Is it just me or are the prices going up down at the local grocery store? I used to get brownie mixes on sale all the time for 99 cents a box and now I find them for 3 for $5, or buy one brownie box at the regular price and get a dollar off on window cleaner. Hey I don’t need window cleaner every time I get a hankering for brownies. The store people also like to run buy one at an unreasonable temporary regular inflated price and get the other one free ads. I don’t think they think we are very smart. It’s really very simple math. If a box of donuts is 2 for $5 and you leave for the store at precisely 3:05 and it takes you ten minutes to get there how many donuts will you have eaten by the time you get home? I don’t know about you but the wife doesn’t let me bring home the donuts by myself anymore, especially since I have a very long commute.
Now what does all this have to do with the pricing policies at our favorite supermarket? I don’t know. That’s just it. They want us in a state of confusion bumping around with a shopping cart with a dazed look on our face all the while the kids are working their own agenda by either grabbing stuff we don’t want when we aren’t looking or constantly badgering us to buy this or that item they have recently seen on TV.
There are however still some good deals at the grocery store. I thought that with the fuel prices being so high that everything would go up and I suppose that it all will. For now though some things haven’t shown the effect of higher shipping and processing costs.
There are still some very good values in the meat case for instance. Just this last week we had boneless chicken breasts on sale for $1.69 a pound and rump roast for $1.88 a pound. Get yourself a bunch of rump roast and ask the butcher to grind some of them for you for outstanding and very lean hamburger and have him cut up some for stew meat or cube steaks or even stir fry. There is a lot of things you can do with some cheap rump meat. The leftovers make the best roast beef sandwiches for lunches too.
Chicken is still a very good value and very tasty as well. I took some of those $1.69 chicken breast home and slopped some cheap soy sauce, a little olive oil (about 4 parts soy sauce to 1 part olive oil) and garlic and onion powder and pepper all over them and then grilled them until they were just done and still nice and juicy. While I was outside grilling, the wife and kids fried up some bacon and sliced a few tomatoes for some delicious bacon and chicken breast sandwiches.
I grilled up way more chicken breasts than needed. My wife Vickie throws the leftovers in the freezer and uses them later to make Santa Fe soup or as toppings on a salad or for pasta dishes or what have you.
Also the other day we purchased some family pack thighs for less than a dollar a pound. They were great and easy too. The wife sloshed them into my can’t miss marinade (see above) and placed them in the oven on a sheet pan and cooked them for about 45 minutes at 325. Boy were they good. Serve with rice or potatoes and you have a very inexpensive and yet satisfying meal.
My favorite rice dish to serve with most any meal is quite simple. Take a cup of regular long grain white rice and sauté in a couple of tablespoons of oil until rice is hot. Then add 2 cups of hot and lightly salted chicken broth to the rice and cover and simmer for thirty minutes on low heat. There you have it, a very nice and easy rice pilaf type dish. I don’t remember how to make real rice pilaf (we used to make it in the Marine Corps) but this stuff is good and easy.
So there you have it, as long as you aren’t buying a year supply of brownie mixes and window cleaner or trying to get home with a box of donuts during a long commute you can come away from the grocery store with some good values. We just have to be careful, don’t listen to the kids, do the math and watch out for the traps, they’re everywhere.