Grocery Challenge

[Littlesister]

I like BJ's for the same reason. I really need to make a trip over there at some point soon. I want to pick up another propane tank and get that filled. And a few other things. Too soon for garden items yet. But I think they will be putting that out in the next couple of months. I need to get topsoil, raised bed garden soil and a few other things in the garden line. But need to check Lowes and Home Depot's sales against BJ's sales when they start selling.  I am going to need a lot of garden soil for those raised beds. So, this year will be an expensive year for the garden but then it will settle down. Those raised beds are big. 

[Momo]

We just had a BJ's open about half an hour from here.  I haven't heard any feedback about it yet.  I have been a member of Sam's and Costco before but I didn't go there often enough to really save much. I did save on the tires I bought at Costco but trying to get them installed and balanced was a nightmare.  It took so much time and aggravation.

[Littlesister]

Momo, with BJ's they send you a coupon book in the mail. And you can get one in the store as well.  Plus, you can use any other coupon for an item you are buying to go with the BJ's coupons. They will take both for that item. They have specials on gas if yours has a gas station. You can get gas cheaper there. Also, propane is cheaper there or was the last time I got a tank filled. They cater more to families on the food rather than those big cans like Cosco and Sam's. Though I think Sam's is selling the regular size cans on a lot of things now. Been over 3 years since I have been there. I was going to renew it as before the Bennett's Creek market paid for my membership and now with them being closed down, I need to pay to join. So being just me I don't know that I need to do both BJ's and Sam's club.

[themartianchick]

On 1/17/2024 at 8:43 AM, euphrasyne said:

I hate Walmart, it is by far the most expensive place to shop for groceries in town.  I check the prices, but it is always the most expensive along with Costco and Sam's Club.  Even Harris Teeter or Whole Foods are cheaper around here.  I mostly stick to BJs, Kroger, Food Lion, Aldis, Lidl, The Royal Bazar (Indian Grocery,) or the Asian Market. I spend about one or two hours a week cross referencing prices.

My mind is completely blown by the fact that Whole Foods is cheaper than Walmart in your area! We have to drive an hour and a half to get to Whole Foods when we are staying in our place in NY. When we go to Florida, the Whole Foods is also an hour and a half away. We only shop there when we want to get the buffet or to buy a slice of cake or something. We treat it like it is a restaurant. Even then, the store lives up to its nickname of Whole Paycheck! 

 

In NY, we mostly shop at Aldi and purchase a few other items at Price Right or Price Chopper. Wegmans used to be my favorite store but the prices have soared. They now rival Whole Paycheck.

 

In our landlocked area of Florida, we shop at Aldi for the majority of our groceries and buy our paper goods and cleaning supplies at Walmart. Our favorite store is Earth Fare because they sell a lot of fresh seafood, marinated chicken breasts and they sometimes have good deals on steak for my hubby. We also have the local flea market for farm-fresh goods. There is an entire wing for sellers of seafood, eggs, veggies and fruits. 

 

I am not prepared to jump on this grocery challenge now. However, I have put my husband on notice: I will be retiring in a few weeks and I have already built a grocery budget. This topic has inspired me to build some menus of my own. We have a bad habit of wasting food that was acquired in recent years. This might be a good way of addressing it and ensuring that we beat the goals for our grocery budget.

 

Thank you for the inspiration!!!

 

Edited to add: If you use an Amazon Prime Visa card at checkout, you get a discount on your Whole Foods purchase. I don't remember how much we saved. (Probably because we are always so shocked by the initial price on the cash register.) The discount shows up on the statement, I think.

Edited January 20 by themartianchick

[euphrasyne]

I'm in SE VA so we have a lot of options for shopping.   Many more than I grew up with in MS.   It is one of the perks I got when I married my DH and moved north to be with him.  The NEX/Commissary (Navy Exchange no tax so usually cheaper) also offers some good options, but I rarely count those as most cannot shop there.  DH stops by frequently on his way home and picks up random items.  Most commonly  green tea as it is $1 cheaper and no tax than anywhere else.    

Edited January 20 by euphrasyne

[Littlesister]

My GD just bought a small chest freezer, and they went to the commissary and bought meat to fill it up. Said it was cheaper than any of the stores. 

When I go to Kroger, I have to be very careful as if you don't stick to the sales, you are in deep trouble at the registers. Guess that is why I don't go there often. I usually go to Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Lidi's and Aldi's for grocery shopping. But right now, I am not doing much shopping. Will be picking up some things at Harris Teeter when they call me to pick up RX. Then I will wait till Thursday to go for the senior discount and use my $10.00 coupon. 

