Sharing in case it helps others: How to use Stop and Shop gift card for delivery, including Cash for Causes ones without a PIN

Posting here in case this is helpful for anyone else. I am typically pretty computer literate, but I couldn't figure out 1) where to enter the Stop and Shop gift card on their delivery site to pay for delivery and 2) what to do if it's this type with no PIN.

The site is set up so some of the checkout/payment options are in the checkout dialogue and others are in the profile settings. You do need to enter a debit/credit card for all delivery orders to cover any differences resulting from substitutions etc.

This document from the state Food Assistance website shows where you do that, and how you enter a bunch of other stuff before you get any box showing you where to apply a gift card: https://www.mass.gov/doc/food-assistance-store-card-instructions/download

Now, you might have one of these gift cards that says Cash for Causes and has no PIN. These are given out at a number of public health programs in Boston. It isn't listed on the state website how to enter it, but I did some experimenting and figured out that the PIN is the last four digits of the card number; in the case of mine shown below, it's 4576 (I've already used this card and it has zero balance now; don't make it weird). 

Interestingly, of the two seemingly identical regular retail-type gift cards I was given that did have a PIN, the PIN for one was the same as the last four, despite being behind a scratch-off thing (real secure, Stop and Shop!) and the other was an unrelated number. 

 

Oh, and Stop and Shop also doesn't have you initially choose whether you're doing pickup or delivery, like most sites. As a default, you'll choose all your stuff, then you'll go to choose delivery, and it will tell you some of the items aren't available for delivery. The website will then start registering that you are doing delivery and when you go back to the store page to add items, it will only show ones that can be delivered to you. It looks like you can actually enter into the first part of the checkout process earlier on so that it registers you are doing delivery and only shows items that are available for delivery. 

The website is quite a bit clunkier than Instacart and others, but I use whatever I have gift cards and promos for, so yeah. I seem to recall that it worked better last time I used it, when it was Peapod. 

Photo of front of Ca$h for Causes Stop and Shop gift card

Photo of back of Ca$h for Causes gift card. Note there is no PIN.

Looks like Swagbucks has changed its coupon approach

So Swagbucks no longer does paper grocery coupons, which is unfortunate. I hadn't been using a whole lot of these lately (and neither has anyone else, which is why they seem to be dying out...), but it was a pretty good deal to use Swagbucks every few weeks to print out coupons, get some Swagbucks for printing them, then get some Swagbucks when you redeem them.

However, at the moment they do have a ton of those "magic receipt" things that are actually worth money. Yes, there are a whole bunch that give you five Swagbucks, so, not really worth it unless you happen to see something you know you've bought recently. But there are also a lot worth 500-3000 Swagbucks. Many of these are the same products that are currently on iBotta and have store coupons. I haven't really scoured the details closely, but it looks like there are several products that could end up being free with the iBotta refund and Swagbucks deal.

(As always, if you don't have Swagbucks yet, please check out my tutorials by clicking on the post label, and please use my referral thingy to sign up so we can both get free stuff.)

I have HelloFresh boxes to give away again EDIT: TAKEN

I have three free-box codes to give away. 

All have been taken. Thanks!

If you are looking for more, freefood often has people post them. Unfortunately most people post pictures of the actual codes, so you have to try them and have no idea if they've been used. People of the internet, please don't do this. Please ask people to comment or message you to get a code. 

FAQ: 

HelloFresh does do vegetarian, doesn't technically do vegan but many receipes are close to vegan with a dairy garnish that can be left off or substituted. The boxes are typically just measured raw ingredients with the rare premade sauce or similar, so you can adjust for allergies, dietary needs, seasoning level.  

You get to pick the meals you receive from a weekly offering of a dozen or so choices. They have a decent variety of Tex-Mex, pan-Asian, Middle-Eastern, Italian-American, upscale American pub fare, and similar.

They are unfortunately almost all hot meals that require access to a stove and oven, so they may not work for people who do not have access to cooking facilities, though check the recipes, as there may still be tortillas, vegetables, cheese, etc. that can be eaten as-is. 

How the free boxes work:

• The e-mail address you are using cannot have a current or past HelloFresh account associated with it, including having redeemed freebies. You will be signing up for a subscription, which you are going to cancel in about a week. 

• You will pay $9.99 in shipping. You need a credit or debit card that can be charged. I recommend using a prepaid gift card (if you do Swagbucks, you probably have many Visa cards for $10, $20, etc.) so you don't risk it charging your actual accounts. The cards say $8.99 in shipping, but free boxes have been coming up at $9.99 lately, so it will likely be $9.99.

