Great Coupons on Splenda - up to $3.50 off

Splenda is a great sugar substitute. The only problem is that it is not cheap. Well, a coupon offering up to $3.50 off will certainly help with that! Go to Splenda.Com to retrieve your coupon. There should be a link from the home page, but if not just click on the "News and Promotions" tab. There is lots of great information on the Splenda website: recipes, cooking tips, weight control, diabetes, etc.

Don't forget to sign up for your free membership with Grocery Watch. It's as easy as 1-2-3 to save 50% on your grocery bill with Grocery Watch: 1. Get your free membership at http://www.grocery-watch.com. 2. Select items to "Make My List." 3. Print your List on "Shopping Day."

Great Deal Alert: Herbal Essences for $0.79 at CVS

CVS is running several great specials this week including Herbal Essences Shampoo.

But before I get to Herbal Essences Shampoo, I wanted to mention their "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" offer on Purex (2 for $6.99). It wasn't the best deal I've ever gotten on Purex, but some of the containers had 20% extra. Adding in my $4 off CVS purchase of $20 or more, I got 120 ounces (76 loads) for $5.59 (compare that to 100 ounces at Publix for $7.69).

Back to the shampoo: Well remember I told you all to get the CVS card because it gives you sale prices and it also triggers valuable coupons too.

Anyway I had a manufacturer’s coupon that took $2 off when I bought 2 bottles of shampoo. Next, CVS is currently running a special on Herbal Essences Shampoo for $2.99 (regularly $4.69), you also get a CVS coupon for $1 Extra Bucks coupon for future purchase. I used existing extra bucks coupons from prior purchases, which will be replaced by the extra bucks coupons from the shampoo that I will use at a later date. The final price for 2 bottles of shampoo with these coupons was $1.99.

But that was before I applied my "$4 off a purchase of $20 or more" CVS coupon that I received for the Coca-Cola products deal I posted last week. My total purchases were just over $20, so my $4 coupon took another 20% off. That took the 2 shampoo bottles down to $1.58, or $0.79 each! (By the way: since my total BEFORE coupons and discounts was over $20.00, I received another "$4 off a purchase of $20 or more" CVS coupon to set up my next deal).

Here are my calculations:

Shampoo and conditioner:	2 x $2.99 each =	$5.98
Manufacturers coupon:		($2.00)
CVS Extra Bucks coupon:		($2.00)
Prorated $4 coupon:		(0.40)
	Subtotal for 2:	$1.58

My final cost came out to be a $.79 a bottle!!

Share your great deals with us: Email your deal to sallysblog@grocery-watch.com. You can also fax deals, coupons and register receipts to 1-413-683-3013.

Be sure to visit http://www.grocery-watch.com, and become a member or join one of our mailing lists.

Recipes and More: Easy Blackberry Cobbler in 50 minutes

Here is a very simple recipe for blackberry cobbler than can be ready in less than an hour:

Ingredients:

1 Can Blackberries, with juice

1 Box Jiffy (or any 1-layer white) cake mix

1 Stick Butter or Margarine

1. 
   Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
   


2. 
   Pour blackberries into deep dish pie pan.
   


3. 
   Sprinkle cake mix evenly over the blackberries.
   


4. 
   Slice the butter or margarine evenly over the top of the cake mix.
   


5. 
   Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or until the top has browned.
   


6. 
   Serve warm. Great with vanilla ice cream.
   

You can find great coupons, prices and deals on the items used in this recipe at http://www.grocery-watch.com. Be sure to visit our site and join Grocery Watch, so that you can quickly save 50% or more on your grocery bill!

Recipes and More: Simple Cheese Souffle

This cheese souffle is e-a-s-y, and serves 6-8. Start to finish, about one hour:

Ingredients:

5 Slices Bread

4 Eggs, beaten

2 Cups Milk

1 tsp. Salt

1 Cup Sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated

1. 
   Preheat over to 350 degrees. Spray 1 1/2 quart casserole with non-stick spray.
   


2. 
   Remove crusts from bread, cut into 1 inch squares and put 1 layer of bread in the 1 1/2 quart casserole dish.
   


3. 
   Put half of grated cheese over bread, then add remaining bread and cheese.
   


4. 
   Beat eggs and add milk and salt. Mix well. Pour over bread and cheese.
   


5. 
   Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes until puffy. Serve immediately. Makes 6-8 servings.
   

You can find great coupons, prices and deals on the items used in this recipe at http://www.grocery-watch.com. Be sure to visit our site and join Grocery Watch, so that you can quickly save 50% or more on your grocery bill!

