Potatoes: $1.99/10 pound bag

The local grocery had a ten pound bag of potatoes on sale for $1.99 this weekend. Really, unless you’re a low-carb person, quite a good deal. I bought a bag and came and home and scrubbed and poked about 2/3 of the bag to bake. When they were done, I made twice baked potatoes for later, flash freezing them, and a batch of potato soup for tonight’s dinner and half to freeze later.

I also peeled and diced and parboiled another half a dozen potatoes to freeze for hash browns later.

If you’re seeing similar sales in your neck of the wood, this site has a great many ideas for freezing potato dishes.

The twice baked potatoes are a great hit around here for an after-school snack on cold days. My youngest will pull out half a potato (or two if they’re small) and microwave them for a snack after school. And I like having a nice side dish nearly ready in the freezer.

I’ve not tried the hash browns before but will try to remember to report back. Certainly cheaper than buying a bag of frozen hash browns!

We’ve made and loved the baked potato soup before and we were all just fine with the texture after freezing. I’ll serve it as a main dish the first time, like I did tonight when it’s fresh, and then heat smaller portions later to round out another meal later.

Other costs to the baked potato soup I served tonight included half a pound of bacon (except we only used 1/4) and 1 cup of grated Cheddar cheese, plus an onion, and some dried herbs. The chicken broth was homemade so nearly free (most folks throw away the bones). For the 2 cups of half and half mentioned in the recipe I used 1 cup half and half and one cup 1% milk.