Wow. Good-bye Jewel. Today I shopped at Angelo Caputo’s and so hello and good-bye to Caputo’s, too. In my new home, I’ll be shopping at Trader Joe’s and Safeway, since both are a short walk from the new house.

So, this will be my last write-up of the Chicago grocery highlights as well.

Here are the highlights for Chicago grocery sales from May 16 through May 23:

SALES THAT START WEDNESDAY

• Aldi: Strawberries $1.19/lb. Blueberries $1.49 for 6 oz. 3 pounds frozen chicken breasts $5.49. See Aldi weekly ads online. Find Aldi locations.
• Tony’s Finer Foods: Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce 79 cents. Sirloin pork chops $1.89/lb. Limes 15/$1. Organic celery 99 cents a bunch. Eggplant 49 cents a pound. See Tony’s locations and ads.
• Fair Share Super Market (a Centrella store): Bananas 38 cents a pound. Oscar Mayer eat wieners 1 lb. $1.25. See locations and specials.
• Angelo Caputo’s: Peaches 59 cents a pound. Red, yellow or orange peppers 89 cents a pound. Homemade Italian sausage $1.69/lb. La Bella Romana frozen pizzas $2.99. Zucchini 49 cents a pound. See the onlinead/shopping list builder and locations.
• Food4Less: Family pack split chicken breasts 98 cents/lb. Strawberries 1 lb. or blackberries 6 oz. $1.50. See the Food4Less ad and locations.

SALES THAT START THURSDAY

• Jewel-Osco: See Jewel locations and ad. If you haven’t already, sign up for Jewel emails to print a coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase.
• Dominick’s: Milk is back on Just for U at $1.97 a gallon. Also on J4U, 12 oz. packs of Vienna Beef franks are $2.77.  Thurs-Mon. only, Lucerne cheese is $2.99/lb. and Nabisco crackers are $1.99. See Dominick’s locations and online sale ads. Get personalized Dominick’s deals on Just for U. Check this week’s Deal Match offers here.
• Ultra:  Bananas 33 cents a pound. Chicken leg quarters 58 cents a pound. Van de Camp’s pork and beans 39 cents a pound. Buy 10 save $5 deal results in 88-cent Wishbone salad dressing or 88-ent Ragu pasta sauce. See Ultra locations and ads.

Then when you make your first purchase, I’ll get a $5 credit.

One of the deals available today is a two-year subscription to Parenting magazine for just $5, so you could get that free with your free $10 credit.

If you need a new checking account, you can sign up for one at Bank of America and get $1oo deposited for free. Make sure to read the fine print to make sure you won’t get charged a bunch of checking fees.

The nice thing about having a BOFA account — if you manage to avoid fees — is that you can show your debit card to get into certain museums free once a month.

Fortunately, this week I was able to shop less and eat out less. I spent $32 at Trader Joe’s, and spent $15 on drive-through treats (shakes for the kids at Dunkin Donuts, two McDonald’s coffees for me and a cheeseburger for Pebbles). We were treated to dinner at Perkins by my in-laws and were fed by my parents for the rest of the weekend, so that certainly helped!

Adding up this week’s spending plus that lingering $47.50 from last week’s sleep-shopping, and I’m at $94.50. Success!

Here’s what we ate on that: Breakfasts were toast, fruit, fruit smoothies or oatmeal. Lunches were leftovers or sandwiches. Dinners:

WEDNESDAY pork chop casserole (we didn’t end up eating those defrosted chops last week after all)

THURSDAY fish sticks and sweet potato fries, salad

FRIDAY hamburgers and fries, my parents’ treat

SATURDAY ate at a family party

SUNDAY holiday meal at my mom’s house, then Perkins, my in-laws’ treat

MONDAY homemade pumpkin carrot soup with homemade white bread (I’m out of whole wheat flour and don’t wanna buy more before we move!)

TUESDAY chicken sausages, brussels sprouts and sweet potato fries

Much to the surprise of my friends, I belong to the expensive gym in Oak Park. Why have I been paying $120 a month for the kids and I to belong there? Two reasons: One, they have a large, well-staffed kids room with activities to keep the kids happy, and Two, they have a rock climbing wall that is staffed with climbing experts who will hold the rope for you so you don’t have to have a partner. Since I have never been able to line up a partner in Oak Park with a schedule that gels with mine, this has been fabulous.

