Clip the coupons you know you will use. By now I know which products I can always get for free so I always clip those coupons too.

Arrange them in a file folder. I used this photo organizer that I got at Hobby Lobby (with a 40% off coupon, of course). One time I left it near the check-out register and didn’t realize it was missing until 3 days later. I almost called in an emergency order of xanax and I don’t even take meds. Luckily the store had it in their lost and found. One lady saw me carrying it around and said “I like your purse”. Oye.

I always have coupons leftover that I didn’t clip, but I might be able to score free goods with in a few weeks if a special sale is going on, so I save the other coupons for about 4 months. I have a very sophisticated storage system. It involves a Sharpee and a plastic bag. Write the date the coupons came out on the bag.

Why do I label the bags with the date, you ask? Becuase the blogs will essentially say “Hey if you use the $1 off Suave coupon from the RedPlumb coupon instert from 5/15 you can get free Suave Deodorant”. Couldn’t be easier for me!

Then I store the bags in a pile in my garage. Sure, you could get a filing cabinet for these, but why spend some bucks when my system is free?

The people on Extreme Couponing have crazy spreadsheets and spend upwards of 20 hours a week comparing deals. I have a job, hobbies, a veggie garden to tend to, 3 menaces, and a husband that I’d like to see so I don’t have time for that.

There are several blogs I follow that already break-down the deals. I like the CentsSaved.com blog because the blogger is local to Colorado so she compares ads for grocery stores in my area. She always features Freebie Fridays so I have a one-stop shop each week knowing where I can score free goods. There are bloggers all around, so I’m sure you lucky Wegman’s folks can find some online.

Target.com has coupons that you can print directly from their web site. You can combine a Target coupon AND a manufacturer’s coupon for one item. Target often has coupons for their clothing too. I got $5 off denim coupons and wouldn’t ya know, their jeans were on clearance for $4.98. I got all of this stuff for $.31:

Walmart allows “overage” meaning if you buy dental floss for $.88 and your coupon is for $1 off, they give you the extra $.12 credit towards another product. I LOVE this policy because I was once able to use my overage to buy free-range chicken. I use the term “buy” loosely as I only paid around $.37 for over $60 worth of stuff.

My biggest deal yet was when a store manager PAID me $2.34 to take baby formula, lotion, cupcake papers & orange juice. I saved 107%! I was actually telling the manager to let me purchase a magazine so I didn’t have a negative balance. I don’t want her getting into trouble and I don’t want coupon policies to become more strict because of situations like this.

I like to be fair when it comes to coupon policies and I don’t nag the people if they forget to take a nickel off my order when I bring re-usable bags. I have my favourite cashiers that know what I do with the goods so they don’t give me a hard time.

One other tip is to have a coupon buddy. My cousin Mo (who lives in NY) and I e-mail each other a list of items we want from the coupon inserts each week. She likes snacks for her kids, I take toothpaste and deodorant because I know those are always free and I can donate those items. We spend $.44 each week in postage to mail the coupons but we save more than enough with the coupons we exchange. Find someone to share coupons with.

Have ya’ll seen the Extreme Couponing show? What do you think?

I didn’t realize how musical Conan is. Throughout the show he would perform with the band. He’d play guitar and the keyboard and he is pretty good. He would change lyrics to well-known songs to reflect the drama he is involved in with Jay Leno and the Tonight Show. Oddly enough, he never once mentioned Jay Leno’s name, but we assume it is for legal reasons. Here is his band:

Partway through the show he brought out a surprise. The Fray! It was an acoustic performance with just the piano and guitar. They played “Over My Head” (Cable Car), and “You Found Me”. They are from Denver so it was nice to have a local famous act perform.

First we added eggs and sugar to a bowl and I whisked away until the mixture was a very pale yellow. Have you any idea how long that takes? My arm was very sore and I don’t even think I could lift a skittle as soon as I finished whisking.

While I whisked for approximately 20 minutes, Martha was busy simmering the heavy cream and vanilla bean seeds. When both mixtures were ready, we combined them and put them through a strainer to make it as smooth as possible. It looked very silky.

We poured the mixture into small roulade dishes and baked it for about 50 minutes until the creme barely shimmied when shaken.

After they cooled off, we got to play with fire. We didn’t use any dainty kitchen torches. Oh no, our head chef brought torches from Home Depot. I sprinkled the tops of the creme with sugar and torched them until the sugar melted and browned into a hard crust.

