Posted on 12/16/2010 6:58:21 PM PST by Mad Dawgg
For the first time since 2008, inflation is hitting consumers in the stomach.
Grocery prices grew by more than 1 1/2 times the overall rate of inflation this year, outpaced only by costs of transportation and medical care, according to numbers released Wednesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists predict that this is only the beginning. Fueled by the higher costs of wheat, sugar, corn, soybeans and energy, shoppers could see as much as a 4 percent increase at the supermarket checkout next year.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Got most of my year supply of food taken care of and natural gas for my CNG vehicle is holding steady at $1.52. I’m about to start raising rabbits for meat as well. I hope I’m somewhat ready for what’s coming.
I wasn’t very clear was I.
It is a Safeway coupon that comes out once a month here in Oregon.
It is good for $10 off when you purchase $50 or more in groceries (adult beverages and cigs don’t count)
I can buy 7up and herb tea or some other on sale stock up item.
Like Safeway Tomato Juice not from concentrate for $1.65 which beats the heck out of name brand V-8 prices.
I fast once or twice a week and Tomato Juice is what I use as one of my liqueds.
The newspaper costs 75 cents.
I have also found that Safeway brand foods are really palatable. There frozen stuffed Pasta is really nice.
I had a promotional coupon for some lightly battered Green Beans as a snack food and they were very good.
My social son prefers our family owned grocery as that is where the most social interaction goes on store wise.
Freddies/Kroger is a wild zoo. People are uptight, almost jogging with there carts.
We prefer a more friendly laid back shopping trip. People who at least smile and nod hello to others they don’t know.
“Grocery prices grew by more than 1 1/2 times the overall rate of inflation this year...”
hummm. I thought the reason seniors and disabled get no increase in Social Security for two years was because there was no evidence of inflation.
“The trick I’ve seen is a smaller container of ‘x’ at the same price the large one used to cost.”
That’s kind of the trick they’ve been doing with Laundry Detergent. They’re labeling the product as super concentrate and charging 3 to 4 times as much for the same size container! Of all the price increases over the past year, that’s the one I’ve really noticed the most. Next is coffee. I actually saw a large can of coffee for almost $11.
We have a few grocery stores around us, Aldi, Sams, Jewel, etc. Jewel is by far the most expensive, nearly 7 bucks for a gallon of milk. I can get that same gallon at Aldi for 3 bucks. We shop for a family of 6 for around 300 a week. My brother shops at Jewel because he says Aldi is crap (same food basically, not the nice ambiance) and for his family of 3, he says he spends 700 a week.
Now, on to the story, did our shopping yesterday (Thursday), and we came out to $350. Usually, we are about $275-300. Same thing last week. We were wondering if it was the holiday season, or just some drastic inflation over the last two weeks, and we were talking about this very subject today, going over our receipt when we noticed that all meats had gone up about 20% over the last couple of weeks.
If a republican had been the POTUS this would have been all over the news nightly, about the grinches and the poor suffering women and children who can’t afford to eat before Christmas. Instead, we get crickets.
But, to my original point (I got distracted), we do have to shop at Jewel for certain items that Aldi does not carry (specialty foods for an elderly family member we take care of), and we always take notice of those in check-out that are paying for their food with a food card.
I’ve commented on this before, we’ve seen them leave and get into Escalades with spinning rims, we’ve seen them shop in fur coats, and hair-dos that must cost over a hundred bucks, with finger nails 3 inches long, all painted up.
What gets me above all else, is that we ourselves can’t in good conscience spend 700 a week on food at an upscale grocery store, yet those on government aid have no problem doing so. THAT’S MY MONEY YOU ARE SPENDING!
I’m not saying folks on aid should be eating cat food, but for God’s sake, they should not be allowed to buy food from upscale grocery stores on my dime.
/rant off
We are all irrigated so we have to grow high value crops so I’m comparing cotton to melons, pumpkins, lettuce, cabbage, onions, spinach and chile. They are water intensive, labor intensive and chemical intensive. Dreaming of making it on cotton is a fantasy I could get used to, Round-up Ready, so no hoeing, thinning or hand harvesting.
We have drip irrigation so water is cheaper than it used to be and we can apply chemicals through the tape, rain or shine, so no airplanes. Cotton also takes a lot less water.
Our air is too dry to grow soybeans, there is rarely a good time to harvest them since we often have no dew and they shatter(or so I’ve been told, we’ve never tried them). I’m sure we have less of a bug problem although we have plenty but in the rare times that it rains we get plenty more.
A couple of years ago, we bought 2 cases of chickens from Sam’s club. Whole chickens, just missing the heads and feet, frozen like rocks.
Well, I think a case was 24 chickens. Those chickens lasted all summer, but after a couple months of 2 chicken dinners a week, my family nearly mutinied when the flier came around and they were on sale again.
My wife told me she would leave me if I ever cooked more than 1 chicken meal a week. :)
I’m guessing I was a bit overzealous...
Oh yeah, and on a side note, we loved those Sams chickens. We used to get Perdue ones when they were on sale, but they dont’ cook right, because they are so large. We had trouble finding a bird around 3-5 pounds for roasting, all the Perdue ones were 8lbs, so they turn out dry in the inside (I’m not the greatest cook in the world either, mind you).
So, we enjoy the cheap off name chickens, they seem to turn out better for us.
I’ll have to do some reading on this. On a hybrid tomato plant, are the re-plantable seeds inside the fruit?