• It looks like you can actually get any size box, so you could get three meal kits for six people each. I am not positive this works all the way to checkout though, and have personally only redeemed these for three meals per week for two people. Still, that's a lot of groceries for $10.

• Immediately after you place the order, skip the next few weeks to make sure you aren't charged, then cancel once your box arrives. This doesn't violate the terms, and they even have a cancellation reason of "I was using a free offer" because they know. This company will allow you to cancel on the website without engaging with a human. 

• Signing up may or may not get you Swagbucks depending if you've redeemed a Hello Fresh offer in the recent past. If it does, your HelloFresh box ends up being -$20 or something. Pretty amazing.

First three people to comment with an e-mail address where I can send the codes each get one. Preference for people who are struggling right now, but I don't require proof.

If you don't already have a Swagbucks account, please consider "repaying" me by signing up under my referral link, https://www.swagbucks.com/profile/Locomotive1313, and getting cash back for HelloFresh. 

Several holiday food resources for Boston folks

Apologies that these are jpgs and not accessible to screen readers -- I wanted to get them up ASAP, but please leave a comment if you can't access them and I can assist you if you need food resources.  

A whole bunch of free Thanksgiving food and other things on iBotta right now

If you don't already have iBotta, sign up here. It's super hit-or-miss, but it's been good lately.

Most of the deals are only available at Walmart, and there isn't one nearby, but you can sign up for a free trial of Walmart+ and get the things delivered for free. When I tried my address (02119 ZIP code), it told me it wasn't available here, but I know my neighbors use it, so I just signed up and placed orders, and it does work. Try putting together an order and going to checkout, and it will show you if delivery is available to you. If it is, sign up for the free trial. BTW, they extend the free trial "just for answering a couple survey questions" and it ends up being about a one-month trial.

The Quincy Walmart doesn't have much of a grocery selection, so select your delivery from Walpole, which does deliver here, amazingly. (I assume Walmart policies are based on parts of the country where a store 18 miles away might be one of the closest ones).

iBotta has kind of a cool plugin for Walmart, where you can browse iBotta deals, click on them to have them show on the Walmart site, and then it will light up the products for which an iBotta deal works. It's actually super cool. There are a bunch of completely free items (and a few that were like -5 cents) -- stuffing mix, gravy packet, cornbread mix, cream of mushroom soup, frozen vegetables, Coca Cola two liter, Izze drinks, and others. There are also some great 50% off or so deals on other items. iBotta also has bonuses where you save more when you do a certain number of deals. The November one requires 48 deals, which is unlikely for most folks to get to unless you have a huge family or are stocking up a business or something, but there are also frequent smaller mid-week or weekend ones, so wait for one of those. 

City of Boston program will build you a free raised garden bed and fill it with soil

 Program signup here. It looks like there aren't any requirements other than living in Boston.

Free $20 worth of products from Imperfect Foods

Get it by clicking on this link. They make it easy to cancel the subscription or skip a week. It does require a debit or credit card, but I believe prepaid cards work. You get $20 worth of free food and I get $20 worth of free food. Then you can send free food to others, and it's a whole wonderful pyramid scheme of free delicious food.

Completely free HelloFresh boxes

HelloFresh is back on Swagbucks. You get 1000 Swagbucks for signing up for a plan that includes a percentage off your first several boxes. If you pick two meals per week for two people, the first box ends up being $10.95 including shipping ($40 off). The next box is $30 off, so, $20.95. Then the next two are $10 off, so $40.95.

I set my HelloFresh to send me the first box right away and paid $10.95. Then I skipped several weeks. My Swagbucks credited, which means I got the box for free, or actually a negative dollar or so. (You can redeem Swagbucks to get a $25 Visa gift card for 2175 SB, and then add the $25 to your Amazon account which gets you $25.50, which means 1000 SB = $11.70 using them this way.)

You know how I've mentioned that the cat is an asshole? And how the cat is such an asshole that I made a label just for all the times the cat shows up and bothers things that I'm trying to blog? Well, the cat is an asshole. Seriously cat, no one said you could go and stand on the HelloFresh box and make a judgy face like that.

If you don't already use Swagbucks, my referral link is: https://www.swagbucks.com/refer/Locomotive1313

When I signed up for HelloFresh, it gave me four free boxes (six meals each box) to send to other people. They are actually free, including shipping. You will need a credit/debit card (I suggest one of the Swagbucks Visa gift cards for these sorts of subscription things so you aren't risking it charging your actual bank account) on which it can run a pending charge of a dollar. I still have two free boxes left to send to people. Note: When you click on the e-mail to redeem the offer, it will commit you to receiving the free box for the upcoming week, so don't click yet if you have other plans for next week, and check out the menus here to make sure there are things you want.

