Saving Money On Meat With Zaycon Bulk Chicken: Our Experience

    

Right now through November Zaycon has Chicken Sale Events across the country. Check out their website to find out if there is one near you!

If you follow my weekly shopping/couponing posts, you may find yourself wondering why you don't see us purchasing meat very often. For one thing, we mostly only eat poultry (in fact I don't eat red meat at all). But for the most part, I was stocking up on chicken breasts and whole chickens and turkeys when they were on sale and storing it in our deep freezer. Check out my latest installment of the Stalk My Stockpile series on the contents of my deep freezer HERE.

A few months ago I wrote a post on our decision to try out Zaycon Foods bulk delivery service to order forty pounds of fresh chicken at $1.79 a pound. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts in South Florida usually retail for around $3.99 a pound. Publix puts it on sale for $2.99 a pound about once a month and only a few times a year do they have a sale for $1.99 a pound. I know that many discount stores and Sam's do regularly price their chicken breasts at $1.99 a pound but we personally find that the quality of the chicken isn't quite what we prefer.

So we decided to try Zaycon to get a better price and a better quality all at the same time. Even though I had heard nothing but great things about them, I as still a little hesitant to place an order. I scoured the internet for other peoples' Zaycon experiences and while I found some good reviews I still had a lot of questions.

For one thing, what does a forty pound box of raw chicken even look like? What if it wasn't the quality we were use to? What if we hated it? How much work would we actually have to do to get the chicken into portions that worked for us? Would we regret it?

Here is the short version: It looks exactly as gross as you would expect it to. It was the best quality chicken we have ever bought. We love it. It took about an hour and a half. No regrets, ordering again next time.

Didn't get all of that? Keep reading for the specifics.

The whole process was much simpler than I originally expected. In February, when Zaycon announced a boneless, skinless, chicken breast sale in South Florida I placed our order right away. I had tried to order chicken once before but the event sold out before I could place our order. This time I got right on it. I paid in full for the order online and the total came to $71.60. While that is more than we spend on groceries in a week, I justified the expense knowing how much we would save in the long run. I saved our excess grocery cash from a few weeks to pay for the order out of normal cash grocery budget.

This is a 9x13 pan for scale

I received a confirmation email and a few reminders in the month and a half between placing my order and my pick up date. On the delivery day, we drove to the local pick up site at our assigned time and there we found a large refrigerated truck and two very nice Zaycon workers. We gave them our name, opened our truck and they laid down a piece of plastic sheeting to protect the car, gave us our chicken and that was it. The whole thing took less than five minutes.

Once we got home, we opened our box to find four large plastic bags each filled with 10 pounds of fresh, never frozen chicken breasts. These were the largest whole chicken breasts I have ever seen. They are directly from the processing facility so the two breasts were still connected by fat so we had to do a little work to get them looking more like what you would find in the grocery store.

It took us about an hour and a half to cut the breasts apart, trim the little bit of excess fat they had on them and then FoodSaver them into portions and cuts that we use on a regular basis. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy the whole process was and all in all they had very little fat on them that needed to be trimmed. We froze the individual portions and now have a freezer full of chicken that is prepped and cut to our preferences.

It has been so nice not to have to worry about budgeting for meat each week and it has been so easy to just take out and defrost what we need each week as we plan our meals.  All in all, I found the chicken we got from Zaycon to not only be cheaper but much higher quality than what we typically buy in our grocery store. It  tastes amazingly fresh even out of the freezer and I don't think that we will buy chicken any other way in the future.

Zaycon doesn't currently have any fresh chicken sales going on right now but they do currently have events going on for hickory smoked bacon, Polish kielbasa sausage, bacon wrapped pork filets, Gold Medal beef franks, and pork loin meaty back ribs. Visit their website for more details.

Have you ordered from Zaycon before? What was your experience? 

Stalk My Stockpile: The Contents Of My Deep Freezers

                                                                            

 Did you miss the first installments of the Stalk My Stockpile series? Check them out HERE!

A huge part of couponing is having a stockpile of health, beauty products, and household products, a pantry full of food and a full fridge and freezers. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that we were attempting to clear/clean out our freezers in order to make room since we ordered forty pounds of fresh chicken breasts from Zaycon.

 

I knew that we had a ton of stuff in the two freezers but even I was shocked at how much we had managed to fit in them over the last year. While we did have a few things that we had to get rid of due to freezer burn or expiration, I was pleasantly surprised at how little we tossed. Check out our before pics of the two freezers HERE.

 So you see what I buy each week and I am sure you ask yourself a few questions. Do they eat all that ice cream in one week? Where is the meat? What about veggies? And those are all valid questions but the secret of a good sale shopper is stocking up when prices are low. And these two freezer are proof of that.

