They wouldn’t. The economy was much better, deals much harder to find, and the store simply said the ad didn’t mean they would match other stores turkey prices, just that their store brand turkey per pound price was competitive with the per pound price of a comparable turkey at the other store.

Hmmm. Well, how about the store brand fresh turkey, which was also cheaper at the other store? How about the store brand turkey breast, which was also more expensive than the competitors? Maybe the other store brand frozen turkey? Again, no. The specific store brand was different than any other local brand, and they would only match stores advertising a COUPON for a generic “store brand” frozen turkey, 12-15 pounds. I was never really sure that coupon existed, and the feeling of being deceived kept me from shopping at that store, or even trying to find deals, for over a year!

Thank goodness this Thanksgiving, stores are trying harder than ever to encourage customers to find “no reason to shop anywhere else” by removing some of the confusion on the low price guarantee. Of course, it can still be difficult to get stores that don’t normally “price match” competitors ads to provide a great deal. If so, here are a few general rules to remember:

1. Most stores price match on local brands, which they have all purchased and sell at the same per-pound price. In my area, it’s currently 49 cents a pound, in my sister’s local area it’s 29 cents per pound. My area won’t match my sister’s price.

2. We won’t be undersold on turkeys – only applies to store/local brand. Don’t expect to get national brands, free range, organic, or other “specialty” turkeys at a competitor’s price.

3. We will match any competitor’s advertised price – again, this only applies to the competitor’s store/local brand, not national brands, free range, organic, or other “specialty” turkeys.

4. We will match any competitor’s coupon – this requires you to produce the other stores coupon, in print, and it must be an exact comparison. Differences in brands, size, fresh versus frozen, or other criteria can exclude the offer.

5. Most price matches on turkey are limited to one per customer.

6. In all cases, you will need to provide printed evidence of the competitors offer, and in general internet printed coupon/prices are rarely honored.

To receive full membership benefits, just

• print your FREE 60-day trial membership offer:

BJ’s 60 day free membership coupon

• take it to your nearest club (you can find locations here)
• Activate it at the membership desk, and receive FULL Member benefits for 60 days.

So, what are the benefits? Well, unlike most warehouse stores, BJ’s has a FANTASTIC coupon policy. More about that below

In addition, BJ’s prices are about 30% below regular retail prices at local stores, including items in these categories:

• Apparel
• Automotive
• Baby
• Bakery
• Cameras
• Club Brand
• Computers
• Electronics
• Entertainment
• Fresh Produce and Meat
• Gas & Propane
• Gifts
• Grocery & Gourmet
• Health & Beauty
• Home & Housewares
• Household Basics
• Jewelry
• Meal Solutions
• Office Supplies
• Pet Supplies
• Seasonal
• Toys

Then, there are the COUPONS!
Unlike most membership and warehouse clubs, BJ’s accepts all manufacturers’ coupons — including the ones that come in your Sunday newspaper — giving you additional savings.

In addition, they offer their own, larger value in-club coupons. You can locate these membership-only coupons:

• online (for example see BJ In-Club Coupons )
• in BJ’s Journal, a BJ’s Member magazine
• through special-offer mailings
• in BJ’s in-Club coupon flyers

You can also use more than one coupon when you buy their multi-packed products (a pack that contains multiple full-sized packages of a single product shrink-wrapped together)! For example, if you have 2 coupons for 50% off an 8-oz. bottle of face cleanser and you are buying a multi-pack that contains 2 or more 8-oz. bottles of face cleanser you may use both coupons.

With the new coupons available in stores, booklets, and even newspapers for TOYS, you might find some great gifts, and great savings too!. It might just be worth a free trial!

Organic Valley Celebrations

When you sign up, you will

• automatically be sent a $10 coupon booklet (while supplies last!)
• be entered to win a years supply of Organic Valley products
• be entered to win a $2500 donation to YOUR local food bank.

SIGN UP PAGE

This is a separate promotion from their usual printable coupons, so if you are looking for Organic Valley coupons, or just like to enter contests, enjoy the extra celebration and savings!

Proctor and Gamble WILL be putting the PGBrandsaver coupon insert in Thanksgiving weekend papers! PG coupons expire the end of the month, and waiting for the following weekend would mean five days without active coupons for their products!