When I took over this gym membership from my husband, I was reminded that when we signed up, we had prepaid our last month’s membership. Three weeks ago, I called the gym to let them know that since May would be my last month, they shouldn’t charge me for May.

They replied that my last month would have to be June. If I had wanted to leave at the end of May, I would have had to call them by April 15.

First of all, this sucks. They claimed that there was nothing they could do to stop me from being charged on May 2 because it was all set up. Please. Companies issue refunds and cancel services on a moment’s notice all the time.

I didn’t doubt that these were the rules, rules that either my husband or I had probably read upon signup. Still, I thought, let’s see if there’s something we can do about this.

I emailed the club’s director, a friendly guy who I had seen working various positions around the gym. After a few days, he asked me to come to his office and talk about the situation. When I arrived, he repeated the line about being powerless to stop the impending charge on my account for May dues.

Then he offered me a gift card for the club’s spa in the amount of my monthly dues — $60. (I hadn’t prepaid for the kids’ last month, so their $60 would just get charged as usual for May.)

“This interview is over, sir,” I said, practically snatching the gift card out of his hand and thanking him about a thousand times.

To be honest, getting the gift card was better than getting a cash refund, because I would not have blown the cash on a wonderful massage for myself. But now, hey — I had no choice.

So, kudos to my gym management for getting around their annoying corporate policy in a customer friendly way,* and kudos to me for remembering that it never hurts — and often helps — to ask.

* No, I did not tell them I had a blog. They had no idea what a huge, giant Internet celebrity I am, and I am confident they would have done the same for anyone who asked nicely.

Speaking of Plum District, you can get 20% off any deal there today with the coupon code MOMSDAY20.

Plum District has kindly offered to give one of my readers a massage from Oxygen Spa Studio in Chicago. It’s a celebration to wrap up the daily deal site’s Month of Mom!

If you win, you get to choose one of five massage options:

• A 60-minute Swedish massage
• A 60-minute maternity/prenatal massage
• A 60-minute aromatherapy massage with 15-min scalp stimulation
• A 90-minute hot stone massage
• A 60-min couples massage

And oh man, do I wish I could enter my own contest, because I have always wanted to get a hot stone massage. Mmm, it just sounds so nice.

Here’s the drill:

To enter, go to Plum District sign up to receive daily deal emails. Then leave a comment letting me know you did so.

If you already belong, or you just want to enter more than once, here are two more options. You must leave a separate comment for each thing you do in order to be counted:
Like’ the Plum District Chicago Facebook page
Follow Plum District Chicago on Twitter: @PlumDistrictCHI

This contest ENDED will end at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Mother’s Day, at which point I will use Random.org to select one winning comment.

OK … go! And happy Mother’s Day.

It is just over two weeks now until we pack our three kids and two cats into a minivan to drive across the country. I have so much packing and so many other organizing chores ahead of me yet that I can hardly bear to think about it, but there it is.

One thing I’m starting to plan is how we can eat during the 10 days or so we will be on the road, without spending too much money or being too disgustingly unhealthy. I mean, I’m not expecting to stick to normal, eating-at-home standards of healthy eating, but I also really don’t want to gain a lot of weight on this trip and sitting still in the car for hours every day snacking on chips and fast food sounds like a recipe for just that.

So it was great timing for me when the National Restaurant Association contacted me about its Kids LiveWell program. The following is a sponsored post sharing what I learned from attending a dinner presentation and press conference with Kids LiveWell and some of the group’s member restaurants, and how I plan to use it on our road trip:

Kids LiveWell is an agreement among 96 restaurant brands to offer healthy menu items for kids. What’s a healthy menu item? It’s a kid’s meal with side and drink that is under 600 calories total, and it must include at least two healthy-type ingredients such as a vegetable or low-fat dairy. The full KidsWell requirements are listed here.

Of particular interest to me, because of our impending road trip, is the app they just launched for Droid and iPhone. I downloaded it right away and am looking forward to using it to find participating restaurants on the road. It has a “location” feature — when I pushed that button, the app showed me a map of my area with all the participating restaurants, and even tipped me off that the closest one is Denny’s.

