Tyson® Grilled & Ready^™ Whole Breast Fillets are one of my favorite new finds in the convenience item category. Available in the grocer’s freezer section, the new Tyson® Grilled & Ready^™ Whole Breast Fillets are fully-cooked, lean, boneless, skinless recipe-ready chicken breasts. The perfect protein for any entrée, salad or sandwich, they make creating delicious, nourishing meals a snap.  Plus, they are 98% fat free and contain no preservatives, and I found them to be very tender.

I used the fillets recently to make chicken quesadillas and to make a chicken pizza. Here is a recipe from culinary expert and cookbook author, Holly Clegg:

Grilled Chicken with Watermelon Salsa

Recipe serves 4

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 6-7 minutes

Ingredients

4 Tyson® Grilled & ReadyTM Whole Breast Fillets

4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) Hoisin sauce

2 cups chopped watermelon

1/2 cup chopped red onion

3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

1/4 cup reduced fat feta cheese

1 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar

1 teaspoon olive oil

Preparation Instructions

1. Coat each chicken breast with Hoisin sauce and place in microwave safe dish. Follow microwave directions on Grilled & Ready packaging to heat.

Serving Suggestion: Serve with corn on the cob or quick couscous cooked in orange juice and tossed with green onions.

2. In small bowl mix together watermelon, red onion, mint, feta, seasoned rice vinegar and

olive oil. Place salsa on top of chicken breast and serve.

Serving Suggestion: Serve with corn on the cob or quick couscous cooked in orange juice and tossed with green onions.

For more recipes, go here. If you’d like to win a coupon for a free bag of Tyson® Grilled & Ready^™ Whole Breast Fillets, leave a comment below. Contest closes August 3, 2010. I will randomly pick two winners and notify them via email.

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Penny-Pinching Processes (not necessarily in order)

Process 1

As I mentioned, I started following several blogs toward  the end of last year as part of my learning process. While I wish I could, I cannot reinvent what these amazing and smart women have created. So, if you’d like to reduce what you spend on groceries, personal care products and household supplies, I highly suggest you subscribe to these blogs:

• Money Saving Mom
• Deal Seeking Mom
• The Coupon High
• The Coupon Project
• Attention Target Shoppers (even if you don’t have a Target, this blog provides lots of great tips and ideas for thriftiness)

Process 2

I started clipping coupons in January and I made my coupon binder. You can find examples of coupon-organizing systems at several of the blogs mentioned above. I like the binder system best because I “love me a three ring binder.” I made mine from one of my daughter’s old middle-school zippered binders. It’s complete with her middle school doodling on the cover. Maybe I’ll graduate to something more “grown up” eventually, but this one was free and saving money is the whole point of the exercise, so it made sense.

Process 3

I participated in the Eat from the Pantry Challenge. If you want to save some money on groceries right away, I suggest you give this a try for a week or longer. There may be lots of complaining from your kids, but it’ll be worth it on the money front! (Be sure to check out Eat from the Pantry Challenge Part 2 and Part 3). Doing this challenge also made it easier for me to get a handle on what I have in my fridge, freezer and pantry.

Process 4

This one is simple: When making dinner, I double or triple the entree (if it’s something that will freeze well). And don’t say you don’t have enough freezer room. As I learned from the book Miserly Moms, you don’t even need two freezers, but rather, a bunch of gallon-sized freezer bags that can be filled and frozen flat.

Process 5

I started buying whole chickens, cooking them and pulling the meat off the bones, then freezing the meat in freezer bags for use in chicken quesadillas, chicken tetrazinni, chicken strombolis, home-made chicken pizza, etc. It’s a lot cheaper than buying the boneless, skinless chicken breasts!

Process 5

I clip my coupons from the paper on Saturday morning, and I file them in my binder on Sunday so the task is done by the time the grocery ads arrive in the paper/mail on Monday.

