Cheryl Beckham

When my favorite grocery store puts Sobe bottled drinks on sale, I buy a huge batch of them. They are made out of glass and are difficult to tote in those little plastic bags, but it is not unusual for me to buy 10-12 of them bottles at a time.

The Sobe drinks are wonderfully different from carbonated sodas and not as sweet as colas. I like the green tea flavor the best, but I like all the different ones.

The regular price is $1.69 per bottle. This week the grocery put them on sale at 10 for $10.00 so I bought 6 green teas and 4 assorted other flavors. I love to find a bargain!

At the grocery store I had a difficult time deciding how much candy to buy for the kids who will be knocking on my door tonight. I finally decided to buy 4 big bags of assorted candies. They were awfully expensive for being little bite size and snack size candies, but I think I will have enough to give a handful of candy to at least 30 kids. Surely that will be enough candy for the night!

To be honest, I am hoping that I have lots of candy left over. I don’t mind sharing it with the trick or treaters, but I have a sweet tooth and it would be nice to have some sweets in the house for a few days.

Today I saw cooking tips on a TV show about how to cook a beef brisket. Brisket is a cheap cut of beef that will be dry and tough if you don’t cook it right, so I have always been reluctant to try it. But after watching these tips I have more confidence and i’m going to try it this weekend.

• First, braise the meat and the seasonings on top of the stove to create a seal and keep the juices in while baking.
• Next, do not use a fork to move the meat to the baking pan. Use tongs or a spatula. You don’t want to pierce the meat with a fork as you just sealed it and piercing it will let the juices out, making it dry.
• Put the meat in a baking pan, add one cup of water or stout beer, and cover it with aluminum foil to help keep the juices in.
• Bake it at very low heat, 300 degrees, for 4 hours and do not open the oven door to check on it - leave it closed so the heat in the oven stays even.

All most all of the houses on my street have some sort of vegetable garden growing in their side and back yards, I do believe that I am the only one that doesn’t have much of anything growing in my yard, besides some crab grass and a few trees and some bushes here and there. I’ve never been one to get into the landscaping aspect of my land, but I do enjoy seeing all of the nice landscaping jobs that people have been piling a lot of their time and money on, all across the neighborhoods.

This afternoon, I answered the backdoor, to find a neighborhood kid with a basket of home grown vegetables that his parents had asked him to deliver to me. It seems that they have an over abundance of their produce and are nice enough to bring over to share with me. I like neighbors like that, not really used to being friendly with neighbors, never stayed any where long enough to get to know anybody and the ones that seem to approach me, in most cases, are the whacked out, messed up, druggie kind of neighbor, the kind that you would want to avoid, not get friendly with, that is for sure.

I do the majority of my grocery shopping at our local Food Lion, they seem to have the cheapest prices for the items that I buy regularaly. There is a few things that I can’t seem to get Food Lion to carry for me, so once in a while I will need to make a side trip to either Martins (owned by Giant and very expensive) or go to Wal-Mart, ugh, I’m not a big Wal-Mart fan and dread having to go there.

I have seen for the past month or so that Food Lion has a huge bin over flowing with brand new books at a discounted price and as much as I love to read, it takes a huge discount for me to purchase any book. I get most of my reading material from places that give them away or go to the used book store to find my bargains. The price of a brand new book is totally outrageous, I can’t even remember the last time I bought a book at full retail price.

But back to Food Lion’s book offering, today I had to make a mid week grocery run and I noticed that the book bin was almost empty, and they had a sign stating that the remaining books were being sold for 75% off of the already discounted price. With that being said, I stopped and took a look to see what was left over and was glad to find two new hard covered books that needed to come home with me and only paid $1.50 for each one, and I’m pleased with my purchase and will go back again on Friday and take another look see.