Chain store ads

QFC

Buy 6, save 3

Marie Calenders frozen dinners  1.79
Cottage cheese. Sour cream .79
Sweet baby rays .99
Pillsbury rolls 1.49 - coupon on multiples 1.00 on three

—————-
English cucumbers..99
Milk .99
Cream cheese 3/5

Saturday only digital coupon
Sugar 4 lbs .99

Safeways

Ham 1.37

Shank half or whole .97

Starkest tuna @@. .59
Bread 1.49 @@
Lean ground beef 80/20 1.99@@


Kens dressing 1.99 - @@ paper coupon, ss, .75 off

@@ in ad coupon store card

Tuesday Notes

Its the first day of spring and I want to talk about the snowball effect.   Not too strange, we hae had snow this late before.   Saving money on groceries to reach a bottom line is like rolling a snowball from a mass that fits inside your fist to the size of a snowman head.   It might take some time, but it has a great reward.   Savings amass with time.

I priced a jar of ragu for 2.00 this morning at Wallmart on line.   We paid .79 with a sale and coupon .
That’s roughly 1.20 per jar.  We bought 4 for a total savings of 4.80.   Now, if I took that 4.80 and I added .20 cents to it and bought 2 lbs of cheese at safeways, I would have 2 lbs of cheese an 4 jars of pasta sauce for  about the same price as I would have if I just went to wallmart and bought the jars of pasta sauce.    Stay with me.  

I bought pasta sauce and saved 4.80
I added .20 and bought cheese  5.00

Saved 7.00

Now I have:   4 jars of pasta
                       2 lbs of cheese
Take the 7,.00 saings  on the cheese and buy
English muffins, whole wheat
Bagels, whole wheat
Hot dog nuns
Rye breads


Now you have
4 jars of pasta
2 pounds of cheese
A package of bagels
Hot dog buns
Rye bread
English muffins
And you have 3 dollars left/

That buys the hot dogs to go with the buns

Now you have spent 8.00
And you hae
4 jars of pasta
2 pounds of cheese
4 packages of bread
And a package of Nathan’s hot dogs.

Or \another way to look at it is that you got 34.00 worth of food for 14.80 for a savings of 19.20.




                     

Notes from the grocery class.

Yesterday my daughter and I hosted a Cut your grocery bill in half class.   Here are a few bullets to  ponder.

• Buy thing in bulk when it makes sense:   Flour, rice, oatmeal.  That 7 dollar bag of flour can save you a hundred dollars replaeing store /manufactured frozen items.   
• Keep a basic inventory of the things you use on a regular basis every week and buy a 4-6 week supply of them when they are at their RBP.
• Keep a small notebook 📓 to record prices of your key items until you find the  RBP in your area.   
• Efficient scratch cook.   Find recipes that are easy and use the instapot, slow cooker etc to minimize your time in the kitchen.   You basically get paid for planning and shopping wisely at two stores in the form of savings.   You don’t get paid for cooking.   
• Use coupons, ibotta, sales, closeout bins and basket coupons wisely to save money any way you can.   Coupons.com, ibotta, 
• There are some people that are on U-tube that are great sources of information.   Betty Crocker on line cookbook is free.  Substitute ready made products with scratch if you can.   There are more people.   Freedom Homestead, Big Famiy Homestead , She’s In Her Apron,  April Holly Smith to name a few. 

Kitchen Management - March 19, 2017

Its that day again, Kitchen Management, and today is a busy day for us, so something will have to slide until tomorrow.   Tuesday is errand day, and we have to do the errands today too.  We hae all been there....life is sometimes a juggling act.   LOL

This is a good day to put on a pot of soup.   I will sub for pizza night.   Soup always works when I have a meeting early evening.   

• Clean out the refrigerator and dump anything dead.   
• Wax the refrigerator 
• Disinfect the counters and sinks and drains. 
• Wash the kitchen floor. 
• Make soup
• Wash root veggies with vinegar water 
• Make vegetable platter . 
• Straighten the pantry.   
• Log the cash for groceries.   

I’m sitting at 50.00 this week.  A lot of it was pasta sauce because I got it for super cheap with coupons and a sale.  That’s under four dollars a day per person.  

Reminder of meals : adjusted 

• Roast chicken with oven roasted veggies 
• Soup
• Spaghetti and meatballs. Salad 
• Tacos, Spanish rice 
• Salmon, baked potatoes, green beans 
• Chix nuggets, (homemade) oven fries, vegetable sticks.   
• Breakfast for dinner.  