Process 6

I read the blogs mentioned above and make a list for the Walgreens and CVS deals I will take advantage of that week to stock up on groceries and personal care items that are free, almost free or significantly discounted.  Doing these Walgreens and CVS deals is a learning process, and you should start small. I think Money Saving Mom has the best tutorials on how to get started doing this. I usually hit Walgreens and/or CVS on Monday or Tuesday, with my list of deals for each store written out and the coupons to make the deals even sweeter paper-clipped to the lists.

Process 7

I look through the grocery ads that arrive on Monday and make a list of the items I will buy from each store on a separate sheet of paper,  also paper-clipping to each list any coupons that coincide with the sales. Remember that the front and back pages of the ads tend to be the “loss leaders,” so these are the best deals. I no longer make a grocery list based on what I want to cook that week — I make a list based on the sales, and build our meals around those items.

Here’s an example: Last week, our local grocer, Schnucks, had pasta on sale 10/$10, pasta sauce on sale 10/$10, 4-pack baked potatoes 10/$10, etc. I went to Schnucks and bought ONLY the 10/$10 items, stocking up on pasta, sauce, etc. Then I built our meals last week around those sales. We had a baked-potato night, and a spaghetti pie night (and I doubled the spaghetti pie recipe, so there’s now one in the freezer). I had already stocked up on frozen ground turkey, shredded cheese and sour cream, all of which had been on sale the previous week, so I had the ingredients for some very inexpensive meals.

How much have I saved so far? That’s hard to answer for a couple of reasons: 1) I saved a ton of money on groceries in Janaury because of the Eat from the Pantry Challenge, but that won’t happen on a regular basis; and, 2) I’m also building quite a stock pile of food and personal care items as I find things on sale, so there are weeks when my grocery expenditures include this stockpiling effort, but I’m getting items cheaper than normal, which will save me money down the road.

I can say this: I have not had one single week since I started in which my total groceries (from the grocery store and Walgreens, Target and CVS) cost me $300, which was a number I often hit prior to my “journey toward frugality.” And, as I mentioned above, I’m stock piling quite a bit of stuff as things go on sale. Plus, I haven’t had to run out and buy diapers or juice or milk at the last minute, paying the highest price for said items because I had to have them at that moment. My shopping is more carefully planned, and therefore more thrifty in nature now. And, I’ve got a number of meals accumulating in the freezer for nights when things get “hairy,” which has cut down on last-minute take-out.

It’s a learning process, but I’m glad I’m doing it. The grocery budget is one of the few line items we can affect (there’s never a sale or coupons for the mortgage payment or the phone bill), so I’m trying to approach this as an exercise in “financial empowerment.” It sounds more fun that way, don’t you think? And I will admit to getting a little bit of a buzz when I manage to cut my “out of pocket” costs for a load of groceries by $20 or $30 at one time by using coupons!

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The newest sauce and stir varieties are:

· Chicken Breast Chunks with General Tso Sauce (my favorite)
· Chicken Breast Chunks with Spicy Sweet & Sour Sauce (my second favorite)
· Crispy Breaded Wings with Citrus Fire Sauce
· Crispy Breaded Wings with General Tso Sauce

I’ve tried all four varieties and enjoyed them all but loved the Chicken Breast Chunks with General Tso Sauce. They are made with the highest quality chicken and are an easy snack option for those starving kiddos after school, but also a great compliment to stir fry or fried rice to make a complete meal. And with the Superbowl just around the corner, they’d make a yummy no-hassle offering for entertaining.

If you’d like to receive two coupons to try Any’tizers for free, enter the contest below:

Giveaway Guidelines:

Leave a comment below about your favorite snacking time.