Great Deal Alert: Maxwell House Coffee, $1.49 per package

Publix is currently running a special on Essential Buys. Maxwell House is one of those specials at $1.99 (regularly $3.41). Already you are saving $1.42.

I took advantage by buying 4, the maximum limit, and applied two coupons I found on this site: www.coupons.com The coupon is $1 off if you buy 2 packages. You save another $.50 on each of the 4 packages. That made the coffee $1.49 per package, saving a total of close to $8 on the 4 packages.

Don't need 4 packages of coffee you say? Hah! When you get a good double savings offer like this, it always pays to buy the maximum amount. As you go through the coupon and sales cycle, you'll find that eventually everything you buy can be purchased this way when the time is right. If you are decide to buy in small quanties, you'll never achieve more than 20-25% savings. By making sure that your entire set of purchases are steeply double discounted, you'll cut your weekly grocery bill by 50-75%, making your dollar go 2-4 times as far.

Final Savings: 56% off - $1.92 per package, final price of $1.42. Total savings of $7.68.

Share your great deals with us: Email your deal to sallysblog@grocery-watch.com. You can also fax deals, coupons and register receipts to 1-413-683-3013.

Be sure to visit http://www.grocery-watch.com, and become a member or join one of our mailing lists.

Great Deal Alert: Easy Mac & Cheese for $.25

Before I get started, set yourself up for the next 75% off deal on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese: Kraft is running a huge promotion for Macaroni and Cheese products. You can find the coupons quickly by clicking on the Kraft ads on our Grocery Watch website. The Kraft Coupons are for "Buy 3 Get 1 Free" and expire in 1/31/2010. The next time your grocery store runs a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" promotion, you can also use the Kraft coupon so that out of 4 boxes, you'll get 2 free from the "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" and another box free with the "Buy 3 Get 1 Free" coupon from Kraft. 75% off! (See how easy this is...) Also: while you're on our website, please set up your free comparison shopping list and join the website.

Back to the Great Deal: I was able to buy Kraft Easy Mac for $.25 a bowl yesterday by using my coupons. I found a coupon for a Buy One Get One (BOGO) Free coupon on this site: www.smartsource.com and then applied another coupon I found on this site: www.shopathome.com The Easy Mac was $.99/each, so I applied the BOGO coupons(so I got 2 free) and then used the $1 off for 2. My final cost on the Easy Mac was $.50 a bowl saving $.25 on the 2 I had to pay for but, in reality if you spread the cost between what I had to pay for it was only $.25 for each bowl. 75% off on this deal. Yeah baby!

Final savings: 75% - Regular price: $3.96, Savings: $2.98, Final Cost: $.98.

Share your great deals with us: Email your deal to sallysblog@grocery-watch.com. You can also fax deals, coupons and register receipts to 1-413-683-3013.

Be sure to visit http://www.grocery-watch.com, and become a member or join one of our mailing lists.

Recipes and More: Great Marinara and Spagetti in an Hour

Here's a quick old recipe for a great marinara sauce and spaghetti that takes less than an hour (and the sauce refrigerates or freezes great for the next meal):

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Cloves Garlic, crushed

2 Cans (28 oz each) Italian Plum Tomatoes, drained and crushed

1/2 tsp. Basil

6 anchovy filets (optional; but seriously, try them)

1 lb. spaghetti, cooked and drained

Heat olive oil in heavy pan and brown garlic. Add tomatoes, basil and anchovies and simmer 45 minutes. While the sauce is finishing, cook the spaghetti in boiling water with a dash of salt and tsp. of olive oil. Pour sauce over cooked spaghetti and enjoy! Make 6 servings

You can find great coupons, prices and deals on the items used in this recipe at http://www.grocery-watch.com. Be sure to visit our site and join Grocery Watch, so that you can quickly save 50% or more on your grocery bill!

Great Deal Alert: Coke for less than $1.70 a 12 pack at CVS

CVS is currently running a special on Coke: buy 4 at $13, get the 5 free. Right off the bat, that’s getting each 12-pack at $2.60 each.

Now to receive this offer you have to get the CVS card, it’s free and I highly recommend that you get this card. Only because when you purchase other items, it triggers coupons that you could use on future purchases, which is exactly what I did.