I am a little nervous to put these photos out there and I am sure that there are some of you who are judging us. But I think it is important to show what we have on hand in our freezers so you can better understand that we don't live off of yogurt and laundry detergent.

Between the two freezers we ended up with 30+ pounds of meat (before our Zaycon order) which included two 10+pound turkeys, 4 bags of meatballs, 10+ pounds of assorted frozen chicken, a large ham, 3 pounds of bacon and more. We have close to 20 bags of frozen veggies, more than 5 kinds of frozen bread, over 10 pounds of butter products, tons of frozen potato products, and so much more.

There is also an assortment of frozen meals, ice cream/dessert treats, pastas, baking supplies, frozen fruit, smoothies, and a few tupperwares of frozen homemade dishes. Obviously we have plenty of food to last us for the next few months.

It was so nice to get an inventory of what we have on hand so I can use it to guide my grocery shopping through the summer. With all of these items and our 40 pounds of Zaycon chicken in the freezers we are going to be able to buy what we want and not have the need to buy anything unless it's on amazing sale.

Inside freezer after:

 

We managed to get both freezers cleaned out and organized about a week before our Zaycon arrived. We were pretty successful at our attempt to eat out of the freezer to make room for our chicken and once we cleaned up and foodsavered our order, all forty pounds of chicken fit nicely in our outside freezer.

How do you organize your freezer? Do you have any tips or suggestions for me? What is the longest you have gone "eating out of the freezer"?

Stalk My Stockpile: Finding The Bottom Of The Deep Freezer- Part One

                                                                            

 Did you miss the first installments of the Stalk My Stockpile series? Check them out HERE!

A huge part of couponing is having a stockpile of health, beauty products, and household products, a pantry full of food and a full fridge and freezers. Over the last year and a half, we have made significant improvements in all those categories and as of late we have actually found that our two freezers are so full we can barely close their doors.

Since we just ordered forty pounds of fresh chicken breasts from Zaycon, I have decided that in the next six weeks (our chicken arrives in the end of March) we are going to make a concerted effort to clean our our regular freezer and chest freezer. I have named it the "Find The Bottom Of The Deep Freezer Challenge".

 

This challenge is two part. One, the obvious, we need to make some serious room in our chest freezer. I have never bought forty pounds of chicken before I can imagine it takes up a lot of room. Two, we have four weddings in three months and I would love to save some of our grocery money for eating out during our wedding related travels.

So over the next six weeks I will be refocusing our grocery/household budget on household products, health and beauty items, pantry staples and then our usual fresh items like yogurt, salad, and some produce. I am going to attempt to buy almost no frozen items. We'll see if I actually succeed....

This week I plan to empty our our regular freezer and our chest freezer and make an inventory of what we have and then attempt to plan our meals around it. I am sure we are going to be shocked by what we have in their.

I know for a fact that we probably have at least 30 pounds of various meats/proteins, lots of frozen veggies, frozen bread (both store bought and homemade), ice cream/frozen treats, butters, pizzas, breakfast items, frozen fruit, and so much more. Chances are we will have to get a little creative with our meals but I am excited to see how it goes.

Stay tuned for the second part of this post where I will show case the contents of my two freezers and fill you in on how they look after the reorganization!

How do you organize your freezer? Do you have any tips or suggestions for me? What is the longest you have gone "eating out of the freezer"?

Stalk My Stockpile: Part Two- Health & Beauty

 

 Make sure you check out Part One of the Stalk My Stockpile Series if you haven't already!

I have to admit that I didn't start couponing to save money on food and groceries. I really got into couponing because I could not stand spending $50 every other week at Target for a small bag of health & beauty products. Don't get me wrong, saving money on food is amazing but nothing beats the feeling of knowing that I will never have to run out at 11pm for shampoo, toilet paper or contact solution again : )

All the stockpile items in these photos and those that will be in the rest of the series come from my weekly shopping trips. Check out my past trips for details about what I paid and the sale/coupon match ups I used to purchase these products.

Main H&B Stockpile Closet

My health & beauty (H&B) stockpile includes personal care items, make up, beauty products, medicines, vitamins, razors, toilet paper, tissues and so much more. I currently store my H&B products in a large linen closet in my extra upstairs bathroom. The only things I don't keep in there are all my vitamins, medicines and other first aid products since I don't want them to get ruined by moisture. 

I am going to try and show you some close ups of each shelf and what I store there. Keep in mind that these products have been purchase over the last year and are bought using my weekly household/grocery budget of $50-$80 a week for all food, groceries, household items, H&B products and paper products.