Receive additional entries by doing any/all of the following, but be sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:

1. Blog about this contest
2. Subscribe to my mailing list/RSS feed
3. Tweet this giveaway on Twitter (you can tweet daily if you want, but make sure you leave a comment each time you do).
4. Favorite Lipstick to Crayons on Technorati
5. Stumble this post
6. Add Lipstick to Crayons to your blogroll or my button to your sidebar
7. Become a fan of Lipstick to Crayons on Facebook
   

This giveaway closes at 11:59 p.m. Central time Feb. 1, 2010. Be sure to include a valid email address with each of your entries. Contest open to United States residents only. Winner will be randomly chosen via random.org and will be notified via email and announced on this post.

If winner does not claim prize by Feb. 3, 2009, he/she will forfeit the prize to an alternate winner.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED. CONGRATULATIONS TO JESSI, COMMENT #71.

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The dinners have lasted longer than I predicted here for a number of reasons. My in-laws had us over for dinner a few times during the first few days of the challenge before they headed back to Florida for the winter (no, I don’t hate them because they’re warm). We also had a few unexpected events that resulted in my family members being fed outside our home. And, with a few trips to the grocery store for staples, I managed to secure the ingredients for a few more meals.

So, by my calculations, I saved about $150 the first week of the challenge, and I’ve saved about $50 the second week. I have restocked the pantry a little bit (to the biggest sigh of relief by my teen), but I still haven’t purchased any ingredients for additional dinners yet. That will happen in a few more days.

I’m also continuing to learn the ropes of couponing, and today I got $78 worth of stuff at Walgreens for $37.10 with the help of Money Saving Mom and a few other couponing divas! I hope to post more about that later, so be sure to subscribe to my feed!

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In case you didn’t know, Market Day is the nation’s largest food fundraising company. Market Day provides schools and other organizations across the country the opportunity to raise money by selling a monthly food program as well as a gift brochure and restaurant-quality desserts and cookie dough, as well as a gourmet food catalogue.

To be honest, I never paid a lot of attention to the Market Day catalogues that came home with my kids until recently when I was trying to find ideas for something different to pack in their lunches. School lunches are just too expensive and unhealthy, but a soul can tire of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’m going to share with you a few of my favorite new finds:

Turkey &  Cheese Pretzel Sandwiches - these sandwiches have slices of turkey and American cheese on a pretzel bun. They’re frozen, so they can be packed in a lunch in the morning and then thaw throughout the day until lunch time. My kids loved them, but my husband loved them even more, so they didn’t last long in my freezer. There are six sandwiches in each $15.29 box from Market Day. That’s about $2.50 a sandwich, but remember, it raises money for your school, too.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Grahamwiches — these treats are a new twist on the old PB&J because the standard ingredients are layered between two graham cracker wafers. Frozen, they make a nice cold snack, or they can be packed in a lunch and thaw throughout the day. You get 12 bars for $10.49, making them pretty economical, too.

Fruit Singles – in the dead of winter, it gets pretty expensive to keep my kids in fresh fruit, but I like the idea of them getting at least one serving of fruit during their school day. These frozen Fruit Singles thaw to a slushy consistency by the time lunch rolls around for my kids, and are a nice alternative to buying small and sometimes sour grapes or over-priced “winter” strawberries each week. They sell for $10.89 for 12 cups.

Among Market Day’s most exciting new offerings are the new collection of herbs, rubs and seasonings from Market Day Gourmet. Each of these spices can be quickly combined with a few ingredients to create delicious, affordable meals that have “gourmet” flavors and aromas complimenting the dish. I’ve made chicken breasts and fish fillets coated with the Carolina Coast Sweet Mustard and shrimp and pepper kabobs marinated in the St. Louis Better Than Caesar spice and a few teaspoons of oil. I’ve also used the Santa Fe Chipotle combined with low-fat sour cream to make a savory topping for baked potatoes.

The spices, which come with recipe ideas for marinades, rubs, dressings and other methods for use, are perfect for use with slow-cookers and make-ahead meals for freezing. The selections include: A Salt for All Seasonings, Carolina Coast Sweet Mustard, Key West Citrus Herb, St. Louis Better than Caesar, Santa Fe Chipotle and Sonoma Summer Herb Blend and they cost $7.99 for a 5.6 ounce container.

