Birthday Freebies

The other week on Facebook, a friend asked what the best birthday deal you found was. I had to say Kohl’s. That got me thinking. Every November my inbox starts to overflow with birthday deals and coupons…many of which I use. I try to use them all but sometimes, the requirements are not worth it or there are just so many days in the month.

Here’s a list of what I have gotten this year or know of. Just about all of these require you to sign up for their mailing lists.

Restaurants Meals

Noodles and Company – Free Bowl of Noodles. You have the entire month to use it. Plus you get multiple coupons  throughout the year for Buy One, Get One Noodles.

Red Robin – Free burger. Most burgers or chicken sandwiches qualify. You have the entire month to use it. You have to be a Red Royalty Card Holder. It gives you perks throughout the year, every 10^th burger is free, and a portion of your purchase and can go back to the school of your choice.

Q’doba – Buy One, Get One Entrée. Since my birthday is towards, the end of the month, I have the 2^nd half of the month to use it. Not too many other email perks but lots of update emails. I believe all your rewards are on your card.

Fuddruckers – Free burger. Again I get this one in the middle month of the month and have until the middle of the next month or so to use it. You do get some additional perks throughout the year but mainly informational emails.

Dickey’s BBQ – Free Sandwich. This another one that you have 2 weeks to use it. I almost lost mine this year when I deleted it by accident. Good thing for auto-recover. There are several other perks through the year as well.

Buffalo Wild Wings – Free snack size of wings (Boneless or traditional). This is probably my husband’s favorite one. I don’t mind it either.  It’s good for 2 weeks. Plus you get free wings and things throughout the year.

Denny’s – Free Grand Slam. It is only good on the day of your birthday. Other perks are 20% of your bill like every month. I have never used this one mainly because I usually have to work the morning of my birthday and am not a big fan of the grand slam. It’s always an option though.

IHOP – Free Pancakes. This is one I do not get. I actually just never got around to signing up for it. You also get free pancakes right when you sign up and again on your sign up anniversary. This one I may wait until summer to do so we can have free pancakes in summer too.

BJ Clancy’s – Free meal on your birthday after 4pm with the purchase of at least 2 beverages and another meal. There are quite a few options to choose from plus you get ice cream for dessert. This is where we normally go for our birthdays.

Other Restaurant Freebies

Texas Roadhouse – Free Appetizer with the purchase of an entree. We use it if we’re there. I’m not going to run out just to get some free onion rings. Besides I don’t want to ride the saddle.

Applebee’s – Free Dessert with the purchase of an entrée. Again this one of those, if I’m there I’ll use it but I’m not going to make a special trip for a free dessert.

Longhorn Steakhouse -- Free Dessert with the purchase of an entrée. Again this one of those, if I’m there I’ll use it but I’m not going to make a special trip for a free dessert.

Olive Garden -- Free Dessert with the purchase of an entrée. Again this one of those, if I’m there I’ll use it but I’m not going to make a special trip for a free dessert. I am not signed up for Olive Garden’s emails but I saw this one of Facebook this morning.

Panera Bread – Free Bakery Item. I would use this if Panera was actually convenient to me. Hopefully this year. It automatically gets load on your card.

Pizza Hut --  Free CinnaStix. We normally don’t order from Pizza Hut but I have the coupon just in case.

Black Otter – Gift Certificate to use on a future purchase if you come in on your birthday. We actually did this one year for the hubby’s birthday. Normally we got to Clancy’s.

Luigi’s in Menasha – Free Mini Cannoli on your birthday. I stumbled upon this one by accident. We ate there last night and I told the waitress I don’t get dessert if I don’t clean my plate even if it’s my birthday. She asked if it was my birthday and I said it was tomorrow. She said close enough and brought me a Cannoli.

Ice Cream and other Snacks

Cold Stone Creamery – Buy One Get One Ice Cream. It’s only good at a specific location. We moved and the mall location is no longer convenient. Besides I feel that it’s my birthday and I should be able to get a free scoop by myself if I’m at the mall and not have to drag the hubby or someone with just to cash in on some free ice cream.

Baskin Robbins -- $3 off an ice cream cake. Free scope of ice cream. The nice thing with Baskin-Robbins, you can register the entire family with 1 email so everyone gets a free scope on their birthday. They don’t bother you the rest of the year.

Downtown Neenah Dairy Queen -- $5 off a DQ Cake. I am not sure about the other Dairy Queens but I know the Downtown Neenah DQ offers this. I know other DQs give out free blizzards.

