eating well and looking good for less

Thursday, March 3, 2011

I broke the store. Okay, not really.

ShopRite has been running their Dollar Deals promo for the past couple of weeks, but yesterday was the first time I managed to get to the store. It's set up a little differently from most catalina deals -- you buy a certain number of qualifying items from a manufacturer, and get $12 in OYNO coupons, in the form of four $3 coupons to be used over a period of four weeks. The out of pocket for a lot of the transactions was higher than I'd like, and since the cats can't be used immediately, there's no rolling. Also, there's a limit of one deal from each manufacturer, per customer.

However, a lot of the items that were included were pantry staples (tea, olive oil, vinegar, apple sauce, Splenda, canned tomatoes, evaporated milk, pickles, Ziploc bags, etc) and many of them were items that I needed, so I accepted the fact that I would actually have to spend money (BAH!), planned the best trip I could, and went out yesterday. Too bad I missed out on the first week, with the apple sauce and tea. Oh well.

Oh, yeah, I also really wanted that cheese. It was 99c per 8 oz block, which is my stock-up threshold. A price around $2/lb is the best regular sale price I can usually get on it. I have read on other sites that people are able to get cheese for 75c/lb! Not me, no way. Sometimes I can get blocks or bags of Kraft cheddar for around $1.50/lb by stacking store and manufacturer coupons at Target, but it's rare. So, seven pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack for my freezer. We were down to one 8 oz bag of shredded Kraft. What can I say. Kids love cheese.

So, here's the photo. Not pictured: one lemonade. Fruit snacks and lemonade both represent bribes used to shut the screaming child's mouth while in the store. He SAID he wasn't hungry before we left. Clearly he was mistaken, since the minute we got into the store he wanted to eat everything he saw.

Total spent: $64.39
Received: $64 in OYNO coupons, plus five coupons for free reusuable shopping bags, worth 99c each

When the coupons started coming out of the machine, the cashier was kind of amazed (I'm not sure whether in a good way or a bad way! ha ha) and the bagger repeatedly expressed her vehement belief that the catalina machine must be broken, because it was not supposed to do that. Yeah, it printed out 29 (!!!) coupons. I don't suppose that happens often.

Here are the deals I did. It was all in one transaction, but I'm splitting it up for the sake of clarity.

ConAgra:
15 cans of Hunts tomato paste, 3/$2
No coupons. Paid $10, got back $12 plus free bag

Nestle:
7 cans Carnation evaporated milk, $1
3 16oz bottles Coffee-Mate, $1.24
$1/2 x1 on the CoffeeMate, no coupons for the Carnation. Paid $9.72, got back $12 plus free bag

Pinnacle:
four jars Vlasic pickles, $2
four boxes Duncan Hines brownie mix, $1.29
55c/1 x4 on the pickles, 50c/1 x2 on the brownies. Paid $7.16, got back $12 plus free bag

SC Johnson:
six boxes Ziploc bags, various sizes, $2.50
$1/2 x3 on the Ziploc. Paid $12, got back $12 plus free bag PLUS an extra $2 x2 catalina for a total of $16 back

Kraft:
four boxes Planter's Nut*rition bars, $2.50
one package Philadelphia Cooking Creme, $1.49
$1/1 x4 on the Planters, $1.50/1 on the cooking creme. Paid $5.99, got back $12 plus free bag

So, all in all on the Dollar Days deals I paid $44.87 and got back $64 in cats, plus five free bags. I gotta say, even getting back $20 more than I put out, spending that much money on that little amount of food makes me shake my head in distress. Not my favorite catalina deal ever, but I am looking forward to using the $15 per week to pick up fresh fruits and veggies through the month of March. I also bought:

Cheese: 14 blocks at 99c a block: $13.86
Coffee Mate 32 oz: $3.99, used Facebook coupon for free CM up to $3.99
Bananas: 3.77 lbs at 69c/lb: $2.60
Lemonade: 79c
ShopRite fruit snacks: $1.50

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