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But, back to the Eat from the Pantry Challenge and a few updates:

1) So far we’ve had chicken and dressing one night for dinner and beef barley casserole another night. Plus, we have  managed to eat all lunches and breakfasts from the pantry or the $97 worth of groceries that I purchased to supplement the pantry.  I know that only constitutes two dinners, but we’ve had two meals at my in-laws home and one meal at a friend’s house on New Year’s Eve, for which I brought a salad and appetizer from those $97 worth of groceries, too.

2) I still think I will be able to make these dinners from the pantry last until Jan. 9 or 10 – maybe longer if my in-laws keep inviting us over. I will be forced to buy more stuff for lunches, fresh fruit, juice and laundry detergent.

3) My teen is still miserable and keeps texting her aunt about the whole thing to get some sympathy. She did LOUDLY proclaim this a.m. that I HAVE TO BUY SOME SNACKS FOR HER LUNCH and some granola bars for her to eat before swim practice. Okay, okay. Enough already. I satisfied these demands with the above-mentioned Walgreens trip.

4) I will have to make a trip to the grocery store tonight to buy the stuff to make a salad for a swim team pasta party tomorrow. That salad is supposed to feed about 20 girls, I think. While I’m there, I’ll pick up the laundry detergent and some more bananas and fresh vegetables.

5) When I run out of pantry meals, I’m going to do a grand total of the money I spent on groceries from Dec. 30 until that date and I’ll share my total savings with you.

6) I mentioned in the original Eat from the Pantry post that I’ve begun following a few couponing queen mom bloggers, and I’m starting to get my feet wet on this whole “cut your grocery bill in half” thing. That may distort my cost savings a little, because I’m starting to learn how to stock up on items we use when the deal is super cheap because of coupons. Again, I wrote about my first days in the world of couponing here.

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One of my resolutions (all of which I hope to outline in another post shortly) is to learn to live more frugally. This is in part out of necessity and in part out of a desire to begin teaching some frugality lessons to my children. So,  I’ve begun following some home economist bloggers, which led me to decide to join Money Saving Mom (a blogger I’m a growing to love more and more everyday!) and participate in an Eat from the Pantry Challenge. This challenge involves, well, eating from your pantry versus eating from a whole new load of groceries.

Of course, eating from the pantry will not completely eliminate the need to grocery shop. And for me, it won’t last as long as Money Saving Mom plans to make it last in her house.

So far, I’m not getting a ton of support from my family. When I told my husband about my intention to participate, he was lukewarm and I got a “GREAT! Just GREAT!” from my teen. Then, she said, “Will it work if you put something in the pantry just moments before dinner so you can SAY it came from the pantry?” She’s hoping I’ll buy a bunch of frozen pizzas and stick them in the pantry just before cooking them. Nice try, girlie!

I’m not discouraged! Here are my reasons for entering this challenge:

Money is tight

I spend around $250 a week in groceries — sometimes more, sometimes a little less. I shop at Shop N Save and Aldis, with occasional convenience trips to Dierberg’s, Schnucks and Walgreens for things we’ve depleted between grocery trips. Now, that is most of our dinners, and most of our lunches and all of our breakfasts. My husband and older kids pack their lunches most days, and we only eat out about once a week, if that. Still, I have GOT to reduce this grocery bill. In fact, my desire to cut costs is the reason I began following Money Saving Mom’s blog in the first place. (Did I mention that I think she’s brilliant?). One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to learn more from her by reading all of her “Start Here” posts.

Anyway, another blogger in the challenge, LifeAsMom, touts that she hopes to spend $400 or less in groceries in January (compared to her usual $600) to feed a family that includes four growing boys. I only have three kids, and only one of them is a boy and he hasn’t yet reached that “get your eat on” age, so if she can feed her family for $600 a month without the “Eat from the Pantry Challenge” then I’d like to try to feed my family for $600 or less WITH the Challenge.