Well I did FAR better than the $2.60/pack: I used a $5 off CVS coupon that I received for purchasing cereal at CVS last week (that deal was $0.67 per box for a full size box1). By using the coupon, it knocked the price down to $8, making the cost of each pack $1.60. Not bad, especially when the regular price is $5.39/12pack. CVS also gave me a $4 coupon for my next purchase on the register tape, so I'm set up for next week as well.

I saved $3.79 on each with a total savings of $18.95. But that's not the end...

On top of that I had 2 coupons to receive a free 32oz Powerade for purchasing 12 packs of Coke products, ($1.69 each). ALWAYS pick up an items with good coupons, even if you have reached the coupon limit for that item in a single store - there will always be a special at a place like CVS to use those coupons.

Final savings: So if you add the powerades in, I saved $22.33 and only paid $8.80 w/tax. That's over 70% off! Remember keep those coupons from CVS!

Share your great deals with us: Email your deal to sallysblog@grocery-watch.com. You can also fax deals, coupons and register receipts to 1-413-683-3013.

Be sure to visit http://www.grocery-watch.com, and become a member or join one of our mailing lists.

I want them to pay me money at checkout!

I used to think "Coupon Queens" were crazy. Who had all that time to sift through all those fliers and coupons, keep track of prices and what sales ended on what days? Surely, all that work couldn't be worth all the effort....

Well, frankly, if you have to go it alone and do all the work yourself, then it's not probably worth it (if you value your time). But if you can piggy back on the work of others, then SIGN ME UP!

This has become a true cause for me. I like saving money and showing other people how to save as well. This website is the realization of a vision for the right high tech mechanism to really take this to the next level - real Web 2.0... To track competitive price data, give savy shoppers access to get deals from brands, stores and manufacturers that really want to earn their loyalty as customer. To make it easy for the consumer to win.

But most of all, I want them to pay me money at checkout! If you use this website, it is easy to find small groups of items where the coupons, sales and deals result in a net payment to the consumer (no payment to the grocer). Over the past year, my overall weekly savings percentage has climbed, from 20% to 50% to now often over 70%. I'm going to get to 100% without buying junk I don't want or having food choices limited for my family and friends (and now you, our members). I'm going to get to a point where they pay me money at checkout!

Easy Way to Organize Coupons

We L-O-V-E Coupons!

Coupons are like printing money. With big dollar values and the way coupons can work more than one at a time, you should easily have more total value from sales and coupons than what you pay for groceries with either your cash, check or credit cards.

Did we say that we L-O-V-E coupons? We L-O-V-E coupons. There. We've said it.

But there's a problem...

The Problem: What do you do with all those coupons? How can you find them when you need them? How do you know what you have?

Once you start clipping and printing all those coupons, it gets a little crazy. You see a special, but "darn! my coupon just expired..." Is there a better way?

The Answer: Store Coupons by Expiration Date

Most people want to store their coupons by category, brand or item; but the best method is by expiration date. Whether it's an accordian binder or 3-ring divider tabs with 3-ring resealable pockets, store your coupons by expiration date, usually the end of every month. Just before the end of the month, take a look at the coupons that are expiring the NEXT month, and watch for last minute opportunities to use those coupons by combining them with other coupons, deals and sales.

Ok, but... How do we find coupons any other time?

Ok, but what about finding coupons when you need them and they aren't expiring for several months? Our Grocery Watch website has over 1 million active UPC codes. We are adding prices and coupon offers against those items every day. You can add items to your shopping day "My List" and on Shopping Day, generate a list of all your items showing competitive prices, sales, coupons and bulk buying opportunities. For all the items on your list which have coupons, the expiration date will be shown. That is the "key" to finding your coupons. Go through that expiration date set of coupons and quickly pull the right coupons aside before starting your grocery run.

What if we don't have an Item or Coupon on Grocery Watch?

With over 1 million active UPC codes and our site just really going live over the past two months, there are a lot of UPC codes where we don't have current prices and coupons for every store in every part of the country. But we do believe in customer service; so if you scan, fax or just email the barcode/title from the coupons, we will add them in a timely manner. Just like we add active prices for items based on purchase receipts that are scanned or fax to us. You can fax coupons to 1-413-683-3013 or email information to coupons@grocery-watch.com. Email your cash register receipts to receipts@grocery-watch.com (or fax to 1-413-683-3013). Give it a try.

Thanks for your interest!

Thanks for your interest in how to better manage and take advantage of coupons. Our goal is to help everyone save at least 50% on their grocery bill, without having to do a lot of work. That's what we're here for - to make saving and enjoying great food as easy as possible.