11 Easy useful tips to Save Money with Coupons

11 Easy useful tips to Save Money with Coupons

Don’t leave home without them! Coupons save many consumers $100′s and sometimes even $1000′s of dollars a year! Need some tips on how to go about using them?

Do you have any coupon tips you can share?

1. Double & Triple: Shop at stores (if available) that will double (and sometimes even triple) your coupons. Pay attention too, because sometimes its only one day per week and often only up to a certain amount.
2. Weekly Fliers: Every week in the mail and in newspapers, the grocery stores have weekly fliers printed up that show off their best sales and deals for that week. Take advantage of these things to stock up. Don’t forget the coupons!
3. Sales: Save your coupons for sales. When your store is offering a 10 for $10 deal or something similar, that’s the perfect time to whip out those coupons and utilize them on top of the stores sales.
4. Check your coupons: Before you go to the store, check your coupons for expirations. Most coupons expire at the beginning or the end of the month, so make sure you use them in time.
5. Don’t Toss: If you do let a coupon expire, don’t immediately toss it. A lot of grocers will still accept them, and all you have to do is ask. Don’t be afraid to ask, because there are a lot of stores that will accept them but don’t make that widely known.
6. Track Prices: I keep a small notebook with me when I shop. I write down the items that I most frequently buy, yes sometimes multiple brands per items. I know how much each frequently purchased item costs at each of the stores near my house that I shop at. This way, when I have the choice to use a coupon, I can decide if its worth it, or if I should save the coupon or utilize the sale instead. (or stack, because thats also an option at some stores).
7. Check receipts: Most stores make their computer screens available to customers to view as things are ringing up. Watch these so that A) your items scan correctly and B) that the coupons are utilized.
8. Shop Store Brands: I have a family member that worked for a well known company that creates a specific name brand product. They also sold to the stores under store brand names. So don’t automatically reach for name brands, most store brands are often equal to or better in quality. Obviously we all have our favorite name brands, so those are the things you should try to obtain coupons for and then shop store brands for everything else.
9. Competition is Key: Let me just tell you, the best stores to shop at, are the ones that accept competitors coupons. And many of them do. All you have to do is ask, so don’t be afraid to. The reason this is a good thing – it means less driving around to different stores, and can save you more money that it would have if you tried to do all your shopping at one store that doesn’t accept competitors coupons or at several different stores.
10. Trial Size It: If the coupon doesn’t tell you what size you have to buy, go ahead and use it on a trial size or the smallest size. Often, this garners the product free or almost free.
11. Print Coupons: Visit www.coupons.com, www.smartsource.com, www.redplum.com and www.retailmenot.com – you can print coupons from there, picking and choosing which you want. Make sure and visit more than one, because often they have coupons the other might not offer.

Do you have any coupon tips you can share?

Peruvian Recipes. How to Cook Picarones

Peruvian Recipes. How to Cook Picarones

PICARONES

Ingredients :

• 1lb (½ k) sweet potatoes, peeled

• 1lb (½ k) squash, peeled

• 1lb (½ k) flour

• 3 tablespoons fresh yeast

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 4 cloves

• 2 tablespoons aniseed

• 3 tablespoons sugar

• Pinch of salt

• 2 eggs slightly beaten

• Oil, necessary amount for frying
  
  
  
  

Syrup:

• 2 cups dark sugar

• 2 cups white sugar

• 4 cloves

• 2 cinnamon sticks

• 2 allspice

• Peel of 1 orange, cut into thick large strips

• 4 cups water

Preparation:

Fill water in a large pan with cinnamon, clove and aniseed. Boil for 10 minutes, approximately and strain reserving water. Cook sweet potatoes and squash in the reserved water until tender. Remove from pan and force through a strainer. Reserve 2 cups of cooking liquid. Allow to cool.

In a small size bowl, combine yeast, sugar, and reserved cooking liquid. Set aside for 15 minutes.

Place strained sweet potatoes and squash in a large bowl. Add salt, yeast mixture and eggs. Stir vigorously until combined. Fold in flour and continue stirring until a soft and smooth and elastic dough is formed. Dough will not stick to fingers. Cover with a damp cloth and leave dough to rise for 1 hour or until mixture doubles its volume.