Expenses are constantly increasing

My teen is a competitive swimmer and as she progresses in her sport, it gets more expensive (travel, competition suits, etc). She’s also less than two years from driving. I’d love for us to be able to provide her with a car, but that’s going to mean belt-tightening somewhere else. Plus, my tween is getting “more expensive” with his activities, and the toddler isn’t far from wanting an extra curricular.

Employment is never guaranteed

As so many Americans have learned, employment is blessing. My freelance work is steady, but not as busy as it has been, and my husband’s industry (television news) is shrinking. We need to save for a rainy day, for sure.

So, I’m trying to learn to cut corners were I can, and that lead me to this challenge. Last night I took an inventory of my pantry.  Here’s a look.

(It’s a mess. I know. That’s not the point.)

Here’s the result of my inventory: After basically emptying my pantry and also taking stock of my freezer (which hasn’t been restocked for some time), I discovered that I could make four complete dinners WITHOUT any grocery shopping, and an additional seven meals with some minimal grocery shopping. So, I made a list of the bare necessities to complete these meals and headed to the store today. Then I put the items for each meal (minus the stuff that has be refrigerated/frozen) into separate bags and made a list of the meals.

Now, I’ve got the fixings for:

• Spaghetti with Alfredo sauce and ground turkey; peas
• Chicken with stuffing; green beans
• Red beans & rice with ground turkey; green beans
• Tuna Casserole (the kids will hate this, so they’ll have Mac & Cheese), green beans
• Tacos, corn and salad
• Chili with cheese & onions
• Beef barley casserole
• Penne Pasta bake made with red sauce, mozarella and cottage cheese, carrots
• Chicken fried brown rice with peas and carrots
• Breakfast for dinner (pancakes, egss and sausage)

The grocery trip cost me $97.80, but it also included: the ingredients for me to take an appetizer and a salad to a New Year’s Eve party; three V-8 Fusion Juice bottles to satisfy my toddler’s addiction;  our week’s worth of milk; lunch meat and cheese for lunches since the kids and husband return to school and work next week; and two pounds of coffee.

After returning home, I remembered that I need to make a salad big enough to feed about 20 swimmers for a pasta party next week, so I’ll have to go back to the store on Monday for that. But aside from these “distractions,” I’m hoping that I can make these $97 worth of groceries plus the stuff in my pantry last until at least Jan. 9. If I do, that will be about a $150 savings in just one week!

I promise to keep you posted about my progress on this challenge, as well as my efforts to follow and learn from these other frugal mom bloggers. I’m filing all these posts under a new category, called Frugal Living, so you can easily find them.

Want to join the Challenge? If so, tell me about your plans/progress in the comment section below. And if you have a blog and post about it, be sure to link up over at Money Saving Mom!

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I’ve carried this “tradition” of family meals into my own family. We eat together whenever possible. We used to eat dinner really early (by 5 p.m.) because my husband worked extremely early hours which required him to hit the sack by around 7:30 p.m.  His schedule recently changed, and he’s seldom home before 7 p.m. these days. Guess what — we now gather at the table around 7:30 p.m. for dinner. (It’s amazing how much more my toddler eats now that she is ABSOLUTELY STARVING at dinner time.)

The benefits of sharing meals together have been lauded through the years. According to GatherRoundtheTable.com, a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University corroborated many previous studies and found that the more often children and teens eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink and use drugs!

In fact, children and teens who have frequent family meals:
·    are at half the risk for substance abuse compared to teens
     who dine with their families infrequently.
·    are less likely to have friends or classmates who use illicit
     drugs or abuse prescription drugs.
·    have lower levels of tension and stress at home.
·    are likelier to say they can confide in their parents.
·    are likelier to get better grades in school.
·    are more likely to be emotionally content and have positive
     peer relationships.
·    have healthier eating habits
·    are at lower risk for thoughts of suicide
·    are less likely to try marijuana or have friends who use
     marijuana.