[Jeepers]

At both Ohio and Indiana my grocery shopping is very limited. Neither place have any chain grocery stores except for Wal-Mart, Meijers and Aldi's. Indy will have two local stores that I suppose I'll eventually check out. So far I really like Meijers, especially their fresh fruit/veg but I heard Meijers were about to raise their prices? And they don't have a lot of sales. I need to start checking out Aldi's. Their shopping cart 'rental' always intimidated me. 

 

When son and husband were at home I always made out a supper menu and I went by it.  I would check out sons school menu that was published in the local paper just to make sure I wasn't duplicating it for the same night.  I found that you only needed to have a limited number of different combinations. We all love spaghetti so we had that about every 10th day. Same with meat loaf. Then I threw in chicken and pork chops and maybe a casserole etc. And just kept rotating the dinners around. There were enough of them that there was never two weeks in a row the same. Weekends were a free for all.

 

In the thread Freezer Meal Combinations, you will find some combinations that work for me. Except for some I add garlic bread, salad, slaw or corn bread at the table with a meal.

[mommato3boys]

Oh how I miss Aldi. When we moved to Texas I was so upset, the closest Aldi is 4 1/2 hours away. I either have to travel to OKC or Wichita Falls. The closest HEB is 3 hours away in Lubbock. So I am stuck with Wal-Mart, United,or Cost plus. There is a Sam's Club just over an hour away in the large city. I want an Aldi backI only shopped Aldi when we lived in NC. I would hit Kroger when they had their 10 for $10 sales but for the monthly shopping (I only got paid once a month when we lived in NC) I would clean the car out fold down the back seat and go shopping at Aldi. 

[Littlesister]

Jeepers, Aldi's is not hard to do with the carts. Just drop your quarter in and it unlocks the cart from the next cart. unhook it and take your cart. When you are done just hook the cart to the other cart and it gives your quarter back. Though sometimes I will just give my cart to someone getting ready to go into the store. People do that for me as well. 

[mommato3boys]

Yesterday was food prep day. I managed to make a half gallon of Pico, a quart and half of Verde Sauce and enchilada sauce, a dozen taquitos (there is enough chicken for another dozen but it was the last thing I worked on and ran out of steam), a pound of dry beans cooked and a pound of breakfast sausage cooked for breakfast burritos cooked before I ran out of steam. This morning I made a dozen breakfast burritos and 10 are in the freezer.  Oh and 3 and half quarts of veggie broth. The veggie scraps in the crock pot over night and was divided up and froze this morning. So maybe the $156 will last a month. We will see. 

[Jeepers]

I know.  

It's just every time I get in the car it heads right for Meijers. Before I know it, I'm in there shopping with their cute little carts that I always over fill.

 

I do love their little carts. Every one else must too because they have just as many small ones as they have big ones.

[Littlesister]

Funny how cars do that. They just have a mind of their own and say nope not today I'm going to this store.

[Necie]

4 hours ago, Jeepers said:

I do love their little carts. Every one else must too because they have just as many small ones as they have big ones.

That’s cuz ya can’t afford to fill more than a little cart at Meijers. 
 

I prefer Aldis, then WM, lastly Meijers. DS2 and DD both shop at Meijers primarily. 🤷‍♀️ Even when DD worked at WMDC, she still shopped at Meijers. 😬 Crazy girl!! 
Aldis and Meijers has comparable quality for produce... though Aldis may not have as much variety. Aldis beats them both for meats... quality and price. I usually go to Aldis first, and if there’s things still on my list that they don’t have, then I go to WM. 

[Midnightmom]

I was in town and had to rebook my appt instead of keeping it so I wandered into Big Lots. It's not one of my "normal" stops and I had plenty of time on my hands so I wandered here and there. The front half of the store still had Christmas stuff on clearance and I found some liquid soap that I had purchased elsewhere last year called, "Peppermint Swirl." I'd seen it prior to Christmas in the other store, but the bottle was half the size as it was last year (shrinkflation) and it was more expensive, so I passed it up. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see the same size as I got last year at 50% off of last years' price too - 49c@. I bought all eight bottles for a grand total of $4.00!!! That was pretty much all I got, except for a few empty spice bottles for 99c each, but boy, was I a happy camper!!!  