Heat oil in a large skillet until hot. Take a small quantity of dough and form a ring. Fry in hot oil until golden on both sides. Repeat the procedure until all dough is used. Wet hands in salted water frequently to make dough rings more manageable.

Remove picarones from hot oil and drain in kitchen paper.

Serve immediately with syrup, (3 per serving).
Syrup:

Combine sugar, clove, cinnamon, orange peel, allspice and water in a medium size saucepan. Bring to a boil over low heat until mixture thickens to a syrup (200 °F – 110 °C). This process will take approximately 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve picarones with this syrup.

8 – 10 servings

Peruvian Recipes. Coconut Alfajor

Peruvian Recipes. Coconut Alfajor

COCONUT ALFAJOR

Ingredients :

• 1 large fresh coconut, peeled and shredded

• 1 cup coconut juice

• 5 eggs, separated

• 12 oz (350 g) sugar

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

• ¼ cup port wine or semi sec wine

• 1 tablespoon ground toasted sesame seed

• 1 egg yolk, mixed, to brush on top

• Milk Caramel
  

• Apricot jelly

• Confectioner´s sugar

Preparation:

Place egg whites, 1 cup coconut juice, shredded coconut in a large saucepan and mix. Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and the bottom of the saucepan can be seen. Remove from the heat. Meanwhile beat egg yolks until they reach a light lemon color, add wine and mix.
Stir into egg white mixture with the ground sesame. Return saucepan to the heat and cook until mixture thickens again.

Stir in butter. Pour mixture in two 9 in (23 cm) greased round cake pans (optional: line bottom of pans with greased parchment paper). Brush top layers with egg yolk.

Bake in preheated oven to 350°F (180°C) until they have a golden color.

Remove from the oven, cool for 5 minutes and invert on a rack to cool completely.

Place one cake on a serving dish and spread a layer of manjarblanco or dulce de leche and a layer or apricot jelly on top.
Cover with the remaining cake and dust with confectioner´s sugar.

6 – 8 servings

Pollo a la Brasa Day, This is the history of the first poultry

Pollo a la Brasa Day, This is the history of the first poultry.

The most consumed dish of Peru has a pair of Swiss actors responsible for this dish is a sensation.

The rotombo must be one of the most important inventions of Peruvian cuisine. An oven specially designed to stun a chicken over the coals and get that taste so addictive that one dish can have.

At the table, the bird gets golden brown and crispy, with a cut potato, too crunchy and sprinkled with salt. In addition to this colorful salad accompanies a ride to the table. That is the trademark of our beloved chicken. The most consumed dish of Peru, even more than the ceviche and the Chinese restaurant.

The story of grilled chicken starts over 61 years ago. Just in 1950, when Roger Schuler's cook (the owner of the first poultry, La Granja Azul) cooked over wood coals of a baby chicken that had been impaled on an iron bar and were drawn on the fire.

This scene made Schuler, Swiss by birth, he asked his friend Franz Ulrich (an expert in mechanical metal) construction of a furnace with special characteristics, capable of spinning rods with eight chicks each. Thus was born rotombo.

While it can not be attributed to the cook Schuler title "creative chicken" because years ago the technique was used by other cooks, we can say it and the Swiss were able to devise an original recipe.

Once ready the taste and rotombo born in the Santa Clara Chaclacayo, La Granja Azul, recognized as the first poultry. The chickens that were sold there were small, about a kilo each.

According to a story says "a central road sign in the middle of the 50 said, 'Eat all the chicken on the grill as you want for 5 soles'." This was one of the marketing strategies that use the restaurant, which made him popular among the upper classes in Lima, where the "aristocracy were allowed to eat with your hands."

The next restaurant to open was EL RANCHO, located on Avenida Benavides. The next five years would open no more than 10 new pollerías around Lima. For these years, its consumption also occurred in the more popular classes.

According to an article in Andina, "Roger Schuler was devoted to the restaurant business and Franz Ulrich to the manufacture of ovens for baking chicken. The oven has evolved considerably from the adaptation by Ulrich, currently there are some that work with wood, coal and gas is the largest manufacturer and Heriberto Ruiz, who worked with Franz Ulrich and became independent in 1965 to give place your own business. "