The PGBrandSaver November 29 issue will have some higher value offers, too, with over $90 in coupon savings! Crest, Olay, Pantene, Febreze for the holidays, just to name a few.

If you are looking for a paper that carries PGBrandSaver in your area, you can search by zipcode or state here:

PGBrandsaver Paper Finder

You can also sign up for ecoupons, and other offers, though the link.

2009 insert schedule

My stockpiled pantry is usually flexible enough to accommodate surprise needs. You know the ones I mean : my sister comes to visit and she is on a sugar free, soy free, no fruit diet that started out Mediterranean, but now has changed to South Beach. Or, my Mom can only have non-fat milk, but she won’t drink it unless it is served from a Low fat milk carton. Even better, my nieces and nephews who were fine with eating broccoli just two days ago will now only eat pizza with the latest “hot” toppings. Finally there was the relative whose preferences in grains used to make bread changed from white flour to wheat, then successively changed to buckwheat, gluten-free wheat, and, last but not least, organic oatbran meal. Sure, I can handle all of that – usually.

This summer was a bit different: very, very busy. The weather was unseasonably cool and wet, which led to squash bugs invading our plot of organic zucchini, black mold spots on our organic tomatoes, and, of course, the occasional intrusion of wild rabbits and a young, hungry ground hog inside the fence surrounding the garden plot. There was a lot of garden maintenance, harvesting, and preserving to be completed. Additionally, a heavy storm blew some roof shingles off, so they had to be replaced, along with a chimney cap. There was the wasp infestation of the chimney, a case or two of poison ivy, medical issues and doctor’s appointments, and so on. In short, there really wasn’t much time available to go shopping for groceries. I shopped twice this summer and relied heavily on my stockpile to meet our daily needs. And it did, but by the end of summer, things were looking lean.

I live a real life, so it was at precisely this point that a surprise disaster struck our household. My lovely sister, who hasn’t been able to visit for a couple of years, decided to come out and help me get things ready for the holidays: party planning, menus, lists, baking, freezing, shopping for gifts, buying supplies to make toys and clothing, getting the entire family on the same sheet of music, so to speak, regarding holiday schedules and events. Sigh, the best laid plans…

She arrived on a late flight on a Saturday evening with what seemed to be nothing more than a dry, tickly throat. By the next evening, she was sneezing and coughing hard enough to literally rattle the windows. Over the next few days, her fever, sinus congestion and lung congestion worsened until she became a semi-delirious, walking cough machine: yery real, uncontrollable, full throated coughing.

To her credit, she spent the majority of the time resting in the guest bedroom and occasionally using the guest bathroom upstairs. But sickness can be lonely and tedious, so, from time to time, she would make her way downstairs to visit for an hour or two, coughing all the while. My DH became truly aware of the seriousness of the problem when he entered the downstairs guest bathroom a short while after my sister had finished using it and found a dried-on sputum splatter pattern covering the entire surface of the five foot tall by three foot wide mirror sitting above the bathroom sink. As he later described it to me, it resembled one of those big blood splatter patterns from a gruesome murder on one of those criminal investigation shows on TV.

I do love my sister very much, so out came the cold and flu supplies from my stockpile: thermometer with sanitary covers, 20 boxes of Kleenex, lined personal garbage cans, over the counter daytime and nighttime cold medicine (including diabetic formulations), cough drops, tea, basically the works. Meals were modified: Ham was transformed into an ingredient for homemade split pea soup and lentil soup, the veggie tray was blended into a hearty vegetable soup, and I made up some light whole wheat dinner rolls to provide some solid food to go along with the nearly continuous feed of soup to my sister. We also provided Ensure and Boost for quick liquid nutrition, as well as Gatorade and Propel to restore electrolytes – all from my stockpile.

Keeping things clean and sanitary became the other half of the battle, so my DH and I pulled out the stockpiled supplies of rubber gloves, disinfecting wipes, Lysol spray, Oust spray, toilet cleaner, and more garbage bags than we would ever normally use in one week’s time. There was also a great deal of laundry to be handled, requiring a special brand of detergent for sensitive skin for my sisters clothing, sheets, towels, blankets, etc. It was pretty much a continuous process of cleanup and decontamination every day. Mercifully, my stockpiled supplies were sufficient for the task.

