stored in the body, so I'm trying to incorporate more of them into our diet.)

Just let it simmer, bring it to a boil and then turn it down just slightly from there and let it go for like an hour. You know it's ready when the chicken falls apart if you try and take it out of the pan. lol, if you're really determined to get the chicken out, you can shred it very easily, and then dump it back in and enjoy.

If you want it to get a little father, you can double the veggies and bump up the chicken to 1 and a half pounds. Use one box of chicken brother and then refill the box with water. You can always add a little chicken bullion to add a little more flavor.

17 Day Diet Recipes

Ok here goes, the 17 day diet is fairly restrictive in phase 1, but here are some of the things we've been enjoying:


Breakfast
Real Eggs - It's an egg substitute made with 99% egg whiles that actually tastes like scrabled eggs. A little more expensive, but worth it for the hubby's cholesterol, and my egg yolk intolerance. Sold at Costco, you get 6 little cartons of the stuff, but it goes pretty quick when you're feeding 2 people. We use them to make omlets, add leftover taco meat to make it a crazy scramble, or just make good old fashioned scrambled eggs. Sometimes my hubby eat real, whole eggs, which you are allowed on the diet, but he has borderline high cholesterol, so I've told him no more than 4 yolks a week to try and get his numbers down.

Yogurt - I only buy Lucerne Plain Fat Free Yogurt because EVERY other bottle I've looked at contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (aka, double sided sticky tape for fat) and if I'm dieting, I refuse to eat the stuff. No point in sabotaging myself from the get go. So anyways, Lucerne Yogurt, between a half cup and a whole cup (you'll figure out how much you need), mixed with an equal part of frozen berries. I defrost and then slightly heat the berries just to take the bite off the cold yogurt. If the berries are tart, I'll add some stevia to take the edge off.

Lunches and Dinners
These really are interchangable...I try and make lunch the bigger meal, but it doesn't always happen. The three things I've made so far that have been really big hits, I'll post the recipes to separately so you don't have to go through all this rambling every time you need to find them. But so far they are:

1. Chicken and veggie soup
2. Spicy Chicken soup
3. Taco meat (for it's versatility)
and 4. Loaded Burgers

Hiatus...

So my husband and I have started the 17 Day Diet, which means that most foods coupons work on, are off limits. I'm still going to try and get a basic guide to couponing together, but if you want to know what's big this week check out either of the blogs listed below.

www.thriftynorthwestmom.com

Or

www.frugallivingnw.com

I like these sites because these ladies are in the Pacific Northwest and know our stores don't double.

Good luck!

Rebecca

Today's Adventure: Walgreens

 

 Today I went to Walgreens and got some great deals. In total, I spent $9.32 for $46.85 worth of goods. That's an 80% savings! Here's the breakdown:

I had to split this into two transactions, first I bought the Quaker Oat Squares and the Life Cereal, it was $5.00 (no tax) and I got a $2 Register Reward back. 

Then I got everything else...

2 Dawn Dishsoap - $0.49 each, on sale for $0.99, less $.50 off coupon for each from P&G Saver

2 Big Boxes of Turtles - $2.50 each, on sale 2/$6, less $1 off coupon from newspaper 11/6 (I thought I had 2 of these, which would have brought them down to $2 each, I didn't but it was still a good deal on a stocking stuffer.

2 bags of Haribo Gummi Bears - $0.49 each, on sale for $0.79, less (2) $0.30 off coupons

3 boxes of Hamburger Helper - $0.75 each, on sale for $0.99, less $0.75 off on 3 coupon from HH website.

1 bag of Coconut - $1.49 each on clearance (I wasn't planning on this when I went, but it's a good deal and I use it for Christmas goodies, so I bought it anyways.)

2 24 packs of Dasani water - $3.99 each on sale

So the real trick to this deal was that I had $12.50 in Register Rewards from Black Friday shopping and applied all of them to this transaction, along with the $2 in RR I got in transaction #1. RR can be a great deal, and can score you some awesome "free" stuff but if you don't watch the Walgreens ads regularily, your RR expire 2 weeks after they are printed, so your "free" stuff, suddenly cost you full price. Plus, if you wouldn't have spent the money on whatever you use the RR for later, it's not really free because you had to pony up cash to get the RR. Make sense?

The other thing about RR, is that they count as a Manufacturer's Coupon (MF), and you can only have 1 MF per item. So if all I bought was the gummies and the dawn, I couldn't have used ANY RR, because I had MF coupons tied to those items already. So you have to buy something that's just on sale (or full price) in order to use your RR. Some people will buy what is known in the coupon world as fillers, small items that are inexpensive, just to be able to use their RR. Like this week, Walgreens has some candles on sale 4/$1. So if you had 2 RR you wanted to use, you could buy 2 candles for a total of $0.50 and use your RR. But if the RR are only $1 each, is it worth it? You've now used part of your RR to cover your candles, thus only reducing your total by $1.50 instead of $2. Obviously if you have a bigger one, worth $4 or $5, it's not as big of a deal, but you have to think this through when planning your trip to the store if you're going to use RR.

Ok, this is longer than expected so I'll end it here and save the rest for another day.

Today's couponing scores!

Note: All of these deals are from coupons in the current FM ad and online printable coupons! So you don't need a stockpile of coupons to get any of these!

Today I went to Fred Meyer to pick up a few items on sale combined with coupons. Here's how I made out:

2 half gallons of 2% milk - $1.25 each (coupon in FM ad)
2 half gallons of chocolate milk - $1.25 each (same coupon)
2 lbs of Challenge brand butter - $1.25 each
(2/$4 coupon in FM ad + $0.75 off coupon in blinkie at the store, use 2)*
4 boxes of Pacific Organics broth - $1 each
(2/$4 on sale + $1 off coupon from Pacific Organics website, use 4)**
6 boxes of Nabisco crackers - $1.17 each
(3/$5 coupon in FM ad, print 3 coupons from SmartSource.com for $1 off on 2 boxes)

*Ok, in case your store is out of blinkies for butter, I suggest printing 2 of the coupons available from SmartSource. They are only $0.55 off instead of $0.75 but anything under $1.50/lb I consider a stock up price. Butter freezes. 'Nuff said.

**You may need to use multiple computers to print more than 2 coupons. Often sites limit you to 2 per computer. You can use a laptop and a desktop, or 2 laptops to get around this.

Also, when I got to FM I found another brand of organic broth on sale 2/$4 with $1 blinkies. I grabbed 2 blinkies but didn't cash in yet as the sale price is good until 12/31 and I don't need more right now. But I know I have the coupons to get more if I need/want to!