 

 

[Littlesister]

I haven't been to Big Lots in a long time. Might have to make that trip to see what they have. Sometimes you can get some really good bargans.

[Jeepers]

Awesome find!!!   

[Homesteader]

We had a water leak this past week between the floors and have been mopping up. It was the perfect time to clean out the closet under the stairs and install shelving. Now I have an easy time knowing how many paper products I have in inventory.

 

The food pantry handed out pallets of blueberries tonight. They were expiring this week. My job was to check each clamshell for mold and set those aside. Every customer received 4 pkgs of the berries and we still had many cases left. I took three. The next several days will be freezing berries. They're wonderful in kombucha, yogurt and morning oatmeal. 

[euphrasyne]

My shopping experience is usually: Aldis, Lidl, Kroger, BJs, Indian (Royal biazzar),  Asian Market.  But I space out which item to which place in time.  I shop the sales and I shop what fresh foods we need in time. Sometimes I pay more than I'd like for fresh foods if we want them.  But that is rarely because i can and have dehydrated and canned on hand.  My best advice is to learn to cook from dehydrated/canned and substitute as necessary.  I know why antique cookbooks  call for baking soda in certain recipes.  You should learn the same.  Chemistry is WAY more important than following recipes to the letter.  

Edited January 25 by euphrasyne

[Ambergris]

Different cocoa powders have different chemical reactions.

[Littlesister]

That is true Ambergris.  There are a few different types of cocoa around here. Some are better for baking than others. 

I am heading to Harris Teeter in a bit to pick up RX's. And will look around store for bargains on things. And to see how low things are today. The new sales started yesterday, and they got a truck in on Tuesday or Wednesday so will see how the shelves look. Though Food Lion when I went in there last had some empty spaces or very low on some things but overall it was full. Fresh veggies in there had more than I had seen in a long time.

[mommato3boys]

We were back in town yesterday for hubby's doctor's appointment and ran by Wal-Mart to grab something I forgot. I decided to grab another couple rolls of breakfast sausage. It had gone up 20 cents from last Thursday (1/18) when I went grocery shopping. TWENTY FREAKING CENTS  if it is any consolation eggs had dropped a $1.01 for 18, last week they were $4.14 this week they were $3.13. I didn't price anything else since I didn't have my previous receipt with me - the sausage was bad enough.

[Littlesister]

I think the price of groceries at some point need to be regulated. It's almost like a free for all, Ok groceries cost this much today so let's up the price some more. Starting to feel like it is like the gas stations. They do like to milk it sometimes. Rising prices are every week and no end in site. What I bought today will be higher in price next week. 

[Ambergris]

Ambergris makes a good point and it is a subject that should be explored further.  So as not to steal MT3B’s great thread I have started a new thread in the Edge for this topic and copied Ambergris’s post there.  Please make your replies to her there!  Mother

Here's a hard fact: You asked for the high grocery prices.  Remember a few years back, when the farmers had ripe crops rotting in the fields because no one would come pick them?  You've seen the same farmers not planting or planting machine-harvestable crops since?   That's the price of the get-tough immigration policies y'all have been talking about in other posts.  Hard-bodied illegals with super-low pay expectations put groceries on your table at a reasonable cost.  You close borders and make the price of getting caught too high, it cuts off the tap of super-cheap labor.

 

Here's another hard fact:  American farmers deserve to make a decent living.  When you squeeze their margins until they can't make any living, you invite Chinese investors to buy them out.  

 

And when you regulate the price of food to less than the price of producing the food, farmers stop producing.  That's Venezuela.

Edited January 26 by Mother

[euphrasyne]

I have also copied Euphrasyne’s reply in the Edge. Please join the conversation there.  Mother
 

Ambergris, you are absolutely right. One thing leads to another (A...B...C).  It is expected, at least in my household.  

Edited January 26 by Mother

[out_of_the_ordinary]

20 hours ago, Littlesister said:

I think the price of groceries at some point need to be regulated. It's almost like a free for all, Ok groceries cost this much today so let's up the price some more. Starting to feel like it is like the gas stations. They do like to milk it sometimes. Rising prices are every week and no end in site. What I bought today will be higher in price next week. 

Respectfully, I disagree.   We don't want MORE government regulation!  Production costs are up and the stores and farmers can't just eat that cost.    One of the grocery stores around here is now starting baggers off at over $17/hour (and still can't get workers).   Their rising cost of just trying to employe people is being passed on to the consumer (among other rising costs). 

Edited January 26 by out_of_the_ordinary