Saving money on Amazon.com Groceries

OK, that blog title sounded like a spam email! Oops!

Justin and I both have Amazon Visa Rewards credit cards, which offer cash rewards that are useable at Amazon. I use my card for pretty much everything I buy. (We never carry a balance on a card - we pay it off every month.) So our cash rewards build up at a pleasing rate! I use the reward points to "purchase" a lot of things that we use around the house, and I wanted to share how we accomplish it, as well as some of my favorite Amazon grocery items.

Disclaimer: I also believe it's very important to shop locally as much as I can. And we still purchase the bulk of our foods from local grocers, especially meat and produce and dairy. But some things can be hard to find, and because eating real food can be expensive, we have to save money when we can. I like to think our savings from shopping on Amazon helps fund our local and organic meats and veggies!

First of all, here are some of the things I purchase regularly (usually with points, but not always). Each photo and link (affiliate links) will take you to that listing on Amazon.

Organic coconut oil - two 54 ouce tubs. This lasts me a while! Sometimes they'll go on sale, and I'll stock up even more. I've never seen the large tubs at a local store, just the small ones. So this is quite a bit cheaper than buying it locally, especially when you use a lot of it. Here's a blog I wrote about the reasons I love coconut oil.

  

Canned tuna. I don't use many canned foods, but these cans are BPA-free. Wild Planet also uses the species of tuna that has the least mercury in it, and that tuna is sustainably harvested. So my three concerns with canned tuna are taken care of with this particular brand.

Organic cocoa powder. This comes in a set of two bags, and we go through it faster than you might imagine. The price isn't much different than grocery store cocoa, but it's organic, and hey, if it's free with our points, I'll take it.

Organic gelatin - a set of two canisters. This is great healthy nutrition! I use it to make jello, and I also sprinkle it into broth based soups for added nutrition. It's only from pastured animals, so you know it's the good stuff. I don't buy cheap gelatin from anyplace else, so I can't say how the price compares exactly.

 





Vitamin D gelcaps. You can get them at the store in pill form for a little less money, but the gelcals are a lot easier to swallow. However, I'm not getting this anymore because we're taking fermented cod liver oil capsules. So that's where we're getting our Vitamin D (and a whole lot of other great stuff too). But I purchased these capsules a couple of times. We took 2 each day, for 4000 IU.

Organic maple syrup. This goes on sale sometimes, and usually I wait until it does. You can also get 15% off by doing Subscribe and Save, which you have to use points differently (I'll explain that later). We use syrup to sweeten most things (ice cream especially) so we go through a lot of it.

Organic coconut milk. I love this stuff and use it in soups, stir fries, smoothies, and even in coffee (YUM!). I believe this is also a BPA-free can - which is another reason why I buy it on Amazon. I haven't found coconut milk in BPA-free cans locally. There's also coconut oil in the top of each can, so I use that for sauteeing (if I'm going to open the can anyways).

  

Coconut flour. A great price since this is a package of 4 bags. A little goes a long way in baking, so you won't go through it as quickly as you think.






We've also purchased fair trade coffee on Amazon (we LOVED Ethical Bean Coffee - we got it on a great sale though), although we're finding fair trade coffee locally now. You can find some good deals on raw/organic honey too, as well as other flours and baking goods. Other things you could shop for: tea, herbs and spices, cookbooks, nuts, BPA-free canned foods, probiotics, sugar, dried fruit...pretty much any nonperishables can be purchased for a great price at Amazon.

Some tips to help maximize your Amazon grocery shopping:

• Sign up for an Amazon Rewards card, and use it for everything. Easy peasy!
• Use your Amazon card on anything you pay for on Amazon. Triple points!
• Use Subscribe and Save to save 15% on most grocery items. You can cancel your subscriptions anytime and still keep the savings.
• I'm not a Mom so I haven't signed up, but Amazon Mom gives moms and child care givers great deals on baby and kid stuff!
• If you're using Subscribe & Save (most grocery items have this!), use paper gift certificates, instead of using "Shop with Points". "Shop with Points" isn't valid if you're doing Subscribe & Save. So have a little patience, and use the points to order actual paper gift certificates, so then you can use both at the same time.
• Wait until things go on sale, then use your points AND Subscribe & Save. It's like double couponing! I usually rely on my favorite blogs to alert me to such sales, but you can also set up email alerts for deals on grocery items or other types of things.

