POTATO, POTATO, POTATO

Have I mentioned I have a bunch of potatoes? Potato, potato, potaaaatoooo. I made potato salad with the tiny potatoes, the red potatoes, and the purple potatoes. It tasted like potato salad, except it looked red and purple. There was probably something more interesting I could have made that specifically used tiny potatoes and/or purple potatoes, but I made this, and it was good.

I also made potato tacos. I'm not sure if potato tacos are a thing, but I imagine they probably are, because root vegetables are a staple of traditional diets in the Americas. I chopped the potatoes up with onions and made basically homefries, but with more seasoning (I used jalapeño sauce, smoked red chili, and lots of cumin). I had small corn tortillas leftover from something, so I served the potatoes on those with tomato salsa, corn salsa from Trader Joe's (this stuff is seriously good; I highly recommend it), and some leftover goat cheese salad crumbles a neighbor gae me, which were the closest thing I had to cotija or similar. They turned out great, and were very popular among my family. 

Lots of stacked coupon deals at Stop and Shop right now

$32.73 for everything you see here

Stop and Shop has certainly been making the stacked deals easier lately. So, if you haven't already done this, you can go to their website and register your Stop and Shop card, and then you can load coupons onto it. This is a feature they've had for a while. Over the past couple of months though, they've been featuring the same coupons that coupons.com has. This means you can use the Stop and Shop card and the paper coupon together, resulting in twice the savings (or 3x if the coupon is 99 cents or less).

At the moment, many of these same coupons are also on SavingStar. Depending on the price of the item, it can be free or close to free after you use all three coupons on one item. Some examples that are currently active:

General Mills Tiny Toast cereal:
rings up as $3.00 (on sale until Friday, normal price $3.99)
-$1.00 Stop and Shop coupon
-$1.00 Coupons.com paper coupon
-$1.00 SavingStar rebate =
...come on, you can do the math here. Free cereal, beeotch!

Cascadian Farms Granola:

Same price, same coupons, same deal. Also free!  

Other cereals had higher shelf prices or smaller coupons, so they ended up being 50 cents or a dollar per box. 

Old El Paso vegetarian refried beans:

rings up as $0.74 (they're being discontinued at S&S, usually $1.69) x 3 = $2.22
-$1.00 on any three items Stop and Shop coupon
-$1.00 on any three items Coupons.com paper coupon
-$1.00 on any three items SavingStar rebate
= -$0.78 for the three cans

Note: They only had one can on the shelf, so I ended up getting two 99-cent taco seasonings and the one can, so it was -$0.28 instead of -$0.78. Still, um, I'd say that's a good deal.

Totino's Pizza Rolls (big package):

3/$10 (on sale until Friday, usually $5.19 each)
-$0.75 off of three Stop and Shop coupon
-$0.75 off of three Coupons.com coupon
-$0.75 doubled coupon
-$0.75 SavingStar rebate
= 3 large packages of pizza rolls for $7.00 instead of $15.57

Purex laundry detergent 150oz:

I did this over two trips, so there are only two bottles shown, but here's how to get the best deal:

On sale for $5.99 (on sale until Friday, usually $9.99)
Bought three of them, used three dollar-off coupons from their website
SavingStar rebate: $5 off $25 purchase (it goes by the full price, not the sale price)
SavingStar rebate: $1 off any Purex purchase (it will credit both rebates)
Pay $14.97, get $6 back
= $8.97 instead of $29.97 for three jugs of detergent

Oh, and I'll earn $1.50 wotth of Swagbucks for the 15 Coupons.com coupons that I printed through the Swagbucks site. It takes 2-3 months for them to credit, but since I regularly use coupons from there, I see the deposits showing up regularly. Total of $32.73 includes SavingStar rebate, iBotta rebate, and Swagbucks.

Have I mentioned that the cat is an asshole?! I may need to make a label for that.

Another meal for a buck or two

I forgot to snap a picture until they were mostly gone

Here's tonight's dinner, which I tossed together with some stuff from Fair Foods and a few things I had in the pantry. It probably cost about two dollars for everything.

