The post below talks about how you can use your Crock Pot to cook frugally. Here’s a chance to enter a contest to win a brand-new Crock Pot for your kitchen. Good luck!

A Year of CrockPotting: Happy Crocktober! Brand new eLume Give Away.

PLEASE NOTE: You have to post your comment on the website above–not the one here–to enter the contest. Sorry for any confusion.

One of the ways that I’ve been keeping our grocery costs low is doing what most experts like Coupon Mom Stephanie Nelson suggest you do when food shopping–plan your menus around what’s on sale at your supermarket. For a long time, I have to admit that I was embarrassed to be seen studying the supermarket circular as I trolled the aisles of the store. Now that I’ve embraced our new frugality, I’m proud to keep that colorful sell sheet with me as my badge of savings, stored prominently on the top rack of my shopping cart. And I have to tell you that it really does work.

A few weeks ago I noticed that chicken drumsticks were on sale for $.99 a pound. The store had five-pound packs of them in the butcher department, and I stocked up.

To be honest I haven’t had much experience making anything with drumsticks; I’m more a chicken breast kind of gal. However, I do have fond memories of my mother making fried chicken when I was a kid, and then we would take the chicken in a picnic basket to the beach, where we would eat dinner on summer evenings. (Oh, the joys of growing up near the beach.) I’m sure one of the reasons that chicken drumsticks were my mother’s go-to meal was because they tend to be the most affordable part of the chicken. Like with many things in my new frugal and green lifestyle, I’m seeing the wisdom of my mother’s ways.

So while I may not be a savvy drumstick cook, I do know my way around a Crock-Pot, and it’s become one of the easiest ways for me to whip up an inexpensive dinner. Plus, a slow cooker uses a lot less energy than a traditional cooking implement, so I know I’m not wasting electricity when I make a meal in the Crock Pot.

Once I had my cheapo drumsticks in hand, I searched my favorite cooking blog A Year of Crockpotting for drumstick recipes. I found two–one that I made the night I brought home the deal on drumsticks, and another earlier this week. Both were a smash with my family.

The first was sort of an ode to my mom, because it’s called CrockPot Fried Chicken Recipe, even though no frying of the chicken occurs. However, this recipe was a hands-down hit with my family. “Honey, you outdid yourself,” my husband said between bites. “Mmmm, it smells like Thanksgiving,” said my oldest daughter, her eyes closed and nose in the air. I think she ended up eating three pieces of the chicken. My youngest loved the chicken so much that she didn’t even ask for ketchup, her usual must-have with any chicken dish. I served this with potatoes and broccoli, both of which I already had on hand, and the total cost for the meal was about $6.

This week’s meal was a bit of a risk, because it involved peanut butter. Now, my kids love peanut butter when it’s between two pieces of white bread, but anywhere else and they’re a little hesitant. This CrockPot Indonesian Chicken recipe, like most on the blog, was relatively simple to make and didn’t cost that much. I’ll bet the total cost of dinner, with rice and veggies, was about $7. Plus we have left overs for lunch. I modified the recipe a bit to add some honey to it–Stephanie, the blog’s owner, had commented that she thought it needed a bit of sweet so I took her word on that–and everyone loved it.

Back at the grocery store this past week, I noticed that whole chicken breasts were on sale for $1.19 a pound. I’m going to do something a bit unorthodox with them for tonight’s dinner, and use them to make old-fashioned, Jewish chicken soup. (You’re supposed to use a whole chicken.) Thanks to my CSA membership, I’ve already got parsnips, leeks, carrots and potatoes, plus herbs, that I can use in the soup so my only investment will be chicken broth. But wouldn’t you know it? I stocked up on that a few months ago when it was dirt cheap at the store. I’m hoping that once I get the soup make today, I can use the cooked breasts for the main portion of the meal, and the broth for an appetizer. Hopefully, I’ll have lots of leftovers for a couple days worth of lunch next week.

How do you guys make your dinner plans frugal?