I hope this has been helpful to you! I love getting boxloads of free groceries and I hope you'll look into it yourself.

Garbage In, Garbage Out - a journey to less waste

This is a post about garbage. Yep. And at the end of this post I've made a long list of stuff I've done to reduce our garbage output. But I can't make a list without a lot of editorializing, so here goes. :)

I'd venture to guess that most of us don't think about our garbage. But lately I've been doing a lot of consideration about that very topic. And I've become convicted that all of us need to be more mindful of the level at which we trash the world.  The average U.S. citizen throws out four and a half pounds of garbage every day. That makes 230 millions tons every year, just here in the U.S.!

It's a huge disappointment that Christendom, which should be a haven of care and respect for the physical creation, seems to be the least interested crowd.  Somewhere along the way, Christians got the idea that since the world is fallen and going to be fixed up someday anyways, we can do whatever we like to it in the meantime. (It's funny that you don't hear that argument being made about human bodies.) The first thing lost in that train of thought is the biblical concept of stewardship. Just like it's wrong to pollute our bodies with excessive smoking/drinking/poor eating, it's also wrong to rampantly degrade anything that's been entrusted by God to our care.  Something else to consider: creation has been entrusted with displaying God's attributes.  People understand God through the physical world, and that's no small entrustment. So creation is no less a part of God's master plan than humans are. Humans and the rest of physical creation have the same destiny (renewal), and should be treated with similar honor.

One last thing: forget what politics has to say. Party politics has (ill-)advised us on this issue for too long.

Here's a huge pet peeve of mine, considering how I think believers should behave: churches produce SO MUCH TRASH. The amount of styrofoam and paper and plastic dishes used even at one event is, frankly, embarrassing. A typical Sunday morning might produce hundreds of styrofoam coffee cups, each used for five minutes and thrown "away." There are alternatives that I think churches need to consider. First, attendees, bring your own reusable mugs for the coffee. Churches should be encouraging this, and also offering normal (non-disposable) mugs for those who didn't bring their own.  Also, at group eating events like potlucks, let's wean ourselves off the throwaway plates, forks and cups (which are flimsy and tacky anyways).  If it's a larger group, another option is for each family to bring their own regular plates and flatware to the church potluck, and wash them later at home. This is actually the way get-togethers were done in the past, when we did not buy things for the purpose of throwing them away.  This idea might sound a little nuts, but that's because we've been infected by the culture of throwaway. If you actually think about it, it makes much more sense. I'm pretty sure people from 150 years ago would think we're nuts (and more than a little wasteful) to have so many things intended for one time use, and immediately discarded.

The Bulk Bins (& Making Less Garbage)

I really wanted to blog about my trip, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I've had this post waiting patiently in the wings for awhile, and it wants to be read. Vacation posts (and photos) to come shortly! :)

One of the best ways to stretch your dollars while buying natural, whole foods is to use bulk bins as much as possible. Most of us are used to grabbing a prepackaged, premeasured, prepriced version of something off a shelf, but once you have a good system down, it's easy to use the bulk bins to
produce much less garbage,
spend only what you want,
buy only what you need, and
buy the very best you can. 

Bulk buying is part of my effort to create less trash (and not-recyclable-in-Lincoln trash at that). I've been thinking about this a lot: our culture is highly consumerist, and very disposable-minded. Even the clothes we buy are supposed to be disposable after the trend has run its course. Electronics and appliances aren't made to last; they're made to stop working in a few years, at which point we will assumably desire a newer model anyways. Creating less garbage should be a priority for all of us. The amount of trash we produce is shameful, and our perpetual carelessness with it demonstrates an inherent lack of respect, or even basic appreciation, for God's creation.  How is throwing it in a landfill any better than tossing it on the side of the road? If it's disrespectful to litter in your neighbor's lawn or in a pristine national park, it's disrespectful to trash any other part of God's world. Christians should be leading the charge in this area.  (More to come in another blog...)