I make these potato wedges quite often. They're ridiculously easy; I just chop up a potato, toss with Goya Adobo, paprika, and dill. Then place on a greased baking sheet and cook at the same temperature as your other stuff (usually around 350-400) until soft and slightly browned. You can also toss with flour to give them a bit more of a skin, but I didn't bother. They're really just vessels for condiments anyway, right? I served them with a variety of condiments (obviously) and some veggie burgers made using my usual recipe that I've mentioned here before. The potato wedges were made using potatoes from Fair Foods (part of a bag of about 20 lbs of produce acquired for $2) and spices I had in the cabinet, so they cost maybe 10 cents for a batch large enough for the whole family.

The veggie burgers cost probably a dollar or less to make about 12 of them. It's the recipe I've talked about before -- equal parts cooked steel-cut oats and equal parts black beans cooked until they're basically like refried beans, then mixed with desired seasonings, formed into patties, and baked or pan-fried. The buns are a bit sad-looking, but they were 66 cents for a bag of eight of them at Stop and Shop, so I can't complain. I opened them up and tossed them in the oven for about five minutes to toast them, which always helps cheap white bread. I sauteed some onions and mushrooms, also from Fair Foods, to put on the burgers for those who wanted them.

We also had some corn, also from the Fair Foods haul. A friend of mine recently taught me the method of putting them in the oven still in the husks and baking them for 20-30 minutes. It's much easier than my usual method of indoor-corn-cooking, in which I basically try to grill it except in frying pan or in the oven. I do like corn better if it's slightly grilled, but this was just fine and it was so easy to just stick it in the oven and leave it there until it was done.

And you know how I said the cat is an asshole? These pictures were taken with me sitting a foot away from the cat, trying to shove the cat off the table. See how effective it was? See how afraid and remorseful the cat looks? See how much the cat cares about anything other than corn right now? Yeah. Be on the lookout soon for posts about how to sell cats on eBay. 

Speaking of the Purina MyPerks thing...

Yesterday I was lamenting that the Purina MyPerks program changed their terms last year, which made it no longer worth it in my opinion. For those who aren't familiar, it was previously set up so that it took 30,000 points to get a coupon for one free giant bag of cat food. This was taking me 6-8 weeks via using the code on the free bag (it doesn't say this is prohibited!) plus the other bag or two I'd buy. It was sometimes quicker if I got codes from friends as well. But then, since people were apparently duplicating the coupons, they discontinued the program and changed it so that it requires 60,000 points and they ship the actual bag of food to you. I decided it was no longer worth it for me, and I'd just get cat food on sale or from Amazon.

Now that I'm really really scraping by, I decided to check back with this program, as I'll do pretty much anything I can do at home to save or earn money at this point, even if it doesn't seem "worth my time." I've got a decent amount of time, and no money, so yeah.

I logged into my account, and what do you know, I have 20,000 points. Apparently the account has accumulated 300 points per month for following Purina on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, plus 100 points each time someone joins using my link.

So, yeah, I'm going to give this thing another try. If you want to sign up, please use my link, and free free to leave comments with any questions you have about how it works.

Where is the cheapest place to buy cat food and cat litter?

So, we seem to have another cat. I'm not really sure why. It decided it wanted to live with us, and who am I to say no?

The cat is pretty cool. Apparently the things have no short-term memory, so they do things like flinging themselves up on the windowsill in horror and amazement every time a car drives by. Or repeatedly trying to jump up on things that are too high or trying to run under something that's too low. And of course being absolutely stunned. Every time.

It's possible we got a dumb cat.

Either way though, bitches gotta eat, and that goes for feline ones too.

So, food for this thing. The cat will eat wet food and dry food. The vet says that it's best to give both, since the less-processed food is better for organ and digestive health, and the kibble is good for their teeth.

Here are the best deals on canned food I've found so far:

This 24-pack of 5.5-ounce cans at Amazon is $9.49 with free prime next-day delivery. That comes out to about 7 cents per ounce.

Edit: Make sure you are shopping at Amazon through Swagbucks, so you can get points for every dollar you spend.

Dollar Tree has 13-ounce cans of Friskies for $1.00, which is also about 7 cents an ounce.