I should say....on a non-hybrid tomato plant....
Seems to me that turkey is often cheaper than chicken...ground turkey cheaper than ground beef. But, I am able to buy large bags of chicken legs/thighs, usually about 15 of each, for $6...I just have to cut them apart. And when chicken breasts aren’t on sale, I buy the split breasts and de-bone them.
LoL.
I mistakenly watched Ramseys Christmas Dinner special late the other night.
Copious drooling.
Ramsey said when cooking a whole bird it should sit out before cutting for the same length of time it is cooked.
That guy was so good in the kitchen that he had me drooling over brussel sprouts. LOL.
We usually watch him as the tyrant on Hells Kitchen.
His special was the first time I had ever seen that side of him at his home with his 3 kids and his Mom. Wife MIA?
What I normally dislike about him in Hells Kitchen with all the yelling and anger I found him to be quite attractive as a good Dad cooking a 5 star meal while his Mom would tell him not to get “cheeky” towards her and he gave dear Mom a kiss on the cheek to apologize.
I am guessing from some of his comments about Moms cooking when she was not in the room is why he felt called to his proffesion.
I use to tell my son If I was granted a wish like kids from make a wish get I would have Anthony Bourdain come cook for me. Now I have updated that to Chef Ramsey. : )
BTW What is Sam’s brand is that Wal Mart?
Where does Sams proccess their Chickens.
Son has a rule that I only buy PNW grown chicken and not from Arkansas as he saw something years ago about Arkansas chicken, can’t remember what.
Could be the reason you birds are so dry.
I bought some flash frozen local farm birds and they were horrible to eat. Extremely expensive to boot.
That was years ago before I got into stocking and budget buying.
Same up here in the PNW.
Buy loads of ‘em when in season and freeze.
I make fruit smoothies them when my body core feels to hot.
I use real Black Cherry juice as my liqued core, ice, strawberries, banana and pineapple sherbert. Yummy.
And the black cherry juice is a natural way to lower uric acid levels that can bring on the gout.
I have no idea what Sams brand is.... I haven’t bought the cases of birds there in a couple of years, now I get the cheap ones from Aldi.
The only birds I find that are dry, are the big ones, and usually those are perdue. Even if I make baked chicken breasts, they are so large, they just don’t cook right for me.
Like, for example, if the recipe says 350 at an hour, well then the inside is raw. If I cook it more, the outside is dry. So, then, I figured, well, more heat. I got chicken jerky. So, I figured less heat, and cover it. It was sloppy. I had so many problems with them big hormoned up birds, I just learned to stay with the little ones.
Usually, if I am cooking, I am also running as the phone operator for our business because the wife is out doing something, so I don’t have time to baby our meals. I’m your typical guy in the kitchen, stick in over, splash on seasoning, then come back when timer goes off.
And, also, now I’ve learned to use the thermometer and get the bird to 165 instead of using the timer. Still haven’t gone back to the Perdue Frankenbirds yet, maybe I’ll feel brave and try again some time.
I sometimes think, heck, i’ll put it in the turkey fryer, but then again, I hate cleaning that pot out, and it costs an arm and a leg in peanut oil (kind of offsetting the cheapness of the chicken I suppose).
And on your timing suggestion, do you mean leave it out AFTER its cooked for that length of time? Or leave out of the fridge BEFORE you cook it to get it to room temperature, I’m a bit confused. Won’t the chicken get cold as heck if it sits out for an hour?
PS: Whats a PNW grown chicken?
Thanks for the council :)
When it comes to chickens I’ll take all I can find!
It’s not only the “lazy” that use the linc card. It is also young people out on their own for the first time, perhaps with a young child, and one of them gets laid off/can’t find work, and they have no credit cards to put their groceries on because they haven’t established credit well enough to get decent percentage rates. And the cost of living is so darn high these days. I don’t blame these kinds of people for wanting to feed their families instead of starving.
Well according to Ramsey and his small turkey he cooked the gravy will heat the meat.
But after your explanation of your cooking techniques I guess it would be fair to say there is no gravy to heat the meat LOL.
I use to enjoy cooking but my job as the quad sons careprovider leaves my feet sore enough so cooking is a chore more not a pleasure.
I dislike clean up too. Being single for life I am dedicated to paper plates/plastic forks and using disposable baking tins from the dollar store if I do bake.
I use my steamer and George Foremen mostly as bending over into an oven doesn’t work with old broken back injury.
PNW is short for the Pacific North West which is Washington,Oregon and Idaho.
Our chickens come from Washington State.
No they shouldn’t. I agree with you there. I have a sister in law who refuses to get a job. Of any kind. Once her husband became permanently disabled and in nursing home she wouldn’t even look for work when her utilities were being shut off. She finally started getting some kind of disability checks in (not hers, husbands) Now she has the food card and buys all sorts of junk on it. I was REALLY suprised that she was able to buy soda, candy, energy drinks, expensive meats, deli foods, while I who work has to clip coupons, get Buddig, cheap ground beef and the store brands.
I LOVE our Foreman Grills. We have 2 big ones that we get going, they are GREAT!
Yep no splatter.
I picked this one up in the reduce to clear bin for ten bucks.
My veggie/fish steamer is ideal for self timing/cooking.
I only have a small window at times like yourself working from home.
So I can’t leave things unattended on the stove.
I get side tracked to long at times.
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