Meal Plans

Meal plans make life easier and help to state off the take out demons.  

• Roast Chicken , Oven roasted veggies
• Pizza
• Spaghetti and meatballs, salad 
• Tacos, Spanish rice 
• Salmon , baked potatoes, green beans 
• Chicken nuggets, oven fries, veggie platter 
• Breakfast for dinner 

notes:   

Chicken is a dollar a pound.   

Pizza costs 1.05 a piece for cheese pizza.   You can add pepperoni , sausage, or multi veggies 

Spaghetti and meatballs are from sales at safeways and Fred Meyers. 

Tacos are from .48 taco shells and hamburger with homemade taco seasoning.   

Salmon is from winco 

Chicken nuggets are homemade by dipping nuggets in butter and dredging in a mixture of dry bread crumbs, parm cheese and chopped nuts. 

Breakfast for dinner is a hit around here. 

Fred Meyer ADS for sunday

10 percent fat hamburger 3.77

English cucumbers .99

Grapes 1.29
Berries 2/5
Cantaloupe 2/4


Milk .99

Heritage Farm drums or thighs.../79 Note:  this is Tyson chicken.

Cream cheese 3/5 - 1.67 ea

breakfast sausage. Jimmy Dean 2/7 or 3.50. - it has been 6.50 at qfc.

1/2 Pork Loin 1.99 ( not my buy price, but note the differen in price between taking a few cut off a loin and buying the already cut pork loin chops.  Remarkable
Note : Pork Loin chop 3.99:  as apposed to Pork Loin that was .99 a few weeks back.

Buy 6, save 3, Mix and match, you dont have to buy six of one thing.

Ritz crackers 1.79
Ragu 1.29 - check coupons
Baby Ray bbq .99
Sour cream/ cottage cheese .79

Comparing prices....

I just looked at a u-tube comparing boneless chicken to boned chicken quarters.   It wasn’t what I would call a scientific comparison.    Boned chicken is probably 1/2 bone and 1/2 chicken unless it was a very fat chicken.   Our chicken quarters were 1.28 a lb.   chicken thighs were 1.00 a pound.   It is dark meat.    At 1.28 a pound, you are most likely paying 2.56 a  pound.   The chicken breast at Fred Meyer is 1.99 a pound.   The Zaycon chicken is .99 a pound.

You cant comare apples and oranges and come out with a scientific comparison.   You can tell which choice is the cheapest.

 Its easier to compare like things,   We are all about finding the RBP on most of the things we buy.   I’m not going to drive miles and miles to find a bargain unless I intend to go once and bulk buy something that makes it worth my while.   Zaycon saved me at least 40.00. Heck yes, I will drive five miles to save 40.00 once.    I’m not driving 5 miles to save a quarter.   Its all about common sense.

No food will do your family any good if you are feeding it to the garbage disposal.

Let’s talk money......

In the year of 2017, we spent on avrag 55.05 a week.   4.00 a day for my husband and I totals 56.00.
But, that amount covered our food, our stocked food, and partially feeding our granddaughter.   She eats at her house and our too.

We eat meals from Pork Loin, boneless, skinless chicken breast, hamburger, eggs, cheese, bacon, and beans.    No, Virginia, we dont just eat beans......

We can do that by using a variety of tips and tricks to lower our food bill.

Efficiently cook from scratch.  Buy buying certain things in bulk, you can save a lot of money.  There are easy 5 ingredient or less recipes all over the Internet.   A 6.99 cent bag of flour can save you the cost six times over.  Artisan bread, 10 hands on minutes, a quarter.  Cheese pizza 1.05 , muffins .35 plus the fruit.   Pancakes far cheaper than 3.00 a small bag.  Or 8 small waffles for over a dollar.
We also buy oatmeal .085 a serving, and rice at .02 a serving.   That’s a ton of savings.

Find the RBP on the things you buy on a regular basis to make dinner and buy enough to last you 4-6 weeks at the lowest possible price.  Use Ibotta, coupons, and sales to cut your costs

Buy your basic meat at RBP in bulk.  Buy enough of that meat to last you for however many meals you will cook it during a 4-6 week period.   Bring it home and portion control it into meal sized portions.  I cook hamburger and freeze it in meal sized portions in quart bags and then a gallon bag that I label with the type of meat and the date.   We rotate pork loin (.99-1.69), chicken breast (.99-1.77) and hamburger 80/20 that we fry and de-fat. ( 2.00-2.44) .  If there is a hunk of beef that is low fat and cheaper, we will grind it ourselves.