Then, when I clicked the restaurant name, it let me know that the Kids LiveWell choices at Denny’s are “Build Your Own Grand Slam” with orange juice and spaghetti with apple juice.

The app also gives you the whole list of participating restaurants, in case you are looking for ideas or want to scroll through to the place you had in mind. So if we’re driving through South Dakota and we see that there’s a Sonic coming up, we could quick check and find out that, yes, Sonic has Kids LiveWell meal consisting of a junior burger, apple slices with fat-free caramel dipping sauce, and apple juice.

Now, this example brings a question to my mind that you might have too: If I am taking my family to Sonic, do I really care if what the kids order is healthy? For that matter, am I concerned how many calories are in a kids’ meal anywhere they eat? My kids could use a few extra pounds just to keep their pants from falling down all the time.

And yet, I’m sure that once we’ve been on the road a few days, I will really want to get at least one meal a day into them that includes a vegetable. Being part of Kids LiveWell doesn’t guarantee that a restaurant serves vegetables, but I can use this app to browse the menu options available at nearby eateries and steer us toward a place that has that side of veggies instead of just fries.

I was invited to attend two Kids LiveWell events during the National Restaurant Association Show this week — a dinner program and a press conference on the show floor. Besides learning about the program and the app, there was a lot of interesting discussion at both the Kids LiveWell events. At the dinner I chatted with my fellow moms about our priorities when it comes to what our kids get at restaurants. The event organizers very kindly solicited our feedback, and after thinking about it, this was the feedback I offered:

This is a great start. What I hope you do next is to encourage member restaurants to cut the bad stuff — in my case, the thing that bugs me the most is added sugar — in menu items across the board, not just in a couple items.

For instance, I love that McDonalds (not a Kids LiveWell member at this time) added a fruit and yogurt parfait to its menu. Heck, it was something I could spoon-feed my infant! But when I tasted the parfait, I was disappointed to realize that both the yogurt and the fruit layers were packed with sugar. It would be nice if we could feed our kids treat foods — a smoothie, a yogurt parfait — that contained less added sugar than most “quick service” restaurants currently use.

One restaurant that I learned about for the first time at these events should be a great inspiration for other restaurants: Silver Diner. This chain is out in Virginia and Maryland — my friend Kori who came along with me loved eating there when she and her husband lived in the DC area. Their Kids LiveWell menu items include “Kids Turkey Sliders with Strawberries” and “Kids Bison Sliders with Vegetables.” Sounds delicious, right?

Silver Diner’s charismatic co-founder (and chef) Ype Von Hengst stood up at the press conference to make some impromptu remarks about his restaurant’s experience adding more healthy options for kids. He stressed that the idea that kids only want to eat junk food is wrong, and I couldn’t agree more. His philosophy is, sure, give them pancakes, but give them some healthy fruits along with it.

“Whatever we give them, they will eat,” he said.

One thing that Silver Diner has done that I think is particularly awesome? They took fried potatoes off the kids menu. Oh, they’re still available. But kids have to know that and ask for them. As a parent, haven’t you been in the situation where you feel undercut by a restaurant’s presentation? I mean, if the kids’ meals just came with the side of fruit or vegetables without the choice of chips, the kids would eat it and be happy — especially if there’s dip. Good waitresses ask you really quietly if the kids want the veggies or the chips. But mean restaurants or careless waitresses put the picture of the chips right int he kid’s face or ask the kid — do you want veggies or chips with that?

I am really glad I learned about the Kids LiveWell program and app before our trip, and I’ll be making use of it. I think they’re off to a great start, and that members like Silver Diner have great examples of how all restaurants could take this farther.

Oh, and then since I was already at the National Restaurant Association Show for the press conference, I took a little food tour. I’ll share some photos of all the (not necessarily healthy) stuff I ate in a follow-up post.

Disclosure: I received compensation from the National Restaurant Association’s Kids LiveWell program for my time reviewing and writing about their program.  The opinions expressed are solely my own.