I also made puff pastry dough. Most people buy this pre-made dough in the frozen food section but it is very easy to make. It is only water, flour, butter and salt. I combined all ingredients until it formed a very shaggy pile in my bowl. “Shaggy” is an official term the head chef uses. It looks like this.

I rolled the dough into a rectangular shape and folded it. Then I rolled it out again, and folded it. I did this four times. This dough is called the “pastry with 1,000 layers”. I think 1,000 layers is a bit much, but re-rolling and folding the dough does create several flaky layers when it is cooked. We were using the dough to make fruit chaussons but let’s just call them apple turnovers.

I cut the dough into circles and filled them with an apple mixture which was just cooked apples and cinnamon. I left some of them open and folded some into the shape of pierogies. Then I brushed them with an egg wash and sprinkled the tops with sugar.

The end result was a fluffy, flaky breakfast pastry.

Other classmates made Chocolate Pot De Creme. This was almost like pudding/ uncooked brownie mix/ custard. It was rich and amazing and worth every calorie.

Sweet. Soft. Nutty. No, I’m not describing Bob. The sticky buns from class would put Pillsbury to shame. In fact, Chef Deb had a plumbing issue at her house and was quoted $1,900 for repairs. The plumber showed up when she was making these sticky buns so she gave him one. The plumber said he wouldn’t charge a dime for repairs if he could take the entire tray of sticky buns home. According to my calculations, if a tray of sticky buns is worth $1,900 then I could sell these and be rolling in dough (get it?).

There was also Pumpkin Caramel Custard which was like flan. I’m not a huge fan of flan, but tried it anyways. It was ok, but not my cup of tea.

Lastly, there was bread pudding with raspberries and apricots soaked in brandy. I’m not a fan of bread pudding either. This was ok, too. I think it would be good if I liked bread pudding to begin with.

Tomorrow is chocolate truffle and souffle day so I am fully prepared to get diabetes and slip into a food coma.

We started by slicing two vanilla beans and scraping out the seeds. Ever wonder what the microscopic black dots are in your vanilla bean ice cream? Those are vanilla seeds and they are oh so tiny. If you get vanilla ice cream without the tiny dots, then it was made with vanilla extract and not the real thing.

We simmered half & half with sugar and the vanilla bean seeds for approximately 10 minutes. It looked like cookies & cream at this point.

Then we mixed in egg yolks and whipped them together. Since the mixture was still hot from simmering, it actually cooked the eggs a little (which is normal). Nobody wants eggs in their ice cream, so we put the concoction through a strainer to get out the scrambled egg bits and soaked it in an ice bath. We ended up with a scrumptious-smelling bowl of pre-ice cream.

We poured our mixture into the ice cream machine to churn for an hour. The machine did all of the work to get it frozen. I don’t have any pictures of my finished product because I gobbled it up as soon as it was put in front of me. I can’t resist. It was so creamy!

My favourite ice cream today was the coffee parfait. I do not like coffee at all. I thought I would be nice and try another group’s creation and I planned on saying I liked it even if I didn’t. By golly I didn’t have to fib. It was amazing. I tasted more of the Kahlua & Heath bars in it than I did espresso powder. It was served with a dollop of whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

Another group made blackberry sorbet & grapefruit & vodka granite. Both were very tasty and would be perfect for a hot summer day.

My group finished somewhat early so we made vanilla tuile paste & chocolate tuile paste. It is pretty much a very thin cookie that is used more for decoration & you can shape it when it comes out of the oven before it cools. We cut out patterns then scraped the paste onto parchment paper and baked it for only about 5 minutes.

As soon as it was out of the oven I had to peel the cookie off the paper and shape it into a bowl or curved shape while it was still hot. We didn’t do anything else with the tuile today, but I could have eaten it with the ice cream.

First we made the cakes, which were about 6″ round. Wendy and I made the batter together and divided it amongst 4 pans so we each could have a layer cake.

While the cakes were cooking and cooling we started the buttercream icing. The original buttercream recipe calls for vanilla, but we had options to modify it to mocha, raspberry, or hazelnut. We opted for the mocha icing. It started out as whipped egg whites & sugar until it looked like marshmallow fluff. It took about 20 minutes of being whipped in a KitchenAid mixer to get to the white fluff part.

Then we added a lot of butter and whipped it for another 10 minutes in the mixer. When it was stiff enough we added the mocha and melted chocolate for the flavour. It smelled divine.