Plan your meals.   Make a plan, or plan to fail.  If you plan your meals and keep a stock, you will always have what you need to make your meals.  A little kitchen management picks up the slack and preps ingredients for the meal.  You can prep, clean the fridge, and rotate a deep clean chore in about an hour.   It saves a lot of time at the hectic meal time.

4 steps, they all take a little work, but they all save time and /or money.   Master one at a time.
You should cut your food bill.   Ours is 1/2 the USDA stats for thrifty.   We eat well.

Winco Haul

Winco Haul 

Green grapes 1.98

Celery .88

Bluebrrries 3.98

Tomato grape .98

2% milk 1.28

Salmon 4.98

Romas .88

Green chillis .66

Black olives .78

Cucumbers .68

Cottage cheese 1.98

Winco stuffing .75

Gala apples. .88

5otal 29.98

Retailer’s Dirty Little Secrets.....

It has been a while since I have addressed this issue.   I have been researching a little m,ore for an class, so I have found more....

Food for thought.....70 percent of a stores profit comes from impulse buys.   There gai is your loss. 

It is no accident that the first thing you see when you walk into a door of the store is something tempting you.    Winco has junk food , tons and tons of junk food.   Topped off with a bakery cart.  They want you to lower your resistance and fill your huge cart.  

We have bags that clip on the grocery cart.  This instantly shrinks the cart.  It also keeps the food off of the bottom of the cart .   Studies have shown the a big percentage of those carts have fecal matter on them.    Yuk is all I can say.   

 Their slow music can add 12 percent to your cart. 

Bringing family members with you can add 10 percent PER person to your cart.   

Face it, you can’t do the math in your head and make good decisions if you are distracted with a child whining they want something that has been strategically placed in their eye level, or how many of us have got to the veggie department to have a child announce that he has to go potty?  LOL 

Its money in the bank to leave them home with the other parent.  If you are single, consider trading babysitting duties with another parent.   Or see if you can leave them with a family member.   

The best bargains are often in the back corner of the store.   After they show you the two dollar plus  for six English muffins in the front of the store (Fred Meyers) , they have 12 English muffins for 1.67 back by the eggs.   Ditto sandwich rolls at winco.  

Manufacturers pay slotting fees.   Basically, that is rent for the eye level shelves.  When its a big retailer, they can pay as much as a million dollars for end caps and eye level shelves.  The retailers no doubt are passing that expense on to you.   The grocery stores make more money from slotting fees than they do selling food.    

Store brands are cheaper than their major brand counterparts.   Often, they are the same item, in a store brand wrapper.   Years ago, my sister worked for a frozen food distributor.   She got to bring home the transition labeled boxes of veggies.   They had two wrappers on them.   The .66 milk green chillies that are winco brand are .66 cents.   The name brand is 1.28.   

In the UK, they figure that 20 percent of the customers give them 80 percent of their profit.   Its the customers that fill their large carts.  

Stats show that if you touch a product, you are more likely to buy that product.   

Non food items have the largest markup.   The store cant buy the quantity that other retailers buy.   You can be much better off buying that article with a coupon somewhere else.   

Eggs, sugar coated cereal and diary have the Biggest markup in the store.   

Those fancy stores have a huge markup on everything.   To their credit, when you carry a lot of specialty items and a lot of items, it just cost more to keep track of all that.   More to stock, more to inventory. You are going to pay for the experience.   

Those racks by the checkouts are nothing but a blast of impulse stimuli.   

I did see an eyeglass repair kit.   It was inexpensive and a real life saver if you wear glasses.   

 

Chain store ads

QFC was a two week ad last week.   

The highlights are 

• Oranges .67
• Draper valley whole chicken .88
• Berries 2/5 

Digital coupons 

You can use up to 5.  That should mean that it is a store coupon and paper coupons should be able to be matched.   Don’t quote me on that, but I heard that someone cleared that with Kroger. 

Cheese 2.49 a lb- my highest target price, but its not bad 

Pasta 1.00

Alberways 

London broil 2.99

Pasta .48 @@

Pasta sauce 4/5 look for prego coupons @@

Cheeese 4/ 5@@. Thats 2.50 a lb. 

My protein rotation would be chicken at qfc and /or cheese . 

For the three of us, we can get 4 meals from a 5 lb chicken.  

