Stuffed Peppers - Yowza!

Our supermarket had big green peppers on sale for 77 cents a pound. I had some ground beef (from a previous BOGO) in the freezer, and all the other ingredients were on hand.

These babies were good. It would have been even cheaper to stuff the ones we grew in the garden this summer.

The second photo is with cheese sprinkled on during last five minutes of cooking. Yum! The recipe called for parboiling the peppers before baking, a definite improvement in getting rid of the harsh raw taste. Those Southern folks sure do understand cooking.

http://southernfood.about.com/od/stuffedpepperrecipes/r/bl30220q.htm

Savings at the Grocery Store

This week, with a hard memory of our retirement investments tanking, I went over the grocery specials more earnestly than usual, and the store, perhaps responding to the bad economic news, had a number of tempting specials.

We broke down and bought one large pumpkin for $9.99. We usually buy three but the crop failure this year has them at astronomical prices. Hard to do without a pumpkin. Just need one.

Except for the specials, I only bought groceries I needed for this week. We're trying a new cheese spread for the cocktail hour. We've discovered some of the pretty good "spreads" made in-house at the store are about $5.00 a pound, which is a decent price, cheese-wise.

So the final grocery total came to $65.77 and the savings were $40.73. That's not bad. I didn't have to buy any paper, plastic or cleaning products. We bought a 24 case pack of cat food earlier in the week at Walmart. BTW, Walmart has the best and the cheapest cat litter. We never buy anything else.

I potted up 8 geraniums that I saved last winter and put in the big whiskey barrell by the side of the house. They grew and flourished and will spend the winter indoors again, thereby saving beaucoup bucks.

I made spaghetti alla amatriciana this week. We got three meals out of a pound of spaghetti and a 28 oz. can of tomatoes and 1/4 lb of bacon. This works out to pennies a meal. Can't beat that. Tasted first-rate, too.

Cheaply yours,

The Cheeseparer

Collecting Junque and Collectibles in a Faltering Economy

This is from Kovel's email newsletter. Some good thoughts. I had just about given up on this blog, as no one is reading it, but what the hell?

From Kovel's:

News, News, News
COLLECTORS VS. THE ECONOMY
Collectors should be able to survive a bad economy better than most. We are used to buying "used" things. Antiques and collectibles are all recycled parts of the best of the past. Buying good "used" furniture from consignment shops or a Salvation Army store is a challenge, but a knowing collector can search and find a worthwhile antique. Vintage clothing is praised by our friends and we brag about shopping at secondhand stores. We are trained to barter and negotiate prices by our years of buying at flea markets. Now it is acceptable to use the same money-saving techniques at local department stores. And of course we understand the financial gains from a garage sale, cashing in old gold and silver, and redecorating by refinishing, painting, and reworking some inexpensive "finds." We learned to repair our antiques, so we have always balked at buying a new blender when an old one can be made to work. We already like to cook from scratch, so let's do everything the old-fashioned way. Let's "waste not--want not." And don’t forget to clip grocery coupons and make the kids turn off the lights when they leave a room.