I hope the financial blogger smackdown between Festival of Frugality and Carnival of Personal Finance bloggers got your attention last week! I thought the football game concept was a fun theme, but I’m sure it was a lot of work for the hosts to coordinate their efforts.

The Festival of Frugality is on its usual format this week: anything and everything about living a frugal lifestyle. I submitted a grocery topic this week, so I’ll pull the grocery list for you. Be sure to check out the entire Feb. 12 Festival of Frugality showcase at Lazy Man and Money. There are tips on entertainment, tax preparation services, Valentine’s Day ideas and other bargains:

• Wise Bread presents Cooking Without Crepe Pans and Other Expensive Kitchen Tools: “What do sifters, colanders and strainers have in common? They’re a way to carry around a bunch of holes. I keep just one hole-y instrument in my kitchen: an 8-inch strainer.”
• Cheap Healthy Good presents Grocery Shopping: What Works for Me: “My old method lacked forethought, concern for my health, and any discernable spending strategy. These days, it’s different. I cook. I plan meals a week in advance.”
• Diary of a New Old-Fashioned Gal presents Artsy Crackers: “I can now attest to the fact that it is amazingly simple (and cheap) to make your very own gourmet specialty crackers. All you do is throw flour, olive oil, salt, water, and your signature spice into the food processor for about 30 seconds, roll it out very thin and cook it for 15 minutes!”
• Monroe on a Budget presents Do you have any cereal coupons?: “One of the myths of grocery coupon shopping is that coupons are useful only for products one would LIKE to purchase on a discount.”
• Lightening Online presents Reducing the Grocery Budget: Budgets & Tracking: “It doesn’t matter HOW you track your spending, but if you want to get the most out of your grocery dollar, I highly recommend that you DO track it somehow.”
• Free From Broke presents Can Buying in Bulk be Wasteful?: “We once bought a large bottle of Advil at BJ’s. It was something like 500 pills inside. About a month after it expired in our medicine cabinet it still had about half the pills. The per unit cost was cheaper than a smaller bottle but the bottle really ended up costing us more.”
• The Great Money Challenge presents What can I buy with a $200 per month grocery budget?: “I find a skeleton menu plan very handy. I decide how to balance my meals and then just do slight variations over the weeks.”
• The Sojourner presents Hurray for the Community Food Bank!: “If you have a community food bank, check it out and see if they have a program like this. This helps them raise the funds they need to provide the emergency food and programs for the needy.” (Note from your Monroe on a Budget blogger — a comparable program that is available in this area is the Angel Food Ministries delivery sites in Lambertville, Ann Arbor, Toledo and Detroit.)
• Frugal Dad presents 20 Money-Saving Tips for the Grocery Store: “If your Sunday paper was delivered with a $10 bill attached, would you throw it away? Of course not. Well, that’s effectively what you are doing each week by not taking a few minutes to clip and organize coupons.”