Don’t buy a chicken that is much less than 5 lbs.   (4.40) 

My stock buy would be pasta sauce and pasta from safeways.   That’s 1.75 pus meatballs for a dinner for 4.and an extra meal of pasta.    Meatballs are 2.00 a bag at Winco.  

10 hacks to save money and make life easier.

Part of Groceries on the cheap is that you may spend a little more time planning a grocery haul ( when you are dealing with a basket coupon or a buy xx, save xx sale. )  I am not going to tell you that it takes no time to make sure things are put in the pantry in some assemblance of order.   Or that studying  the ads and meal planning is not time consuming.

  I study the ads in our area and I meal plan on line.   You can use all kinds of ways to mealplan that doesn’t take time.   My mother used to schedule the same meal for a specific day.    We could tell what day of the week it was by what she was cooking when we hit a the door from school.    Other people write down 10 meals that they cook on a regular basis and rotate them three times a month.
There are , also, people that meal plan once a month.   All of these meal plans are flesxible.   We don’t necessarily eat Mondays meal on Monday.   It’s whatever works.

Because we all wear many hats, i make up the time I spend planning by cutting time on the cooking end.   I make money (save ) planning, I dont make money cooking.  

• Make your own bread crumbs with heels and dry bread.  Get it out of the plastic wrapper before it grows hair.   Before I had a good food processer,  I used to dry it by putting it in the cold oven until it was dry.   Then I put a grater on a sheetpan and went out on the deck and grated it.  
• Make your own cream soup base.   It saves a lot of money and doesn’t take much time. There are two receipts, one is low fat, the other low salt.   
• Making your own ranch dressing mix, onion soup mix, taco seasoning and seasoned rice mix saves bundles and you can make one a week easy.   Good way to teach children fractions and measurements. 
• Buy broken nuts in the bulk isle. (Winco) .   You don't have to chop them much and they are ready for coating chicken or to put in cookies. 

• Making a quick muffin is a way to feed children breakfast fast and it saves a lot of money.  Breakfast muffins can be made ahead and frozen if they last that long.  
• Buy pizza sauce from the DT.  Put it in a ice cube tray and freeze.  When frozen, dump the cubes in a zip lock bag and store in the door of the freezer.   2 “ice cubes” cover a home made pizza. 
• Pizza crusts are .19 when made with a bulk flour and yeast.   Flour, salt, yeast, water and 2 tsp of olive or veggie oil.   It takes about 3 minutes and pizza dough bought at the store is between 1.50 an 2.00/. 
• Homemade pizza (cheese) is 1.05 a pizza when made with sourced products.   One day next week cheese is 2.00 a lb at Fred Meyers.   I often get it for less than 2.50 a lb.    Pepperoni is a dollar at the dollar store.   Pepperoni coupons don't work for the small packages, but a few veggies added to the pizza and you can get away with 1/2 a package of pepperoni.   
• Hard cooked eggs are a snap when you bake them in the oven.   Put eggs , once each in muffin cups.   Bake  in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes . Immediately, remove the eggs (a spoon works well) to an ice bath. The eggs cook perfectly every time and peel easy. 
• Doing a little prep when you have time and the house is 🤫 quiet can save a lot of time later.  You are doing things in batches and it takes less time with less clean up.

• Deli containers are .50 each at Amazon.  They stack and take less space .

Monday Kitchen Management

Not happening tomorrow.  Guess that means today. (Sunday).  They are cutting our power tomorrow to replace the power poles.  We arent changing the clocks either...why do it twice.   The clock on the stove is especially difficult.

Reminder of meals

1. Chicken pot pie
2. Hot pockets 
3. Roast chicken 
4. Chicken nuggets 
5. Nachos 
6. Salmon
7. Breakfast 4 dinner. 

• Cook chicken for the pot pie
• Wash salad greens 
• Mark chicken to thaw. 
• Make beans 
• Make 2 week bread dough
• Clean refrigerator and dump everything dead. 
• Wash kitchen floor 
• Disinfect countertops and sinks and drains. 
• Wax south side cupboards. 

Meal Plans

Make a plan, or plan to fail.   Meal plans dont have to be a drawn out affair, but plans enable you to eat better and be more organized about it.   Taking a few minutes to do prep work I call kitchen management, keeps the kitchen clean and takes away a lot of the stress during the hectic dinner hour.  Your meals are 1/2 done an life is easssy.   

• Chicken Pot Pie 
• Pizza Pockets (homemade) 
• Roast chicken, oven roasted veggies 
• Homemade chicken nuggets , oven fries , veggie platter 
• Nachos
• Salmon, baked potato, salad, bread 
• Breakfast for dinner:   French toast, fruit platter, bacon?   

