We planned to spend Saturday doing some major grocery shopping, then cooking a ton of food to put in the new chest freezer. Instead, it snowed and turned to ice, so we didn't do anything on Saturday except shovel, and sit around inside wishing that we were not sitting around inside. Sunday we did a mini-epic shopping trip. Not big enough to be called an Epic Shopping Trip of Epic Proportions, but definitely a huge pantry stocking sort of run that involved a LOT of different stores.

Rite Aid: a dozen boxes of Barilla pasta, two bottles of Motrin PM, one bottle of Tylenol Precise cream, nine boxes of Tylenol Precise heat pads, four copies of the newspaper, a stuffed dinosaur toy (birthday present for the kid who is going to be FOUR!!! in a month and a half), three rolls of wrapping paper, and two king-sized candy bars, for the men, both grown and wee, who followed me around three stores looking for all this stuff and who ate the candy bar not pictured. (Note: we stopped at another RA after I took this photo, so pretend there are four more boxes of Precise products stacked up there with the others.)

Started off with $16 in Ups, spent all those plus $21.83 in cash, ended up with $32 in Ups. Most of the OOP was because my first transaction included the newspapers, the $5 dino toy, the candy bars, and the wrapping paper. I probably could have worked out multiple transactions so that I spent less OOP, but whatever. I don't like doing multiple transactions in one store. Spend more OOP, get more back in Ups. It all works out. If you subtract the Ups I earned from my cost, I'm down $5.83. Cover price for four copies of the newspaper alone costs $7.

CVS: Ten two liter bottles of Pepsi, three cases of canned Pepsi, five boxes of Finish dish detergent, one Air Wick air freshener, two copies of the paper.

I would much rather have had twenty two liters of Pepsi, rather than the cans, but the store had stacks of boxes of cans and hardly any two liters. I think I singlehandedly wiped out half the stock of two liters displayed at the store. CVS, come on. If you're going to run a deal that requires people to buy $20 worth of Pepsi products at one time, in specific multiples, please try to have more than, say, $20 worth of those Pepsi products in your store. Thank you. Also, the AirWick and Finish. As I lamented last week, I only had three coupons for the Finish detergent. I really didn't need or want more air fresheners, but I never get good deals on dish detergent, and I needed that AirWick thing to get my OOP low, since there's a great coupon for it. I figured that if I used my three Finish coupons, bought two at the sale price, and bought one AirWick, after figuring for EB I would be spending 25c OOP. Well, it's not a money maker, but I can deal with that. Of course, the first store didn't have enough Finish, nor did they have any of the AirWick thingy I needed. Off to the second store! Fortunately, you cannot spit without hitting a CVS in this part of town. They are at least five within a couple of miles. Otherwise, gas would be a killer.

OOP was $9.64 from a gift card balance (ouch), plus $30 worth of Extra Bucks. Earned back $25 in EB, meaning that for these transactions I am down $14.64. Again, wish it had been a profitable deal, but I would have spent that much money -- in cash, not from gift cards -- on ten sodas and a couple of newspapers at a supermarket, meaning the three boxes of canned soda, four months' worth of dish detergent, and air freshener were pretty much free. Or, well, actually it was all free, since I didn't actually spend any of MY money on it. :P

Next, Acme. Really, I only wanted the milk from Acme, which was free after last week's GM cereal catalina, but since I was there, I picked up four boxes of Better Oats and 11.5 lbs of split chicken breast. The oats were $1 and I had a pair of B1G1 coupons, the milk was free with a small amount of overage from the catalina, and the chicken was 99c a lb, which is a pretty good price for chicken breasts IMO. Total: $13.27.



Then we went to ShopRite, because it's the start of their Can Can sale, which means cheap canned Tuttorosso tomatoes! I use a lot of canned tomatoes. I use them in soups, chilis, stews, to make my own pasta and pizza sauce, and in about a million other things. I find that a lot of the other brands taste like can, or have a different gross funky taste, and since 67c for a 28oz can of Tuttorosso is pretty much the lowest that they go all year, I bought three dozen cans of tomatoes.