SALES THAT START WEDNESDAY

• Aldi: Didnt’ get my Aldi ad. See Aldi weekly ads online. Find Aldi locations.
• Tony’s Finer Foods: Powerade 49 cents. Bone-in chicken breast 99 cents/lb. Cascade yogurt cups 50 cents. See Tony’s locations and ads.
• Fair Share Super Market (a Centrella store): Eggs 69 cents a dozen. Manufacturer’s coupon for $2 off 3 12-packs Coke. See locations and specials.
• Angelo Caputo’s: Jones Braunschweiger 9 oz. for $1.79.  Eggplant 59 cents a pound. See the online ad/shopping list builder and locations.
• Food4Less: See the Food4Less ad and locations.

SALES THAT START THURSDAY

• Jewel-Osco: Arm & Hammer laundry detergent 50 loads $2.99 (that’s 6 cents per load). Buy 4 participating Nestle ice cream products, get a coupon for $4 off your next trip.  Hebrew National beef franks $3. See Jewel locations and ad. If you haven’t already, sign up for Jewel emails to print a coupon for $5 off a $25 purchase.
• Dominick’s: On Just for U this week, bananas are 39 cents a pound and Jay’s chips are $1.88. I got personalized coupons on Just for U for 50 cents off Ritz crackers — and these are on sale Friday through Monday for $1.99. It looks like the milk deal on Just for U ends today, May 9 — so grab two today if you want $1.97 gallons. See Dominick’s locations and online sale ads. Get personalized Dominick’s deals on Just for U. Check this week’s Deal Match offers here.
• Ultra:  Dutch Farms cheese 6-8 oz. are 98 cents, limit 4. Peaches 98 cents a pound. Dutch Farms butter $1.99/lb.  Campbell’s Pork & Beans 29 cents a can. See Ultra locations and ads.

For one thing, I caved practically every time the kids asked for a treat, which means we went to Dunkin Donuts at least twice. To be honest, most of those trips were bribes because after spending hours on the phone dealing with screw-ups in our still-delayed mortgage, throwing a slumber party for 9 kids (counting my own) and everything else that goes into single parenting and planning a huge move on my own, I just didn’t have the strength of mind to wrestle the kids into the car to go wherever we needed to go those days without bribing them.

Hey, on the upside, I did’t order anything at Dunkin Donuts. But all those little trips added up, in addition to a meal at Flat Top Grill and another at Chipotle, and my restaurant total for the week was $44.

Dunkin Donuts $6

Taco Bell $4

Chipotle $14

Bruegger’s $8

Flat Top $19

I felt like I was doing poorly on the grocery front too, since I had to throw away several containers of leftovers during the week.

But when I totaled my actual grocery receipts, I found that I had spent only $24 at Dominick’s and $30 at Ultra. That’s the upside of all those restaurant meals, I guess — buying less groceries.

And I would like to point out that those grocery runs also included a number of things I needed for the Hogwarts-themed slumber party I held this weekend, at which I had to feed six kids and one adult in addition to my own 3. I had already cooked the main course and put it int he freezer (homemade “Guiness” beef stew, from the Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook), but I had to buy cake mix, frosting, canary creams (Golden Oreos), jam tarts (Pop-Tarts), bacon, sausage, popcorn, chocolate syrup and seltzer. Also, chips and guacamole makings for the other mom and me — she brought the drinks.

The party went over quite well, even if a number of the little guests ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner instead of beef stew and buttered peas a la the Hogwarts Great Hall.

So my total food spending for the week was $98 — I made it under budget after all, even with a slumber party!

(Unless I find a receipt in my purse from a shopping trip I’d totally forgotten about. That happens sometimes!)

WHAT WE ATE ON $98 THIS WEEK, FOR DINNER:

WEDNESDAY – can’t remember.

THURSDAY – vegetarian tacos.

FRIDAY – Frozen pizza, salad.

SATURDAY – Slumber party! Beef stew with carrots and potatoes, buttered peas. For dessert, birthday cake.

SUNDAY – I went out for a blog event and the sitter fed the kids pasta with jarred sauce

MONDAY – pasta left over from last night, salad

TUESDAY – bean soup from the freezer with homemade bread and defrosted pork chops

For breakfasts, we had oatmeal or peanut/butter jelly toast, with fruit. For lunches, leftovers or sandwiches.