By the time the cakes cooled we sliced them into layers. I opted to make a 4 layer cake and Wendy made a 2 layer cake. Piping the scalloped edge wasn’t on the class schedule but I knew how to do it from my Wilton classes so I decided to fancy mine up a bit. Not too bad, eh?

We also finished the cream puffs from yesterday by piping the filling inside and dipping the tops in chocolate. Mmmmm.

Here are some pictures of what my classmates made. This is vanilla roulade with lime curd and fruit compote.

Raspberry Hazelnut Genoise.

Coconut layer cake.

And now a class photo.

The culinary school offers a variety of classes including a knife skills class. The student make vegetable soup so they can learn how to slice carrots, taters, zucchini and a bunch of other stuff. Since they make a lot, we get to eat their hard work for lunch every day and it is quite delicious!

We started out by making two types of pie crusts. Pate Brisee is the basic pastry dough. We didn’t get a chance to use this today so it is wrapped up in the fridge for tomorrow. We also made Pate Sucree which is a sweet pastry dough and it is almost like a shortbread cookie. It is very crumbly when rolled out and had to be put in the pie dish in pieces and then squished back together. We used Pate Sucree in our fruit tart.

Once the crust was done we made Pate a Choux which is a fancy way of saying Cream Puff Pastry (hey I’m not French). We piped the pastry dough through a tube onto parchment paper and baked it in the oven. Here is what came out!

While the cream puffs were baking we made the Creme Patissiere (fancy for Pastry Cream). It is pretty much a more delicious version of Jell-O pudding. Sorry Bill Cosby, da puddin’ from da class was better than yours! This pudding has two purposes- we filled the fruit tart crust with it before layering fruit on top, and we will use it again tomorrow to fill the cream puffs.

Here is the fruit tart! Pate Sucree crust filled with pudding and some yummy fruit sliced on top. I did all of the fruit slicing and arranging. See how purdy it looks?

The best part about this class are the magical clean-up fairies. Whenever I set a dirty dish aside, a fairy swoops in to clean it and returns it to the proper shelf in the kitchen. I checked Target but they don’t have any clean-up fairies on clearance right now.

I bought some YakTraks to strap onto our shoes since they are supposed to help with traction on ice. I couldn’t even feel them on my feet and never worried about slipping at all, which is a big deal considering I am a klutz.

Bob let Coda off leash for most of the hike uphill and Coda enjoyed every moment of freedom frolicking in the wilderness. He even howled to the tune of “The Hills Are Alive”. Honest, he did.

While Coda enjoyed running around I was getting pretty tired when we came to quite the incline. I made a rule that Bob had stop every 20 yards so I could rest. I wasn’t kidding. At one point I found a rock to sit on and busted out my stash of Girl Scout cookies that I snuck into my pocket before we left the house. I know you’re all wondering what kind they were. I had Do Si Dos! Peanut butter sandwich cookies. Peanut butter has protein so it was the perfect healthy snack for a hike. Yeah… just go with it.

After about 2 1/2 hours of walking uphill we decided to head down. Ahhh this was much better. I didn’t have to stop at all on the way down. I love gravity. You didn’t expect Bob and I to go on a hike just for the fitness aspect did you? No no no, we went out for Mexican food for dinner to re-gain the calories we lost and then some.

It was still freezing cold (around 26 degrees) so we grabbed some hot chocolate and hot cider and fed the goats before heading home. The goats loved Bob. Must be all of his facial hair that matched the goats.

Today we went to Rock Creek farms that had the same problem with pumpkins freezing and rotting. Acres upon acres of the pumpkin patch were a bust to walk through. All of the remaining pumpkins had already turned to mush. We headed to the pre-picked bins to get pumpkins that hadn’t turned into orange blobs yet.

Since it is getting chilly here, the kids have started to snuggle. Don’t look at the next picture if you can’t handle cuteness. Don’t let them fool you though! They are still trouble! Just ask Coda where my loaf of beer bread and pound of vanilla fudge went.

Oh, and Bob wanted to show off his pumpkin again:

We continued on our scenic drive along the Colorado River for about an hour. Purdy yellow Aspen trees and fishermen dotted the riverbanks. It was a lovely, uneventful drive until our gas light came on and we didn’t see a gas station for what felt like hours. I may have over-reacted about the gas light because we survived. (Editor’s [Bob's] Note: We still had almost 3 gallons of gas when we got to the gas station. I wasn’t even breaking a sweat.)