First two people to comment with an e-mail address to which I can send an invite will get a free box of six meals. 

Preference for people who are struggling to afford food, can't get benefits or enough benefits, etc. I won't require proof, but please be honest.

Quick and simple banana-oat pancakes that happen to be vegan and gluten-free

I made these super quick and easy pancakes using ingredients I got for free. A local organization gave us some basic food packages that contained bags of oats, bags of rice, bags of dried beans, canned tomatoes, frozen fruit, frozen vegetables. (The frozen fruits and vegetables were huge bags with no brand name on them and appeared to be foodservice surplus). So, yeah, these were quite similar ingredients to what WIC gives, so I'm going to tag this as WIC as well, even though we don't currently get WIC.

As usual, I didn't really use a recipe, but I can reconstruct what I did. I put about 1-1/2 cups rolled oats and one frozen overripe banana (thawed first) in a large pitcher, added about a teaspoon of baking powder, then added almond milk a bit at a time until it was the right consistency to pour for pancakes. I mixed it with a stick blender. This is important; if you don't use either a stick blender or jar blender, which makes your oats the consistency of course oat flour, you will end up with something edible, but it will be more like oatmeal cookies with whole rolled oat pieces and it won't puff up and be chewy in the same way that this is.

For syrup/compote/whatever, I microwaved frozen blueberries and sugar for one minute, stirred it, then put it in for another minute. It was boiling by the end of the two minutes. You can do the same on the stovetop. I didn't measure the sugar; you don't need to, and can just do it to your preferred sweetness and consistency. You can also add spices if you like. This technique will work without sugar, though it will be a thinner mixture if you don't use any. Regardless of amount of sugar, blueberries don't have enough pectin in them to gel into a spoonable jam-type mixture, so you won't get anything much thicker than what is shown here. (And I realize I should have used a plate that isn't the same color as blueberries so it's clearer what it looks like, but I was mostly focused on making breakfast, with blogging as an afterthought.) If you wanted this jam-type texture, you would either need to add store-bought pectin, or use half cranberries and half blueberries.

The Food Project Build-a-Garden Program will, well, build you a garden

I just found out about this program from a leaflet in the library. I don't know anything about it other than what's on the flier/website and knowing that the organization as a whole has a good reputation.

So, it looks like for a contribution of at least $25 they will build you a raised bed garden and provide soil and seedlings. This program states it is for low-income and moderate-income households in Roxbury/Dorchester/Mattapan with a preference for families with children. It does not appear to have a hard income limit or require that you have SNAP like many programs.

Hello Fresh allows stacking Swagbucks discount and regular discount to get three meals for $10

Swagbucks has a Discover offer right now that gets you 1000 Swagbucks (about $10, or more if you redeem for cards that are on sale) for signing up for Hello Fresh (which, if you pay attention here at all, you know that you cancel it after the first week once it's no longer steeply discounted). The normal charge for a week of meals is $60, you'll get $10 back from Swagbucks, and if you use the code I have, you'll get $40 off. Most of these deals don't let you enter a promo code if you've gotten there through a referral code, but it works for Hello Fresh. I got my 1000 Swagbucks, plus it applied the $40 discount code I got from a friend.

So, go here and sign up for Swagbucks using my referral code if you don't already have an account, then search for Hello Fresh, find the one with 1000 Swagbucks back for joining (remember to always screenshot the deal in case it doesn't credit correctly), go join and put in your information, then come back here and click through using my code. Or you may have to type it in, I'm not sure. It worked for one person via clicking the link and another person had to manually input it.

As always, comment with any Swagbucks questions and I'll answer them.

Free Gobble meal kits

I'm trying Gobble via Swagbucks. If the deal credits, it's a moneymaker ($36 upfront to get 5000 Swagbucks), but I'm hearing mixed reports as to whether it credits the Swagbucks.

If you'd rather just get the free Gobble meals, use my link, and we both get free stuff.

As with most of these, it's a subscription service, so you need to remember to cancel after you get the free stuff. Also, it makes you sign up before it shows you what options they have and how to choose what you want, but once you're in, it does let you choose the specific meal kits you are ordering.