Auntie Anne’s Pretzels – Free pretzel the month of your birthday plus other perks throughout the year. It’s all done through their app now.

Beverages

 A&W – Free root beer float. I’ve never cashed in on this one mainly because my birthday is in November. I think it’s too cold for a root beer float. I’m thinking this year may be different.

Starbucks – Free Beverage. Here’s the catch, need to register a gift card/app. That’s not a problem. This year I only had 3 days to use my free beverage. That’s tough this time of year with Thanksgiving.

Dunkin Donuts – Free Beverage. Good for 3 months after your birthday. You need to be enrolled in their rewards program but you receive free beverages after 200 points. You get points for everything you buy. Plus you get a survey for a free donut on the bottom of every receipt.

Shopping

Kohl’s – $10 to spend the month of your birthday if you have a Kohl’s Credit Card. You also get the other perks of Kohl’s Credit Card throughout the rest of the year. I don’t use my Kohl’s card all that often but it’s nice to have just in case.

Shopko -- $10 off $50 during the month of your birthday if you sign up for the rewards card. I normally don’t spend that much at Shopko at one time so I have actually never used it. You also get other discounts throughout the year including your anniversary month.

Younkers/Boston Store -- $25 off $75. I don’t spend that much there to justify printing the coupon plus with all the restrictions on it, I don’t find it worth it. No rewards card or credit card necessary. I just got a ton of emails from them with coupons.

World Market – This year I got 15% off my entire purchase. Last year I got $10 to spend. I didn’t make a purchase all year so maybe that is why. I also get other discounts throughout the year.

Godiva – $10 to spend the month of your birthday.  I only signed up for this to get my free chocolate every month…then the store in Fox River Mall closed. Now I only get the $10 to spend and have to pay shipping.

Old Navy – 10% off my entire order.

Other Coupons

Cottonelle – Sent me a $1.00 off a 12 pack toilet paper... and with Walgreen's having $3.99 toilet paper this weekend, I can score a pretty good deal,

Kellogg’s Family Rewards – 100 bonus points and $20 Shutterfly Credit

Swagbucks – 55 swag up on my next gift card.

Driscoll’s Berries -- $0.50 off coupon for any Driscoll berries.

I know I have gotten Solea, Chili’s, and Perkins in the past but don’t recall getting an email this year but I may have deleted them by mistake. This is only the emails that I received. I know there are other places, both local and national, that give out birthday deals. Who knows maybe next year I will have more. Free stuff is never a bad thing unless you don’t want your inbox filled up with tons of emails that you have to weed through. 

Kitchen Adventures: Cookie Dough Whoopie Pies

At cookbook club the other night, I was looking at cookbooks for next month and picked up The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook by Lindsay Landis. The recipe I first turned to was for Cookie Dough Whoopie Pies. The hubby loves cookie dough and has been asking me to make whoopie pies forever. When we first moved into our apartment, I picked up a whoopie pie pan and 3 years later it still hasn't been used..until today.

I think my biggest reason for not making whoopie pies was that I thought they were too much work. I only have 1 small whoopie pie pan and I didn't want to be tied up in the kitchen all day making whoopie pies. To alleviate this problem, I cut the recipe in half since I don't know what we were going to do with 20-24 sandwiches except feed my coworkers. The recipe itself was pretty easy. When I cut the recipe in half, I figured we would have about 10 whoopie pies. Um, yeah my calculations were way off. I got 4.5 whoopie pies out of the half batch. Either I made mine bigger or my math was way off.. 4 is actually a really good number for us. We can try them and don't have to worry about them going bad since they only last about 3 days.

Whoopie Pie Pan

I did tweak the recipe slightly since the hubby doesn't like dark chocolate. I used regular cocoa powder instead of dark cocoa powder and omitted the espresso powder. I had to pick up the marshmallow creme. I came home with marshmallow fluff and momentarily panic. Google reassured me marshmallow fluff and creme are the same thing. It's like tissues vs. Kleenex.

I had the 1/2 whoopie pie and it was scrumptious. I'm hoping the hubby agrees.

Cookie Dough Whoopie Pies -- from the The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook

Ingredients (makes 24 sandwiches according to the cookbook)... If you want to make a half batch, see the note at the bottom for the conversions of the odd measurements.