When I got home I found some Tuttorosso coupons on eBay, for $1/2. No way! If I'd had those, it would have cost $5.97 for all 36 cans of tomatoes. *groan* I could order some from eBay, but I doubt that they would arrive before the sale ends. And I can't find them on any coupon clipping sites or in the various coupon databases. They *look* legit, but I'm suspicious of eBay coupons.

The store was crazy insane crowded. I have NEVER seen it like that before. There were people everywhere. I felt like a little salmon, swimming upstream to spawn and die, somewhere back in the recesses of the dairy aisle. When we finally got to the register, a couple of my yogurt coupons wouldn't scan in, and the register said, "Coupon value exceeds item value." Which it didn't, because it was a coupon for $1 off 12 yogurts which cost 29c a piece. The cashier told me that it was because the yogurt was already on sale, and if I used the coupon it would be better than free! And you can't get things for better than free! Normally I would have stood there and very politely argued the point, because I was pretty certain that the coupon was barcoded in such a way that the register thought that it was trying to take off a dollar for ONE 29c yogurt, but there were a million people in line behind me. There is a time for calling the manager, and it is NOT when you are in line with a gazillion spawning salmon standing behind you. The cashier was like, "It's just too good of a deal! The price on the yogurt is already too low, so they won't let you use a coupon on it, too. You can take it over to customer service, but I know what's going to happen is they'll tell you you can't use a coupon on a sale item, and make it better than free." What was completely hilarious about this was that immediately afterwards, she scanned in the Sinex $4/1 coupon for the cold medicine which was on sale for $3.99, and the coupon scanned in at the full value with no problem. :)

After I got out of line, I took the qs over to CS and they refunded me the $3 for the coupons. And now looking at the other yogurt coupons I have, I see that the problem is exactly what I thought it was: the coupon is coded to take $1 off and their system attaches it to only one item. Ha! Vindication!

No pictures from this shopping trip, but I got: a package of mushrooms, 4 lbs oranges, 3 lbs apples, 2.5lbs broccoli, two cantaloupes, about 4.5 lbs of chicken leg quarters, three dozen cans of whole peeled plum tomatoes, three dozen La Yogurt cups, two canisters of Swiss Miss hot chocolate, three boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios, one box of regular Cheerios, two packages of lasagna noodles, two dozen Eggland's Best eggs, four boxes of Sinex/Dayquil (I was hoping it would trigger a $5 OYNO cat, and since it was free after coupon I figured what the heck. it didn't, though. what on earth am I going to DO with all this cold medicine?), and two jars of pasta sauce. Total before coupons and sales: $191.12 Total after coupons and sales: $59.41

(If I had had those Tuttorosso coupons, it would have cost $41.41. *sigh*)

Then, finally home, we started cooking, to fill up the new chest freezer with lots of delicious meal parts. So far I've made french fries, meatballs, zesty marinated chicken breasts, and shredded chipotle chicken. I had planned to make a couple of pans of lasagna, but didn't have time yesterday, and I still have another 5.5lb package of split chicken breasts to turn into... well, something or other, I don't know what. Was also planning on cooking up some delicious lentil soup, baked mac and cheese, pizza and pasta sauce, chicken stock from all the leftover chicken parts, and cloverleaf dinner rolls. Oh man, I can't wait to fill up my freezer with all kinds of good food, for those "too tired to cook" days.

So, that was my weekend. I spent a lot more than I usually do, but I got a huge amount of certain items that I use on a regular basis. I was totally out of canned tomato! It was sad. I think that including gift cards and cash, I spent about $100 on all this stuff. I have $57 in Ups and EBs to use in the future, and I got almost $500 worth of items at retail prices. I also have a lot more of the Tylenol and Motrin coupons, so I plan to go back and buy more of those this week. At the end of the week, my Ups total should be a lot higher, assuming they are still in stock when I go back!