Have you ever tried the Grocery Game? Or maybe a free website like southernsavers.com ? If you haven’t, these are websites that take all the coupons from the paper and the Internet and match them with local sale papers. The idea is that you clip, clip, clip (or print, print, print) and then use the most valuable coupons with the cheapest prices to literally slash your grocery bill. Then you stock up when you can buy items super cheap and over the course of 6-8 weeks, you aren’t really shopping what you need but replenishing your stock. And, they do the matching for you–if you use the coupons from the Dallas paper (Grocery Game) or your Kroger matches theirs (Southern Savers).

Well, since I’m not driving to East Texas to pick up a paper and our Kroger has slightly different sales than theirs, I’m doing my own matching. It is kind of cool, but the question becomes: Do I need to buy 10 bags of Hershey’s kisses, etc for $8.00 just because I can?

Anyway, I say all that to say this: This week, I spent $80 on $163.00 of groceries and toiletries. Not too bad. That breaks down to petite boneless sirloins for $2.50/pound, $1.00 for Herbal Essence Shampoo, 4 cans of evaporated milk for free, and $2.25 for a 12 pack of cokes. Pretty good, right?

However, since I only bought things that were on sale, the “same old thing” couldn’t go back on the menu.

So I pulled out my trusty favorite: I guess I’ve had this since college. It is copyrighted 1991. I have notes written in the front cover and all over page 71. (Those cake flour to all-purpose flour conversions get me every time, but I’ve made the silver white cake too many times to count.) It appears I spilt something on the cheese chapter because the pages hiding our favorite quiche recipe are stuck together. So are the pages with the Au Gratin Potatoes. And the page with the color photos of the cuts of beef–well, half of it is missing. And Mom and Nita-the reason I cook my hard boiled eggs the way that I do–well, Betty Crocker told me to on page 169!

So tonight, I’ve got ground beef, frozen veggies, potato flakes in the cabinet, and plenty of cheese in the fridge. Sound like the makings for Shepard’s Pie. (at least that’s what I think it’s called.) To the index I go…Oh Betty, you’ve let me down. I guess this is one recipe I’ll have to find on line instead.