When I store most of my H&B products I try to organize them by earliest expiration date first. For products that don't have expiration dates like shampoo or tissues I make put my most recent purchases in the back of that products stash to make sure I use up the products I bought earliest before I use the newer ones.

We also keep paper products and personal products in each of our three bathrooms so those are not pictured here. As you can see we are very well stocked on some things thanks to recent trips and deals and we are running low on a few things too. Hopefully we will see some good pricing on things like mouthwash, toothbrushes and other things soon.

This photo was taken before I bought 8 bottles of Pantene Products today too.

 Along with never having to pay full price this part of our stockpile comes in very handy when we want to donate to toiletry drives or to homeless shelters and we definitely have some family who likes to come over and raid the H&B closet : )

About 30 boxes of tissues

The equivalent of over 100 regular rolls of toilet paper

In my early couponing days when Justin was still skeptical about the merits of couponing I think that it was saving money on these types of products that convinced him more than saving money on food did. Before we got married he had a very bad habit of waiting until he absolutely HAD to have razors or shampoo before restocking and he was always having to pay full price.

Additional first aid supplies

As I mentioned, my medicines, vitamins and other first aid products are stored in a different place than my other H&B items. I keep these in the upstairs hallway linen closet and store many of them in air tight containers to keep them from spoiling.

I am constantly check expiration dates on these products so I can make sure we use or donate things before they expire.

Vitamins and Pain Relievers

Where do you store your Health & Beauty stockpile? What is your favorite H&B item to get for cheap/free with coupons?

Join me over the next few weeks as I share more photos and information on my stockpile and how I store it.

Part Three: Cleaning Supplies and Household Products
Part Four: Pantry
Part Five: Fridge & Freezer

Make sure you stop by this week's Mealtime Monday and link up any amazing recipes you have been working on lately.

***Depending on the day this post may be linked up to any of these fabulous linky parties.***

Do you host a weekly party? If so, make sure to visit my party page and add yours so we all can join in the fun!

Stalk My Stockpile: Part One

Ok, you know you're curious. You see me buy things every week and I can hear you asking yourself, "Who needs that much air freshener?" or "How can anyone possible eat 40 boxes of pasta?". And yes, I admit it seems crazy. But the mainstay of any couponer is her (or his) stockpile. 

My stockpiles are my pride and joy. They make me irrationally happy. There is nothing better than knowing that if you run out of shampoo or toilet paper at 11:00 at night that you can just walk to the closet and grab some. No need to run out to grab things, no paying full price, no going without. 

Here's a little preview of what's to come in next week's post: Our Health & Beauty Closet

Just in case you have never seen Extreme Couponing or heard about stockpiles, let me fill you in. A stockpile is a collection of food, pantry staples, personal care products, cleaning supplies and paper products that one buys at rock bottom prices (or gets free with coupons). Some crazy, extreme couponers have stockpiles that take up entire rooms, basements, garages and more. The idea of a stockpile is that you should never have to go out to the store and buy something full price when you run out and absolutely need it.

Being from South Florida where basements don't exist and the garage is a constant 120 degrees, I store my stockpile a little differently than many couponers. I keep most of my products in my pantry, kitchen and upstairs closets and only keep a select amount of non-perishables on a few shelves in my garage. 

Over the next few weeks I am going to show you pictures of my stockpile and discuss how I organize and store my stash. I am a little bit nervous about this since I don't really know how my stockpile stacks up to other not crazy normal couponers. I am also a little worried that non couponers will judge me since it can seem a bit strange for a family of two to have such large quantities of stuff. 

Week One: Health & Beauty 

Week Two: Cleaning Supplies and Household Products

Week Three: Pantry

Week Four: Fridge & Freezer 

Keep in mind that I have bought all of this in the last year and that despite what it might look like spend between $40-$80 a week total for all our groceries, household, health and beauty items and everything you see in our stockpile. I know some people will ask "Why not save your money? Why buy shampoo if you have so much already?" My response would be if you can still stay within (or below) your normal budget why not slowly build up a stock pile?

There are weeks when we are busy or tight with our budget and our stockpile has been invaluable. It is so nice to be able to make lunch or dinner without running out to the store for things. We are able to have people over last minute and not panic about needing some snacks. Best of all, I am spending way less than I use to on these things while buying way more. And if there ever comes a time that I can't coupon or couponing policies change, at least I will have a few months worth of stuff to live off of  : )

Make sure you stop by this week's Mealtime Monday and link up any amazing recipes you have been working on lately.

***Depending on the day this post may be linked up to any of these fabulous linky parties.***

Do you host a weekly party? If so, make sure to visit my party page and add yours so we all can join in the fun!