durhamonthecheap

Sunday, February 3, 2013

30 years of Brueggers - celebrate on 2-7-13 with a free bagel w/ cream cheese

30 years of Brueggers. I have been a fan of their Bagels since the late 80s when I first was introduced to them in Iowa City. IA.

This week, Brueggers is again celebrating their anniversary by giving away free bagels and cream cheese. Go to their Facebook page here and like the page. You can then print out a coupon and in the store on 2-7-13 select any bagel and cream cheese combination you like.

I am hoping for a pumpernickel with any cream cheese since I love their pumpernickel bagel.

What is your favorite bagel flavor?

National Frozen Yogurt Day is coming up - Coupon for free Menchies yogurt!

Menchies is offering free froyo on National Frozen Yogurt day! Get your coupon here.

Celebrate 2-6-13 and frozen yogurt with a treat from Menchies. There is one in the Woodcroft Shopping Center in S. Durham.

Update:
I went today and enjoyed a wonderful mix of frozen yogurt for lunch, including their new flavor "Red Velvet Royale", which is made with real cocoa, cream cheese & cake batter.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Product Review and Giveaway - PERDUE® Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts

Contest and giveaway rules:
Deadline 2-20-13 Noon (coupon is good until 3-31-13):
Coupon: good for up to $5 towards the purchase of PERDUE Breast Roasts available only at Walmart

What is required:
1) you must either subscribe to the blog AND post a comment with your favorite chicken recipe
OR
2) put your email in the comment field AND name your favorite chicken recipe

Today, I am reviewing my first experience with a totally new product by Perdue, the Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts. The Breast Roasts come already marinated in Lemon Herb (which was the only flavor available in my Walmart) and they are exclusive to Walmart stores.

This is important for the giveaway that I am hosting. If you do not have a Walmart store in your neighborhood, you will likely NOT be able to buy the product. I checked this morning at Food Lion, Kroger and Harris Teeter and could not find this product in any of the stores.

As I said, I had to buy the Lemon Herb flavor since my local Walmart in S. Durham carried no other flavor. But according to the Perdue website, the Chicken Breast Roasts are also available in Smokehouse Peppercorn, only not at my local Walmart.

I mention prep, but really all you need to do is cut open the bag and place the breast roast onto the baking sheet! Dinner prep could not be easier. I made mashed potatoes while the chicken was cooking and steamed some asparagus. I love these dinners because one course takes care of itself and frees up your time to do other things!

Notice that the 110 calories per portion contain only 25 calories from fat and the size of these breast roasts is perfect for a family. Depending on the age of the kids, you may have even some leftovers for lunch the next day!

I wish their was smell-web so you could actually smell how the delicious the meat was. It was really nicely balanced. When I first put the breast roast into the oven I could smell garlic and I do not like garlic. I mean not just not like garlic, when I was in the hospital they actually allergic to garlic on my chart because I really react that strongly to garlic. So was definitely worried and wished Walmart had offered the other flavor with Peppercorn, which likely did not contain as much garlic as a Lemon "Herb" flavor. But after letting the meat cook and then actually tasting it, the worries were not needed. There was really not obvious garlic flavor present. The flavors were in my opinion well balanced, similar to the Oven Ready products that I had previously sampled from Perdue.

If you go the Perdue homepage for the Breast Roasts here, you can find recipe suggestions. I decided to simply prepare the roast as recommended on the packaging since I had found some asparagus on sale and also wanted to make homemade mashed potatoes for dinner. But you can certainly go to the Perdue pages and find recipe suggestions. One recipe that I am interested in trying is making some apple relish containing the breast roast.

So how were the PERDUE® Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts? Well, I could show the empty plates! But honestly, the prep was so easy and the meal ended up being delicious and healthy. I paired steamed asparagus with butter, mashed potatoes with chives and the PERDUE® Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts. It was a nice weekend dinner and we even had some left over for a lunch next week. I liked the flavoring of the breast roast; you could really smell and tastes the herbs. I would without hesitation serve these roasts instead of homemade chicken breasts. It is nice to see that you have another quick and easy option from Perdue available that comes in handy on a busy day when you cannot prepare a meal from scratch. They taste like homemade and the meat was juicy. I can highly recommend this new product by Perdue.

And to ensure that one of my readers can sample the PERDUE® Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts and see how their family likes the breast roasts, Perdue was nice enough to provide me with a free coupon. This coupon should cover the actual price of the product. Coupon value is up to $5 and at my local Walmart in S. Durham the price on the shelf was $4.98. So I ended up only paying taxes.

Contest and giveaway rules:

Deadline 2-20-13 Noon (coupon is good until 3-31-13):

Coupon: good for up to $5 towards the purchase of PERDUE Breast Roasts available only at Walmart

What is required:
1) you must either subscribe to the blog AND post a comment with your favorite chicken recipe
OR
2) put your email in the comment field AND name your favorite chicken recipe

Disclaimer: I received a coupon for a free PERDUE® Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast Roasts from Perdue in exchange for an honest review. I was also provided with a coupon to give away to one of my readers. The opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by Perdue, Walmart or any third party.

Product Review: bzzcampaign Cafe Escapes

Today I received the bzzcampaign supplies to WOM advertise Cafe Escapes, which makes Keurig compatible beverages in a variety of flavors. What makes this campaign particularly exciting for me is the inclusion of Chai Latte and Mocha. I like Chai because the spices give its flavors a nice complexity and Mocha to me is the perfect combination of chocolate and coffee.

Gosh, the packaging already looks delicious! Those cups of specialty coffee and hot chocolate look so good, especially one week after we had a real winter here in North Carolina with ice storm and everything!