Notes: 

1. I bought pillsbury pie crust at GO for 1.50.  It is a double crust, so I will use one crust for chicken pot pie .  Add cooked cubed chicken breast from the insta pot, whit sauce from cream soup base, and frozen mixed vegetables. 
2. Pizza pockets are made from the other pie crust.   Add lettuce and tomato salad.. 
3. Roast chicken, and oven roasted veggies.  You would be surprised how good one roasted radishes are.  
4. Homemade chicken nuggets.  Chicken is cubed from a chicken breast.  It is not re constituted chicken.   Breading is bread crumbs from stale bread , chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts) and parm cheese.   We don't buy parm cheese in a can, or bread crumbs.  Why pay upwards of 2.40 a lb for someone else's dry bread.   Its so easy to pop crusts and leftover bread into the food processor  and whirl it.  ( granddaughters favorite job) .   Parmesan cheese in that cardboard container is just nasty.  Its been hanging around the store, has a lot of wood pulp in it to keep it from caking.   And, I have got more volume for less money fresh at Fred Meyers and winco.   Oven fries are potatoes, scrubbed with vinegar water, cut into wedges, and tossed with olive oil and garlic pepper.  Yum.
5. Nachos are a favorite, especially on movie night.   We got tortilla chips for free this week at qfc.  Add cooked hamburger, beans, cheese, diced tomato, black olives, and mild peppers.   
6. Salmon is still 5.00 a pound at winco in the frozen food section.   Add a salad and peasant bread.   Peasant bread is a no brainer and made in 10 minutes hands on time. And, that is spread out between two days.  Baked potatoes are easy.    LOL.  
7. French Toast is made with french bread from the Orowheat cart at the DT.  Add eggs and milk and some cinnamon.   Bacon was three dollars a pound for one day at qfc.   Fruit from last week.   It pays to have appropriate storage containers..who let the gas out!

Notes: Class

I heard someone on a u tube channel say that the word cheap means inferior quality.   That’s probably true.   With tounge in cheek, we named this blog.   We dont purchase cheap food.   This is good food, cheap.   You can buy the exact same thing in three different stores and pay three different prices.   Why not pay the lowest price?   Its to your own advantage.  

I am teaching a class on grocery shopping and meal planning / recipe gathering, probably next Sunday at our local library.    FREE:   Handouts and a crash course in lowereing your food bill.   There is limited seating so I need to know who is coming.

This is not hoarding, it is keeping a responsible amount of food to take care of your family when bleep happens.   Face it, there is a lot of piece of mind that goes along with being prepared.   We all buy house or renters insurance, and it is against the law not to buy car insurance.  Why not hae enough food to carry you over a rough spot— especially when it cost no more money.   It saves money in the long run, because you can go on no spend  months if you have a heavy expense month and not sacrifice anything.   Its a win: win situation .

We spent 55.05 a week average in 2017 .   That’s about 1/2 the USDA stats for my husband and I.   And....we supplemented granddaughter and built a stock.   We ate well, and Virginia, we didn’t eat beans every day. LOL.

Fred Meyers for Sunday

Finally, after a dry two weeks, there are some good prices.    This is the  Thursday that there is a ten percent discount for military and veterans.   The insta pot is on sale for 79.99.
There is an additional 70 percent off apparel and shoes.

Corned Beef Brisket 2.49 for point cut , 3.49 for flat cut
Cabbage is .49 a lb

Free milk with 4/8 dollar cereal General Mills.....usually you can find coupons.  2/25 smart source 1.00

Grapes 199
Apples 1.49
Berries 2/5
Avacados .99
Organic blueberries 3.99- .22 an ounce.
Frozen berries 3 lb 6.99- 14.5 cents an ounce

Kroger sausage 2/5
FF boneless, skinless, chicken breast 1.99 ( high)
Farmland bacon 4.49 - look for a coupon smart source 3/4 for .75

Biscuits 10/10 - you dont have to buy 10
Kroger ice cream 2/5
Spaghetti 1.00

Digital coupons

Sunday , march 18 only
Turkey breast .88 lb
———-
Saturday, March 17 only
Cheese 3.99 - thats two dollars a pound....buy price

Thursday, march 15
Nathans 1.99

These take a digital coupon and you can buy 5
It’s rotation time for cheese

GO haul

Grocery Outlet Haul 

Many items were .50 or a 1.00/.  