When we get out of the habit of constantly buying packaging, in the meantime, we find ourselves saving money.  At our house, we don't use disposable cups, plates, silverware, grocery bags (most of the time), napkins or paper towels. And I've been trying to cut way back on plastic packaging - check out Fake Plastic Fish for some hard-core inspiration! This sort of lifestyle shift will really realign your perceptions about stuff in a lot of good ways. Not to mention you will end up with longer lasting clothes, less expensive food, and better quality things in general. (Or maybe even...dare I say it...fewer things? Hmmm...)

Now I will climb off my soapbox and wander back into the grocery store. Yes, bulk bins. I think people have this idea of "bulk bins" as a place where you get a 25lb sack of something, then throw it on your horse and ride back out to the farmstead. But 'bulk' just means the store has it in bulk, which lets you get however much you want. Need a quarter cup of something called ''teff'' for a recipe? Or want to try a serving of steel cut oats for breakfast before committing to a whole bag? You can use bulk bins to get whatever amount you need. And you don't have to use a horse.

My True Feelings About Lawn Care (late night imagination)

This might be a scary thing, but I'd like to give you a little glimpse into my late-night imagination. This is a little scene that has played itself out many a time as I fall asleep, and the story has many variants. But here is the basic idea.  The setting: we live in a pleasant neighborhood, own our first home, and consistently fail to mow the lawn.

---
Someone knocks on the door.  It is the Head of the Neighborhood Association (HNA).

HNA: "Hello Mrs. Moore. I am here to remind you that your neighborhood contract requires you to care for your outside property so that its aesthetic properties will be satisfactory."

Me: "What do you mean?"

HNA:  "Mrs. Jones across the street, along with several other neighbors, have registered concerns that the grass in your yard is way too long, and smattered with weeds."

Me, still uncertain:  "We do take care of our yard. But, now that you mention it, I don't really care for Mrs. Jones' marigolds."  I start to walk across the street to register MY concerns with Mrs. Jones.

The H.N.A. follows me. "Mrs. Moore, you can't let weeds grow in your yard. You signed the covenant."

Me: "Yes, we said we'd take care of our property, and we do. What do you mean by weeds, anyways?"

HNA: "Ma'am, your lawn is smattered with dandelions and flanked by large bushy things."

Me: "Well, Mrs. Jones's porch is smattered with marigolds, and I don't like those. Can I sic you on her plants?"

why we don't eat much meat

Last fall I stopped buying meat. Well, at least for a while. I've returned to buying some here and there, but overall, meat is rarely the main attraction in our meals. We aren't going vegetarian, not by a long shot. But we've both agreed that eating meat only occasionally and in small quantities, instead of in large portions at every meal, would be a very good thing...in our own home.

I do not believe it is ethically wrong to eat animals, and I think it is wrong to impose my own decisions on others' cooking when we're out and about.  Just thought I'd get those out of the way.

But I do want to talk about why I...Justin and I...made this decision. (It was my idea originally, but we discussed it a lot, and we are in full agreement.) There are plenty of reasons people may choose to eat less, or no, meat.  For me, three main reasons surfaced as I began thinking and researching.  (Those two things, put together, never fail to result in some new life-changing decision!)

1) Plants and veggies are just plain healthier.  You don't have to look very far to discover some very compelling information: people who don't eat meat (especially red meat), or who eat small amounts of it, are happier, more fit, less likely to be obese, less likely to have cancer or heart disease or high blood pressure or diabetes.  Vegetarians live, on average, ten years longer than their omnivore counterparts. (This can also be chalked up to the fact that vegetarians are also very health-conscious in other areas of their lives.)  It's an established fact that a healthy plant-based diet is one of the best things you can do for your physical well-being.

Plus, the Bible attests to it!  Think about it: a perfect garden, the best conditions imaginable for man and beast, and...Adam and Eve ate the bounty of the earth, not other living creatures. It was God's original ideal. Animals weren't even harmed, much less eaten, until the world was perverted by sin. While we live in a fallen world, it is very obvious that the gifts from the earth--God's best plan!--is the original ideal diet.