Even though she was still sick the following Friday, my sister was allowed to board a cross country flight, and she made the long journey back to the west coast so she could try to be back to work the following Monday. Of course, over exposed as we were, it was about this time that my DH and I began to experience a dry tickle in the back of our throats. Having to spend the weekend thoroughly scrubbing and decontaminating the house only added to our misery. In terms of our health, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the unbelievable amount of dried-on mucus we removed from nearly every surface in the house, both high and low, and even from my poor Pembroke Welsh Corgie’s fur. (It’s rare that he wants and enjoys a bath, but on that day he seemed genuinely thankful to have been cleaned up.) By Monday morning, both my DH and I were truly sick and made our way immediately to our doctor. Many prescriptions later, both he and I were following doctor’s orders to stay at home and rest for at least a week. Ack! Once again, my stockpiled supply of food, meds, and cleaning supplies saved the day.

Some have been interesting, and a few have been um, well, creative approaches. I don’t usually see any major savings to be had, but I think it’s neat he’s trying. He has a huge family, three mortgages on one house, and really needs to get his expenses in check.

He’s also been the victim of identity fraud a few times.

So…I was looking through some links my brother sent, and opened this one advertising a free $250 grocery card. Just fill out a few sponsorship offers, and there you go. Free money, right?

Only, in my experience, these are the horrible offers that take forever to get through, and technically you can’t complete the terms of all the required sponsor offers, usually because you can’t take out that many new credit cards at one time.

This one might be legit. I don’t know, I didn’t try. I’ve been burned too many times on similar “free money” offers. But, I’ve been wondering how to approach my brother about it. My brother has complained that his live-at-home son is constantly taking out credit cards under my brothers name and SSN, and maxing them out. That’s a whole different story. I am wondering, though, if my nephew is chasing down all these “free” offers in my brothers name, getting scammed, and causing many of the problems for my brothers credit. And if so, how to broach the subject with him. My half brother is really sensitive, and I’d hate to muddle up our relationship more than it already is.

Then again, maybe it’s NOT a scam, and I’m just being really hard on him. Sigh. Free groceries sound nice. Especially for only 20 minutes of filling out sponsors offers. Sure, I regularly get free groceries, but it’s by cutting out coupons, reading ads, finding deals, and stockpiling. Alot more work. (On the other hand, my way is ’sustainable’ and I can do it every week if I work at it. But I wouldn’t want to rub that one in!)

I love my brother, but he’s a dreamer. I love that about him. But sometimes, even dreamers need to see the cold hard truth: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Ah, what to do, what to do…has anyone else dealt with this? What would you do?

To access and use the coupons, you simply sign up for Zavers with your store card, and click through the list of coupons online to select those you want to use.  Once the coupons have been linked to your store shopping card, the discounts will be automatically redeemed at checkout when you use your shopping card.

You can store and use up to 40 clipfree coupons through Zavers.  Paperless coupons are not doubled or tripled.  Some manufacturers allow the use of a paperless coupon and a paper coupon for the same item, while others do not.
Stores currently participating in this new program include:

• A&P
• Waldbaum’s
• Superfresh
• The Food Emporium
• Pathmark

Here’s the information on the new Viactiv Consumer Advisor Panel

Viactiv invitation

The makers for VIACTIV products would like you to become a Consumer Advisor, to share you opinions, participate in marketing research and generally have your say about our products, the messaging, some things we’re thinking about, and health & wellness overall.

If you are interested, please complete our form. You will have the opportunity to shar eyour thoughts or choose to pass on any particular study.

Kellogg’s coupons

and consider signing up for their updates.

You can also learn about the

Special K $10 “skinny jeans” rebate, the

$10 bonus bucks when you buy 3 cereal boxes rebate, and even

which cereal brands have specially marked boxes with $5 in coupon inside

as well as other current AND past offers.

So, what other offers are you looking for?

“Use-It-Or-Lose-It Muffins”

Basic Recipe:
Ingredients: one 15 – 25 ounce box Raisin Bran or other “flake” cereal, 3 cups sugar, 5 cups flour, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 cup oil, 4 eggs (beaten), and 1 quart milk.

