Week Haul, April 28th, 2011

The prepping budget got hustled around a bit and we had some household necessities so I did what I could with what I had. I also made more salt and cornmeal purchases but didn't bother to take a pic of it coz I'm sure you've all been there and done that Haha.

Dried potatoes were $1 buck a piece. Pretty good deal. I'm going to try 1 pkg first and then go back for a case - this 1 pint container reconstitutes to about 1lb of hash browns.








The last day of the sale I picked up more pink salmon @ $1.79. It will be on sale again in about a month anyway. I also picked up a lb of plain almonds and another lb of cocoa powder.








Strawberries were pretty good so I picked up 10lbs and a few lbs were eaten...










...the rest were canned. 7 lbs made 8 1/4 pints of preserves. Fair enough











There was even a little extra to make preserves for the evil moms ice cream.











The girl stuff was 2.99 but it gave a 3 dollar in store rebate so I purchased the Jergens bar soap for 1.50 (for 8 bars) - we received about a dozen nepro samples free which is enfamil for diabetics and we threw them in the bob for extra vitamins and calories. i also picked up an extra can opener just to have it around for a buck.





We must just be lucky here because a lot of these discount stores carry a LOT of good stuff that is neither expired nor destroyed. We really like the 99 cent only because ours also carry produce, tea, Texas toast and first aid type things.

This is my first dirt purchase of 34 bags $34.66. That's a half cubic foot per bag @ .99 cents.



Found more of the chocolate chips for 95cents each and grabbed the 16 they had on the shelf. I also picked up some very large ghirardelli choco bars on final clearance for 1.19 ea.








I took the Swedish aunties to Ross to look for some gym clothes (they like adidas and puma) and they swore everything in there was cheap - well yeah it's cheap if you are a size 4 and a size 6 and everything on clearance has your name on it - haha. However I found these 1.5 loaf pans for 5.49 ea and a norpro pasta machine for 20 bucks. BUT on top of that they had the "senior" discount on a Tuesday so I got 10% off everything.


The most awesome part of the loafpans wasn't just the quality of them but they are made in the USA. Yeah unbelievable right. Someone told me they paid 12 bucks for theirs and they were made in China (bleh). Seems to me that a lot of prepping related things are often made in the US. If that ain't telling you something I dunno what is.




I stopped at Walgreens again to take advantage of the full rebate on the girly stuff and even used my rebate on some pretty cool stuff. Funny how 2 little 99cent bottles of nail polish seem like a treat, the rubber palmed gloves were only 1.49 and the gardening stuff was only 75 cents, I still had quite a bit left on the rebate so I picked up 4 bottles of 91% alcohol.



The tomato sauce was 5/$1 so I picked up 20 cans and called it a day.











We used more than half the 1st batch I bought to fill the small bed, so after my eye appt I stopped and picked up another 40 bags. yeah you heard me 40 bags.









Mom 2 was wandering the store and found this oyster sauce for only 99 cents. This exact same brand was selling at the asian store for $2.99. Unbelievable how much people lift that price on you if you don't know where you are buying stuff.







Afro picked up 4 more bags of compost, 10 bags of 'dirts' and found 4 tires "free take them" a few blocks down lol. We are going to use the tires for the tobacco plants to keep them high enough and away from the dogs since they seem fascinated with the gardening crap.

on Mr Mans Youtube someone posted that we should watch out for compost having hidden herbicides and roundup and such because it might impact the growth or non growth of our plants. Fair enough. He then went on to talk about he's been composting since 2009. LOL ok. we learned this crap 2 months ago. *shakes head* I find that most advice is too late, irrelevant to the desert, assumptive that we aren't already doing it or simply an attempt of tooting ones own horn. It is what it is --- but I find that good intentions are rarely good there is a bit of egocentricity in there. But when advice is good and it's people you know it's REALLY good. That potting mix comes from long beach shavings. They don't have much detail about their product but I did email them.

It's like this. We are doing as much as we can in the short time we've started prepping (5 months on the 1st). I'd like to think we are holding our own when it comes to this prepping thing. We are just trying to focus on what we can do - all the fine tuning will come later. Also, when it comes to prepping this quickly - we don't have time to do esoteric things like make our own compost on the spot (the leaves and grasses from our plants take a bit longer to compost), make our own toothpaste, buy the best mill, use only heirloom seeds (we're practicing with storeboughts), and don't get me started on every tom dick and harry telling us what kind of weapon to have. Look. We are further along than some people who have been prepping a year - at this point in time it is important to have each base covered rather than just ONE base covered well - that defies logic to focus your energies on one small detail because someone put in a bit of advice. It's called workarounds to prevent holes in your prepping. Prepping involves a wide array of preparations - and seeing as to how anything could hit the fan it's best to just cover yourself long enough to get to the point you can fine tune each area. Jeez.

We also had a lot of hidden expenses this month: optometrist appointments, 2 pairs of glasses each and contacts, gardening and hardware related expenses and of course the all mights ass kicking at the gas pump. Give me a damn break.