Moar potatoes

I continue to make things with potatoes, because I continue to have entirely too many potatoes. Here are some homefries. I made them sliced, because they cook faster and more evenly. Nothing special, just potatoes, a little oil, Adobo, dill, smoked red chili powder or paprika. They're good alone, with breakfast foods, in breakfast burritos, or as a quick lunch with whatever vegetables you have around stir-fried and dumped on top of them.














Also I made au gratin potatoes. I used a recipe I found on Pinterest that I can't seem to find again. They were just OK. You can't really go wrong with potatoes and cheese, though I've had better.

I don't think I ever posted a photo of this whole Fair Foods haul. Wow. This one was pretty amazing. And, uh, contained a lot of potatoes.

Oh my god I have all these potatoes

I seem to have a ton of potatoes. Big, small, red, white, yellow, oh, and a bag of small blue ones and a bag of tiny weird-shaped ones. These were all acquired either through Fair Foods or through a similar food surplus program run though a religious organization. Both programs are amazing and have been so helpful to our family. And both programs give you a pre-packaged load of food without much opportunity to turn parts of it down. So there are all these potatoes.

I'm going to have to figure out different things to make with potatoes. Fortunately they keep quite a while, I mean, compared to things like bananas or leafy vegetables. But as tends to be the case with rescued produce, they're already getting up there in age. So far I've made a quasi-Indian curry. I sauteed onions and garlic, then threw it in the slow cooker with potatoes, frozen peas, and canned tomatoes that were either free in one of these food packages or a few cents via couponing. I dumped in a bunch of every spice I had that works in curries (see here for where to get inexpensive spices). Then once it was sufficiently cooked, I blended it a little to make it thicker, and served it over rice. This meal was close to free to make, and it served our family for dinner plus enough for everyone to take for lunch the next day.

Stay tuned for more potatoey goodness.

Watermellooonnn

So I got this free watermelon. Obviously watermelon is good just to eat, but I was looking for something interesting to do with it, and wanted to incorporate it into a meal. First,
I scooped out balls of watermelon. I combined this with some quinoa (I used some one-minute quinoa that I got couponing), plus chopped cucumber a neighbor gave me, a purple onion from Fair Foods, and canned black beans from couponing. I drizzled some balsamic salad dressing over it. It was quite a hit.

I don't have a melon baller, but at some point we seemed to have acquired these kid spoons that are scooplike rather than spoon-shaped, which suck as spoons, but work great for making melon balls. Yes, my grown ass made melon balls with an alien spoon. Don't judge.

The melon balls weren't super spherical, but the watermelon was overripe, so they wouldn't have been even if I had a melon baller. +1 for the weird alien spoon.

Next, since the watermelon was super overripe, there was a lot of juice and shredded melon left in the shell. I didn't want to waste it, so I combined it with some kosher/vegan agar-based jello-type stuff I had on hand. I made the whole thing in the watermelon shell, because this looked fun.

I poured as much of the liquid/liquifying watermelon pulp into the measuring cup so I wouldn't end up with too much liquid, then made sure the water was fully boiling, and poured it into the cup. I needed two cups for the amount I made, and I made it a little under to make sure it would set up with the fruit pieces added. It turned out great, and was a big hit with both kids and adults. Someone suggested the watermelon juice would also be good for margaritas or jello shots, which seems like it would also be pretty great.

Fair Foods continues to be amazing

Comment with what I should make with it. 

Free Little Caesar’s Pizza today

Little Caesar’s is giving away lunch  There’s one in Roslindale if you aren’t familiar.

Second Daily Table Open in Dudley

Story from the Banner about it here

Banana French toast

This was a surprisingly easy recipe I invented. Fair Foods gave us two bunches of slightly bruised/browning bananas and a loaf of what I thought was sandwich bread when I took it, but ended up being cranberry walnut bread. None of us are particularly crazy about the nuts-and-dried-fruits category of foods, so I tried to think of things I could do with it. I figured it would be improved if it were sweet, and this led me to French toast.

I knew bananas are often used by themselves as a binder/thickener in a lot of vegan cooking, so I figured this would work. I blended the bananas using an immersion blender, then added some vanilla and pumpkin pie spice. If using fresher bananas, you'd probably need to add some liquid to get it to a thinner consistency, but this was correct since these were rescued bananas. I then soaked the slices of bread in the stuff and fried them in a nonstick pan with a little oil. The result was normal textured French toast with a bit of a banana/fruit/nut flavor. We served it with maple syrup (Amazon has the best prices usually, FYI) and everyone enjoyed it. It's probably one of the simplest things I've ever cooked. Will definitely make again.

Two dollars!