Dollar Tree is also probably the best source for pet toys, bowls, brushes, cat pee cleaner, and so forth. They seem to be decent quality. I would probably avoid the toys though if you have a dog or cat who chews toys to the point that pieces come off and they could swallow them; the pet stores make expensive chew-proof ones for pets who do this.

Now, for dry food:

Dollar Tree has 14-ounce bags of dry food for a dollar. I haven't bought any, and I'm a bit hesitant because it's an off brand. I wouldn't normally care about this for human food, which is highly regulated, but pet food doesn't seem to be, and I've heard horror stories. If anyone has more information about this food producer, I might consider it. (Some Dollar Tree products are actually reputable brands repackaged.)

So, moving on to a little more pricey. If your cat isn't picky, it's possible to get cheap food by buying whatever brand is on sale and has a coupon. Purina often has coupons available on the coupon sites. They often run one that's a dollar off any size bag, and they make a small bag that's $3 or so. The coupons will print two times per computer, and you can follow the various coupon matchup sites to see who has it on sale, and then you can often get the bags for a dollar or two.

Purina has an online pyramid scheme, which was previously getting me a free huge bag every 6-8 weeks, but apparently people were reproducing the coupons, so they're physically mailing the bag of cat food and it requires a lot more points to earn. Still might be worth it for free stuff.

If you're really in a bind, Reddit has a "Random Acts of Pet Food" forum where you can explain your need and people will help you out. Like any of the "Random Acts" pages, it's not meant to be sustainable and is intended to just use once when you run into an actual emergency. Please don't take advantage of these pages, as they're such a great thing for the people who participate and I would hate to see them so overrun by scammers that people stop donating.

EDIT: I should include cat litter too, huh? This is the cheapest clumping litter I've found. It's $13.28 for 40 pounds with free prime shipping. Dollar Tree usually has bags of clay litter for, well, a dollar, but my cat* seems to only use the sand-type litter and will use the couch if said litter is not provided in at least one litter box, because apparently this cat doesn't support using coupons and finding sales.

*The other cat**, not this new one

**I may need to call them The Asshole Cat and The Dumb Cat or something to differentiate

Be sure to click on the e-mails from Purina MyPerks

I'm still in my groove of getting a free large bag of cat food every 6-8 weeks or so, which is awesome. I've discovered that the e-mails, which they send out about every week or sometimes more, are worth 100 points for clicking. It doesn't usually show up right away, but it does credit you.

Loving these free cat food coupons

Just got my third coupon for a free bag of Purina cat food. They're taking 7-8 weeks to show up, and about the same or a little less to accrue. I'm not doing any of the tasks that actually require writing or anything, since that doesn't seem efficient, but am logging in most every day (usually at the same time I do my searches on Bing rewards) to click on the stuff, plus entering two proof of purchases per month and periodically having friends sign up via my post. Oh, and clicking on their e-mails gets you points as well -- just be sure to use a second address for your various promotions, or else you'll be swamped with spam.

The Purina coupon came!

The free cat food coupon showed up from the Purina thing I posted about. I requested it on July 1, and it showed up on August 30, so it took nearly two months, but it's legit, it showed up, and I went and bought a giant bag of food with it. One word of caution: it shows up in an envelope that looks like junk mail, so check your mail carefully. But definitely go sign up (do me a favor and use my link in the previous post, please?) and you should be able to get a free giant bag of cat food every month to two months once you're started and earning the points regularly.

Trying this Purina free cat food thing

A couple months ago, I signed up for this Purina Myperks site using a code a friend sent me. Every day I've gone in and clicked on things, had a couple of friends accept my invite, and I've entered two UPC codes from cat food I've bought. Wow, there really ARE internet pyramid schemes for everything! It took me about a month to get to 30,000 points, which is a coupon for up to $15.99 off of a bag of cat food. Pretty cool. I requested the coupon on July 1, and they mail it, and I haven't seen it yet. I'll update when it shows up. Still, the program seems pretty easy and I can't imagine it wouldn't be legit. If I can get a free $15.99 bag per month, that would cover about half of my cat food expenses, which would be awesome. Here's my link if anyone wants to try it.