Jewel-Osco: A Very Time Consuming Lesson, Part One of Two

Boy, here it is the start of another week and I'm still blogging about my shopping experience from last week! Analyzing this is really helping me sort out how it all works though, so even if it isn't helping any of you (or worse, is boring you to tears), I'm going to keep at it because I do believe this will become easier as I learn more about it.

Using Jill Cataldo's great site again, I checked out the deals available at Jewel last week. Jill, by the way, recommends changing the way you shop: you don't shop based on what you 'need' for the week. You shop based around the best deals available and build a stockpile. Sometimes you'll even end up buying things you don't need (aforementioned moneymakers), which you can always donate to charity. My family is pretty malleable in terms of what we will eat (we like food), and I like to cook so I'm more than willing to change up my order. In the past I would look up recipes I liked for the week, make a list based on those ingredients, and then go shopping - and spend a ton of money buying everything I needed! Now I will go shopping based on deals and coupons, then see what I have in the house, and then make up the week's meal plan based on that stuff. Just a change in habits, that's all.

So I was most interested in the following deals:

JEWEL TURKEY DEAL - On page 9 of Section 1 of the 11/14 Chicago Tribune (the actual newspaper part) there's a coupon for $10 off any Jennie-O, Farm Fresh, Perdue or Butterball fresh OR frozen turkey with the coupon and a separate $20 purchase. This is a pretty good deal, particularly if you want a smaller bird. The ad shows sample prices with coupon:
16lb. frozen Jennie-O turkey - $6.24 after coupon (.39/lb.)

"Buy 10, Save $5" Instant-Savings sale
Buying any ten of these items, mix or match, will result in $5 worth of instant savings. Prices shown are AFTER "Buy 10" discount. Remember, you must buy ten items in the same transaction to receive the discount.
Jill lists all of the items in the sale on her site; I wrote down the ones I was most interested in on my list. There were a decent amount of baking supplies on there as well as some instant foods we would eat, and some of them were on sale and/or had coupons that could be applied to them as well.

Jewel is running a Catalina sale involving Kellogg's products. Buy any 10 participating Kellogg's, Keebler, and/or Sunshine products and get a Catalina for two free movie tickets plus $10 Concession Cash by mail (to be spent in the movie theater.)
Here are your products and matchups. (A UPC list is here.)Note that if you have the $50 Kellogg's Your Ultimate Holiday Guide coupon book, you'll do very well here. Also, Coupons.com has a link to $10 worth of Kellogg's coupons on their site, and here's another link to print $5 worth of Kellogg's coupons to use with this deal too.
Again, Jill lists the products on her site, and the provided UPC list is great too. Lots of cereals, crackers and snacks.

"No Coupon Needed" Deals:
Homelife toilet bowl cleaner is $1.69 for a 24oz. bottle
(remember where I said the other day that I have no memory at all for numbers and prices? Yeah, that applies to cleaners too. If she tells me this is a good deal, I'm all for it. We always seem to run out of toilet bowl cleaner for some reason.)

Coupon books currently found at Jewel:
Share Something Delicious - here's what's inside.
$50 Kellogg's "Your Ultimate Holiday Guide - here's what's inside.

Jewel meat deals:
Jewel chicken drumsticks or thighs are $1.49/lb.
Jewel Stockman and Dakota roasts are on sale B1G1F this week (these are pricey at $25.) This Sunday's Chicago Tribune has a coupon for $5 off the roast on page 9, near the $10 turkey coupon. If you buy two roasts, use the $5 coupon on one and get the second free with the B1G1F, paying $20 for both, or $10 each.

Jewel produce deals:
1lb. bags of Jewel frozen vegetables or 12oz. Steamy vegetables are .69 each
Red seedless grapes are $1.28/lb.
Anjou, Bartlett, Bosc or Red pears are $1.29/lb.
Farm Stand baby-cut carrots are $1.29 for a 1lb. bag

Jill says: Anytime meat is under $1.99 a pound (no matter what it is -- beef, pork, poultry) it's a buy in my book, because $1.99 is a cycle low and a good benchmark for meat prices -- ditto for most produce. Seafood, by its nature, is more expensive per pound, but a good "buy" benchmark is $4 per pound or less for fish or shrimp.

Wow. A lot of deals at Jewel already, some of them pretty complicated for a newbie (the two "buy ten of the listed products" deals were making me quite nervous, because the PLAN was to try to find the best deals for me within those listed items, AND match my coupons to all of them. It was definitely in the 'intermediate-to-advanced' coupon category, heh, but I was determined to give it a try!), and I hadn't even checked Coupon Mom or Avenu yet. (I'll get to the Avenu thing in my next post!)

However, I have promised my son I would play some video games with him today and it is time, so I will continue this post a bit later!