Salad .50

Syrup 2.00

Cake mixes .99

Cookie mix 48

Pie crust 1.49

Sliced cheese 2.00

Black olives 

Turkey lunch meat 3.00

Berry muffins

2 cups baking mix
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1cup sour cream
1 cup berries

Mix dry ingredients.
Mix eggs and sour cream
Dust berries with a couple of tablespoons of dry ingredient,
Mix wet ingredients with dry ingredients,
Fold in berries

Place in lined muffin cups

Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes


A good way to use up sour cream .
I always have some , but we go in spurts and use a lot, and then, not so much.  

Practical Thursday Notes

Rotation Meats

One easy way to cut your protein costs is by adapting your food purchases to a rotation meat .  By simplifying your meat purchases to cuts that are versatile, you keep variety in you meals, and cut costs.   This means that you can buy larger quantities for less money and portion control your meat.  This makes for less waste.  

A pork loin can cost as low as .99 a lb.  Costco business has them for 1.59 with a 2.00 discount on the bag at checkout.  That makes the ten pound pork loin 1.39 a lb.  My top buy price is 1.69.   You can make pork chops, pork roast, pork stew meat, and stir fry from the scraps.   To exemplify, center cut pork chops can be 3.49 a lb.  

Boneless, skinless , chicken breast can be purchased for 1.77 here.   I bought direct from the farmer for .99.   Split chicken breast has the rib portion on it.   If you cut the rib portion off, you can cook it and pull the meat from the bones .  The bonus is chicken stock.   A hack I learned from a utube friend, April, is to set your slow cooker on low before you go to bed.   ( bones, veggie scraps, and a few herbs, water up to within an inch ) in the morning, you hae broth and bones you can pick the meat from.   Picked meat can be tacos, cassarole, soup, nachos, etc.   Chill the stock and defat it before freezing .  Leave head room in your container.  

We put each chicken breast in a separate quart bag (cheap ones at DT) and put the batch in a gallon bag with the date and chicken breast marked on the bag.

Hamburger is a whole lot more efficiently cooked in batches.   Cook it until no longer pink, de-fat it, and bag in portion controlled batches.   Cooked hamburger is easily thawed and is a great time saver at dinner time.  You can also portion off enough for hamburger patties or homemade meatballs.   I have found, however, that meatballs are cheaper bought frozen.   I save the inside wrapper of things like cereal, or baking mix to use in place of wax paper separating beef patties.   It is also good if you are making cutlets, or crushing crackers.  

The other rotation weeks can be used for eggs, cheese, and beans.  

No, Virginia, we don’t just eat beans.    LOL.  

Thursday notes

First:   Flour prices have taken a hike.   That translates to higher prices on pasta and bread.   Another reason why it is a good idea to stock.  It doesn’t make the prices any cheaper, but it pads the way so the shock is a little diminished.   I did discover that delivery flour is 7.59.   Bought at costco it was 6.99.  It was previously 6.39.   It still makes a loaf of bread for .25.  

The bargains the last two weeks have been minimal.   We have basically two corporations that control most of the market.  Kroger owns QFC and Fred Meyer.   Albertsons owns Safeways and. Albertsons.
Then, we have Winco, Costco, and Grocery Outlet.   When we had the debacle of Albertsons selling to Haagen and Haggens going bankrupt and selling back to Albertsons, the prices at Albertsons and safeways took a big hike.   I can imagine that all the legal fees took a toll on profits.   At Kroger, qfc is the more expensive and the more full service store in relationship to Fred Meyers.   Winco is no frills and employee owned.   I do find that if you ask a question at winco, you get an informed answer, or they point you to someone that can accommodate you.    Costco is turning into a food from Mars store.   More and more, I am finding that the basics like oatmeal, yeast, and cornstarch are missing or they are out of and they have plenty of hemp, seaweed, and cage free eggs.

Grocery Outlet is appealing to the ‘special’ crowd as well.   There is some bargains, but a lot of organic.    My experience with organic has been that two days after something hits the door, its growing hair prettier than mine.    No food is going to do your family any good if you are feeding itnto the garbage disposal.   Our farm lands  have been farmed for hundreds of years .   To accept that all those pesticides used for years have completely disapated from the soil is not a logical conclusion for me.   Going organic costs 38 percent more than regular food.   The real truth is that you cannot buy organic on a four dollar a day budget.   It is not practical to go to the store every day and buy just
what you are going to eat that day.

We are not store or brand loyal,  thats how we eat well  on less than four dollars a day.  





















.