For Cookies:
2 Cups Flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup dark or Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 tsp instant espresso powder
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup whole milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla

For Filling:
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 (7 oz) jar marshmallow creme or fluff
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder, and espresso powder. Stir in sugar. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in milk, oil, egg, and vanilla.

Put the wet ingredients in a well in the dry ingredients

Stir until flour is incorporated and no large lumps remain; mixture should have the consistency of thick cake batter.

Line a baking sheet, if you don't have whoopie pie pans, with a silicon mat, parchment paper, or just spray with cooking spray. Drop batter by the tablespoonful approximately 2 inches apart. Bake 10 to 12 minutes, or until cookies are set. Let cool on baking sheet about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining batter.

To prepare filling, beat together butter and brown sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Mix in flour and salt on low speed until incorporated.

Add marshmallow creme and vanilla and beat until fluffy. Stir in chocolate chips.

To assemble whoopie pies, sandwich 1 heaping tablespoon of filling between two two cookies.

Press until filling spreads evenly to the edges Repeat with remaining cookies. Refrigerate in an airtight container, whoopie pies will keep for up to 3 days.

I'm guessing you could freeze the cookies until you are ready to use them and then just making the filling.

Now that I know how easy this are, I have a feeling my whoopie pie pan will get more use.

**Note** If you want to make half the recipe, here are the conversions for the odd measurements.
1/3 cup = 5 Tablespoons + 1 teaspoon (2 1/2 Tablespoons + 1/2 teaspoon for half the recipe)
3/4 cup = 12 tablespoons (6 tablespoons for half the recipe)
1 egg = 3 tablespoons when beaten (1 1/2 tablespoons of beaten egg)

If you don't have whole milk, you can substitute 6 tablespoons evaporated milk and 6 tablespoons water for the 3/4 cup whole milk.

Freaky 5K

I needed a 5k to do in October. So far this year, I have done at least one in March, April, May, June, July, August, and September. I had one planned for November. January, February, and December are just too cold. I found the Freaky 5k in Appleton among others. It was on Halloween and it didn’t require me to drive an hour or more for a race. Then another racing friend of mine told me there were killer hills andit made the Firecracker in Kaukauna look easy. I don’t do hills.

When we had our fantasy football draft in August, I jokingly mentioned to my sister-in-law that she should come do the Freaky 5k with me on Halloween. It has killer hills. She has never done a 5k before but recently has started running for FUN. She thought it was a great idea and wanted to sign up for it. All I’m thinking was what did I get myself into…..

The weather all week was gorgeous. The forecast for the race was RAIN. I did 1 race in the rain this year, I really didn’t want to do another.  Being the Freaky 5k on Halloween, costumes were encouraged. I seriously thought about going on as a referee until the forecast called for rain. There was no way I was running 3.1 miles in the rain in wet knickers.  However, I learned my lesson from the last soggy race I did, wear a poncho. Luckily we had 2 ponchos and I could give one to my sister in law. Who cares if it was a Jacksonville Suns poncho.  It kept us dry.

After parking several blocks away and having to walk in the rain to the starting line at Pierce Park, there was at least a pavilion to stand in until race time. Weather wise I still think the Beer Run was worse than this. I wasn’t wringing water out of my jacket during the race. The poncho really did help.

I kept with my sister-in-law for about the first eighth mile or so and then I had to walk. She kept right on running. I did my normal race routine of running/walking.

The “killer” hills weren’t as bad as I expected. There were 2 of them in the entire race. You start at Pierce Park, go down past the Yacht Club, and back up around Xavier High School, and back to past the Yacht Club up to Pierce Park. The first hill we had to go up was pure torture which was surprising since it was still in mile 1. It was steep and it nearly killed me…and I walked up it. As I trudged along, I had to remember I still had to go up the hill at the finish. I tried to pace myself to make sure I walked up that hill. That hill w

asn’t nearly as bad as the first one and I even ran up some of it. It was more of a gradual steep incline.

Despite the weather and the hills, I still finished in 42 minutes 15 seconds about 30 seconds or so off my personal best. My sister-in-law beat me by exactly 10 minutes. People say this is one of the worse courses for a 5k. I may have to agree but it wasn’t that bad. Holly said I would regret doing the Freaky 5k but I really don’t. I actually kind of enjoyed the challenge of it. Was I worried that Holly said it nearly added 9 minutes to her time. Sure but as long as I didn’t finish last and I was done in under an hour, I didn’t care. I was really happy with my time. Guess what, I’ll probably suffer through it again… maybe even in costume next year.