Insisting that family dinnertime was a must is something Nikki Stauffer learned from an early age and then continued with her own family. “By gathering children around the dinner table every night,” Stauffer explains, “our parents taught us that there is so much more to share than just a meal. It’s the place to strengthen bonds, build personal character and encourage each other. Not only did we each have our own ’seat’ (that no one else dare take), we had a ’spot’ in the family that no one could replace.”

When friends and other parents she met seemed to think this was a novel idea, Stauffer founded GatherRoundTheTable.com as a way to encourage other parents to have a family dinner every night (or as often as possible). She had seen firsthand the value and importance of family dinners before learning the statistics noted above. These studies just encouraged her to do her part through her web site.

The site, which began as a grassroots movement, has steadily gained momentum. Today, the site offers podcast interviews with celebrities, authors and parenting experts, articles and recipes submitted by many of the guests on the weekly podcast show.

While there are many parenting sites that offer a wonderful array of information, GRTT focuses primarily on the family table and its importance in the growth and development of our children.

 In addition to gathering families around the table, GRTT also wants to encourage gathering friends around the table as well. Deep and binding friendships are as important to everyone’s well being as family members. So welcoming friends of the children, friends of the parents, even neighbors or others you might want to get to know better, is also advocated. Whether it is to enjoy a home-cooked meal or a delivered pizza, this brief time together offers everyone a safe haven from the world around us, encouraging deeper bonds and relationships that help sustain us through difficult times, and let us rejoice in accomplishments both large and small.

I like these ideas. How about you? What methods do you employ to make family dinner time happen in your home?

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In 2008, nearly 12,000 people in the United States were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes. During the periods around Christmas and New Year’s, this number was particularly high, with 316 people killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes.  In 2007, 162,493 women were arrested for a DUI, an increase of almost 29% since 1998. (Can you say Bunco? Girls’ Night Out? Cookie Exchanges? Ornament Exchanges? It seems the opportunities to gather and celebrate and drink are endless these days).

Buzzed driving IS drunk driving.

You can’t help but wonder if lives could have been saved if people thought twice before getting behind the wheel. Sometimes, just TWO drinks is enough to be “buzzed” and (I’ll say it again): BUZZED DRIVING IS DRUNK DRIVING.

With the holidays approaching, it’s important that drivers be reminded about the dangers of buzzed driving.  Who knows…it could save a life.

Yesterday, I participated in a Twitter event for this campaign hosted by Resourceful Mommy and the Buzzed Driving/Ad Council, and learned some interesting things, such as:

• In 2008, 16 percent of child traffic fatalities occurred in alcohol impaired driving crashes (remember, most children DON’T HAVE THE OPTION TO OPT OUT OF RIDING WITH AN IMPAIRED DRIVER, SO BE RESPONSIBLE).
• 140-plus people died last year during the Christmas season from alcohol-impaired driving.
• 173 people died last year during the New Year’s holiday period due to alcohol-impaired driving.
• Drinking lots of water before drinking alcohol will NOT help you stay sober longer. (Neither will food or charcoal tablets). The best remedy is to NOT DRINK AND DRIVE.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHSTA) and the Ad Council are asking everyone to drive smart this holiday season and to pledge not to drive buzzed. I don’t drink, but I took the pledge anyway. You can take the pledge here, then tell your kids, friends and family that you did so and encourage them to do the same thing. It’s a great New Year’s Resolution that you can make early!

Other ways you can help spread the word and perhaps save a life this holiday season:

• Become a fan of the campaign on Facebook.
• Follow the campaign on Twitter.
• Visit the campaign Web site to watch Emily’s story and play an interactive game that demonstrates the difference between buzzed and drunk.
• If you have a blog, copy and paste this information into a post on your site!

While at holiday events, it’s easy to lose track of a drink here or there – but this can be fatal.  This holiday season, keep you and your family safe by spreading this message.

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