As many of you know, from my blog postings and Twitter updates, late last week my mother was admitted to the hospital. That meant that in less than 24 hours from her initial emergency, I needed to get myself from Pennsylvania to Maine–and believe me, I was in no shape to make the eight-hour drive. Really, the only rational thing to do was to fly, so on Thursday I spend most of the afternoon trying to work that out.

Let me tell you, I was sorely disappointed in USAirways ability to accommodate me with my last-minute request. Now, I realize that most airlines want you to still buy your ticket well in advance if you want to get a decent fare. Fair enough. But with customer traffic on the decline (so says a recent New York Times article “Travel Industry Shaken by Economic Downturn”), you would think that the airlines that are hurting for passengers would make it more attractive for people like me to do business with them. Nope, not at all.

When I checked in on USAirways website on Thursday, a round-trip ticket from Philadelphia to Portland was $1,200. It didn’t matter what time I wanted to fly out on Friday, the fare was pretty much set in stone.

Next I figured I might try trading in some of my frequent flier miles. I’ve got a decent amount on the airline, and I’ve never had the chance to use them. Well, that wasn’t going to work either. Though I was traveling only about 600 miles, USAirways wanted me to use 50,000 miles for a 1,200 mile round trip. (Perhaps it’s been simply too long since I tried to trade in miles for a ticket and this is the norm?)

Of course, I could have called the airline, but now that USAirways is charging $25 for you to book travel through one of its phone agents, there was no way my frugal self could justify that kind of extortion, er “convenience” fee.

Why did I go to USAirways first? Well, one of their biggest hubs is in Philadelphia, which I thought meant that they would offer me the most options for my flight. Well, I was wrong.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that my best bet was going to be turning to Southwest Airlines, one of my favorite airlines of all time–and where I should have gone in the first place. (Whenever I travel for business, I tell people to book me on Southwest first.) Yup, Southwest came through for me and in a way that didn’t put a huge dent in my pocketbook. I was able to book one of their Business Select seats on a flight leaving first-thing Friday morning for $138. Yes, you read that right, one hundred and thirty eight dollars–and that’s including all taxes.

I could have booked a slightly cheaper fare, but being the control freak that I am, I like that the Business Select fare comes with a guarantee of being one of the first people on the plane. And with Southwest’s open-seating program, this gives me peace of mind that I’ll be able to choose an aisle seat, even in the exit row, instead of getting stuck somewhere I don’t want to sit.

Priority boarding aside, here are some of the other perks that come with a Southwest Business Select fare:

* Earning extra points in Southwest’s frequent flier program

* Receiving a free drink coupon when you print out your boarding pass. This is key if you want more than soda during your flight, because Southwest no longer takes cash to pay for drinks. You have to use credit or debit, or you’ll be going thirsty. (Soft drinks, coffee, water and juice are still free.)

* Getting a discount on a car rental (I used this for the car I picked up at the Manchester, New Hampshire airport when I landed).

* Lining up for priority security screening in certain airports that Southwest serves. These include BWI, Dallas, Denver and Los Angeles.

* Being eligible for a full refund of your fare if you need to cancel or change your flight. This option came in handy for me, because I was originally scheduled to fly home midweek after taking care of my mom. I was sticking around to take her to a doctor’s appointment, which was eventually pushed back. Since I was unable to stay longer in the week and my mom was recuperating really nicely–nearly back to her old self–I decided to change my flight to a few days earlier. I paid no penalties and still got the flight I wanted for only $138.

Remember: this $138 is considered to be Southwest’s full-priced fare for the flights I needed to take between Philadelphia and Manchester, New Hampshire. I realize that for more “popular” routes, that full fare might be a wee bit more (for example, I’m flying to Tampa later this month and paying closer to $400 round trip), but I’m confident it would never be anywhere close to the $1,200 heart-stopping fare that I found on USAirways.

That’s why this week I’m giving the Suddenly Frugal Seal of Approval to Southwest Airlines. The next time you need to get from Point A to Point B via an airline, I would strongly suggest you look at Southwest Airlines first.