Grocery shopping roulette...
this grocery shopping this I do every Sunday morning has started to give me a case of the ass, as Jimbo is wont to say. The prices on everything have been fluctuating without reason or limit lately and it's hit or miss if you're going to find what you need at the price you paid last week, or double that price, or half, depending on the whim of the grocery wholesalers, I suppose, or at least the store chain management. The trend seems to be that convenience foods, like canned soups, pasta sauces, frozen dinners and the like, which I usually never buy, seem to be off the chart. The store brand of frozen pizza, a box of five rectangular pieces, has gone from $3.49 to $5.99 in two weeks. However, in the freezer across the aisle, the store brand frozen french fries and onion rings, which are usually $2.99 a bag, were on sale for $.99 a bag, with a limit of two per customer. Of course, being a frozen french fry hound, I jumped right on that. Canned soups, except for Campbell's condensed, are all hovering around $3.00 a can, but the ingredients to make your own are being thrown at you when you walk in the door. I got a five pound bag of organic carrots this morning for a buck. I'm going to slice them into rounds, blanch them and freeze them for later use. $1.39 for a five pound bag of red potatoes. Yellow and green squash, $.49 a pound. Yellow onions, $.89 a pound. Cubanelle peppers, the size of a shoe, $.99 a pound. Broccoli, $.99 a pound. It goes on and on. I stocked up on what I could process and freeze since, next week, it will probably be give-away day on canned crap and fresh vegetables and fruit will be through the roof. I'm really not getting it. I'm not real big on using paper towels, but I got a 12 pack of Bounty Basics for $3.99, I mean that's hard to pass up. They'll last me for six months. Next aisle over, the laundry detergent I usually pay about $3.00 for is now up to $6.99. For a total of $4.00, I got a box of Borax and a box of Ivory Soap flakes, which will probably do a better job. I also picked up a box of left over Chanukah candles, 100 for a buck. They'll come in hand one of these days, I'm sure. (Don't mean to be sacrilegious, but they do...) I need to invest in one of those plastic bag vacuum sealer things and a small chest freezer for my utility room so I can start stocking up. I have two cases of Ball canning jars standing by, too. I think this summer I'm going to concentrate on growing tomatoes, lima beans and such things that can be easily processed and canned.
Well, I'm kicking back for a few hours, then we're going out to dinner tonight with my wife's family for her father's birthday.
Be well.

Touch me...