I will bring the coupons to work next week, so if you are interested in sampling Cafe Escapes, let me know!

I will share the Cafe Caramel and Cafe Vanilla. For my taste they are too sweet on their own, but great if mixed in with regular coffee instead of coffee creamer. So if you work at the university, you may find these in break rooms across campus for sampling! If you like the McDonalds frappes and lattes, these may be really good for you because the frappes at McDs or Starbucks tend to be too sweet for me and I am not very fond of the whipped cream on those either. I know that both new flavors have gotten really good reviews online. If you prefer French Roast because you want full-bodied coffee flavor, you are in the same boat as I, you will miss coffee flavor in these.

This second sampler I am particularly excited about because it has Chai Latte, Mocha and two hot chocolates - what a wonderful variety of flavors to include. I love Chai and Mocha and having two hot chocolates, especially a dark chocolate variety, is awesome. I am glad bzzagent decided to have this campaign now when it is still cold, even in North Carolina, and we can warm up with a nice cup of hot chocolate!

It is amazing that Cafe Escapes managed to make a flavored coffee that actually tastes like caramel. Overall, the caramel flavor is good, but it was a tad too sweet for me. So my solution, use half and half. I mix regular coffee with Cafe Caramel, save the cream and sugar, and it is ending up being a perfect cup of coffee with a hint of caramel!

Disclaimer: I was provided by bzzagent.com free samples and coupons in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in the blog are solely my own and have not been influenced by bzzagent or any other third party.

Catch it while you can: Aldi in Durham has Red Velvet Cake on clearance at $2.99

I stopped by the Aldi in S. Durham today and besides my actual shopping list items, I did pick up something nice for dessert this weekend. Aldi had Red Velvet Cake for the last few weeks, but today I saw it was on clearance for less than $3. Down from more than $6, the price was too good and I pulled trigger and bought a cake.

I am not an expert on Red Velvet Cake, but this cake was wonderfully light and fluffy. I liked that the cake was not too dense and the frosting was just thick enough to cover the cake, but certainly not too thick to make the cake overly sweet. Overall, I think that the Aldi version of a Red Velvet Cake will serve nicely as a family dessert and at the current clearance price it is a true bargain!

The velvet cake does contain cacao and the frosting is cream cheese. Based on our experiences, one slice is just fine, although because of the light texture an adult can easily finish up two slices. The fact that the cake tastes really good makes eating two slices certainly an easy enough "chore".

Book review: Scott Palmer - The 5 Money Personalities: Speaking the Same Love and Money Language

This book takes an interesting approach to money counseling. Rather than provide advice about which stocks to buy or how to properly and effectively balance your checkbook, the book by the Palmers seeks to counsel couples how to prevent that their marriage is torn apart by financial issues. Appropriately written by the couple of Scott and Bethany Palmer, the books arose out of the statistic that financial issues are a major reason for divorce in the USA. Financial issues does not necessarily mean that people are short on money, but can also include problems such as hiding expenses or how money is spent.

available on Amazon.com here

The authors therefore start their book of with a simple assessment tool to identify the money personality of the partners and help the individuals as well as their partners understand why they handle money the way they do it. Understanding your money personality and relating to your spouse's money personality is an important first step in bringing about honesty in a relationship. No more secret accounts or money in cookie jars; if you know how your spouse behaves with money, you can not only reduce fighting about money, but also lend the necessary support to bring about change or correct money mistakes.

The marriage as a partnership includes together working out finances and therefore the next three chapters focus on communicating about finances between the partners, including sharing a cons with your spouse and discussing them. While these tools are simple and some of the approaches may appear to be common sense to the reader, they also provide a foundational framework to guide partners on ways to start communicating about money.

I got out of this book that it is okay to share bank accounts or keep separate accounts, as long as both partners agree and understand the reasons behind these facts. Being open about how you feel about money and how you prefer to allocate resources is as important as being open about the partnership goals itself. Money talk does not mean stress, it can be an important strengthening factor in your relationship if one correctly and that is what this books hopes to achieve in the end.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book through booksneeze in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are solely my own and have not been influenced by the authors or the publisher of this book.

Product review: Subway breakfast - Sunrise Subway Melt

Today, Subway had its free breakfast promotion in some of the North Carolina markets. I went to the Subway in the Woodcroft shopping center in S. Durham and ordered the Sunrise Subway Melt and also got my free coffee, for which Subway uses Seattle's Best.

The Sunrise Subway Melt, described here on the Subway Menu page, contains three different meats as well as cheese and a choice of egg or egg white. I ordered egg white and Provolone cheese, plus asked that some bell peppers and banana peppers be added to the sandwich.

It is a good size sandwich that combined with the coffee makes for a decent breakfast. The regular price for the sandwich alone is $2.75. Not bad for the mix of Turkey, Bacon and Black Forest Ham.

Below are more detailed images of the sandwich, so you can see what you can expect if you decide to order it. I do not go to Subway often, but I have to say that for a different breakfast than all the fried food at many other places, this sandwich tasted fresh and very different. I liked that I could add some veggies to the flatbread and the combination of peppers that I used went really well with the standard ingredients.

I also used the nutritional information calculator on the Subway page and these are the numbers for my customized sandwich.

SERVING SIZE (g) - 120

CALORIES - 190

Calories from Fat - 50

TOTAL FAT (g) - 6

Saturated Fat (g) - 2

Trans Fat* (g) - 0

CHOLESTEROL (mg) - 0

SODIUM (mg) - 780

CARBOHYDRATES (G) - 22

Dietary Fiber (g) - 1

Sugars (g) - 1

PROTEIN (G) - 15

VITAMIN C % DV - 10

CALCIUM % DV - 20

IRON % DV - 8