Mix dry ingredients together. Add oil, eggs and milk, and mix. (This mixture can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 6 weeks prior to cooking.) To bake, fill greased muffin tins three-quarters full. Bake at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for 18 minutes or until done (use standard knife test for doneness). Makes 5 to 6 dozen small muffins or 3 to 4 dozen large muffins.

Substitutions:
Sugar: sugar is optional, replace with equivalent amount of sugar substitute or leave out.
Flour: use any flour or replace up to 3 cups of flour with oatmeal, oatmeal packets, oatbran, or bran. Substitute 2 cups of the alternative ingredient for each cup of flour replaced.
Oil: replace with apple sauce, flaxseed, melted margarine, fruit puree.
Eggs: replace with egg whites (3 egg whites equal 1 egg)
Milk: Juice, pureed fruit, melted ice cream, nutritional drinks (Boost, Ensure, EAS, etc)

“Chewy Fruit Cereal Bars”

Ingredients: 3 cups flake and fruit cereal (like raisin bran), one-third cup flour, one cup brown sugar, one-quarter teaspoon salt, one-eighth teaspoon nutmeg, 2 eggs, and one-quarter cup softened butter or margarine.

Beat eggs until thick and light in color. Gradually beat in one cup of brown sugar, then beat in the quarter cup of butter/margarine. Add flour, salt and nutmeg, blending well. Stir in cereal and spread the mixture evenly in a greased 9 inch square pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes or until edges pull away from pan. Cool and cut into bars. Makes 2 dozen bars.

“Cereal Jam Bars”

Ingredients: 2 cups flaked whole grain cereal, one and one-quarter cups flour, one and one-quarter cups light brown sugar, 1 egg, three-quarter cup of softened butter or margarine, one 8 ounce package of cream cheese (softened), and three-quarter cup of jam.

Mix flour and 1 cup of brown sugar together in a large bowl. Add butter and mix until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. Stir in cereal. Press 3 cups of the cereal mixture firmly onto the bottom of a greased 13 by 9 baking pan to form a crust.

Mix cream cheese, one-quarter cup of brown sugar and 1 egg until blended. Spread mixture evenly over the cereal crust in the 13 by 9 pan. Top with jam and remaining cereal mixture. (Tip: microwave jam slightly to soften before “pouring” over the crust.)

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes until lightly browned. Cool completely and cut into bars.

“Crisp Chocolate Truffles” from “Treasury of Christmas Recipes” cookbook

Ingredients: 2 cups Rice Krispies, one 6 ounce package semi-sweet chocolate morsels, one 7 ounce jar marshmallow crème, 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, 2 tablespoons shortening, one 14 ounce package of white candy coating, and multicolored sprinkles (optional)

In heavy 2 quart saucepan, combine marshmellow crème, butter/margarine, and chocolate morsels. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth; remove from heat. Stir Rice Krispies into hot chocolate mixture, mixing until thoroughly combined. Drop mixture by rounded teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.

In top of double boiler, over hot water, melt white candy coating and shortening together. Dip each chocolate ball in coating and place on waxed paper-lined baking sheet. Decorate with sprinkles, if desired. Refrigerate until firm. Place in small candy paper cups to serve. Makes approximately 4.5 dozen.

“Holiday Wreaths” from “Treasury of Christmas Recipes” cookbook

Ingredients: 6 cups corn flakes cereal, one 10 ounce package regular marshmellows, one-half cup butter or margarine, 1 teaspoon green food coloring, red cinnamon candies.

Melt butter/margarine in large saucepan over low heat. Add marshmellows and cook, stirring constantly, until marshmellows melt and mixture is syrupy. Remove from heat and stir in food coloring. Add corn flakes cereal and stir until it is well coated with syrupy mixture. Portion the warm cereal mixture using a one-quarter cup dry measure. Use buttered fingers to quickly shape the portioned mixture into wreaths. Dot each wreath with red cinnamon candies.

Variation: Press the entire warm cereal mix into a buttered 5.5 cup ring mold or shape into a large ring on a serving plate. Remove from mold and dot with red cinnamon candies. Slice to serve.