What are you hoping will go on sale the week before Easter?

I look forward to grocery shopping the week just before a major holiday, as I find some of the best prices on a select few items, with each holiday. Before Thanksgiving, it's frozen turkeys, canned vegetables, potatoes and butter. Before Christmas, it's usually ham and cream cheese.

For Easter, it's often ham, again, asparagus and eggs.

So, this next week, I'm hoping to find another ham (I've got 2 in the freezer, I'd like one more, which, after baking 1 for Easter, will give us 2 additional hams to use sometime in late spring, maybe around Mother's Day, and again in early fall, to give us some breakfast meat).

I'd also very much like to find eggs on sale. Last year, Walgreen's had a dozen eggs on sale for 99 cents/dozen, and no limit. I checked my April grocery journal for last year, and I bought 17 dozen eggs in the month of April. I remember freezing about 5 or 6 dozen eggs. I'd like to buy 18 dozen eggs this April, if the price is right, and freeze about 7 dozen for future baking and cooking.

I'm also low on cream cheese, and in some years, I do find cream cheese on sale the week before Easter. I'm hoping for more this year, too. I'd likely buy 6 8-oz bricks of cream cheese, at the right price (paid 88 cents at Fred Meyer last year).

It would also be nice to find canned pineapple for $1 or less. Last spring, I found canned pineapple for 88 cents at Fred Meyer. I bought a dozen cans, then, and am just now down to my very last can of pineapple.

So, that's what I'm hoping to find on sale the week leading up to Easter. How about you? Are there specific items that you usually find on sale the week before Easter?

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A frugal supper for the last week of the month

I can't believe that I am still under budget for the month of March, and here we are in the very last week of the month!

This was dinner the other night.

I had roasted one of the turkeys from last November's purchases. My daughters helped me get every last bit of meat from the bones, after making stock with the skin and bones. Surprisingly, there was enough meat removed, after making the stock, for 3 pots of soup.

I made a very hearty turkey minestrone with canned tomato paste, carrots, onions, garlic, herbs, cooked garbanzo beans, pasta and turkey.

To go with the soup, I made garlic bread from one of the loaves of French bread I'd baked the week before, kept in the freezer. French bread is so economical to make, and very forgiving, for a yeast-raised bread. So, I make this a lot when I'm low on my regular sandwich bread, and know I won't have the time to do a big baking.

For dessert, slices of birthday cake, a scratch yellow cake, with plum jam between the layers, and cocoa powder buttercream frosting.

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