Playing The Supermarket With The Penny Stockboy
So you want to spend $100 maximum monthly on groceries, already.
Let's say that, like this blogger, you're
First, buy very little processed food, nothing baked, no snacks and no liquid beverages save for milk in gallon jugs, black tea in the 100-bag box and coffee in the 39-oz can.
You make all your breads, baked goods, and snacks from scratch, using five-pound bags of whole-wheat flour, two-pound bags of corn meal and plain popping corn, potatoes butter, milk, eggs, cocoa, sugar, spice and flavorings.
In the produce aisle, you make your base from heads of green cabbage, carrots and onions and navel oranges in five-pound bags, two-pound bags of limes (one lime sliced and steeped and squeezed into your daily half-gallon of hot/iced tea, and ditch the sugar), potatoes in ten-pound bags, and green peppers, and sweet potatoes, broccoli crowns, cooking greens, salad greens (especially romaine lettuce and chicory), butternut squash, and bananas by the pound or by the head, averaging around a dollar a pound as a group - such among the pricier produce as the cooking greens will find their offset in your big bag of carrots at fifty cents a pound. Consider also eating and/or cooking your calcium-and-fiber-rich citrus peels.
In meat, you look early mornings for the "Manager's Special" yellow sticker cutting the price by c. 25%, especially when the price is below c. $1.50/lb, along with the weekly specials. And even when not on sale, shank portion ham, pre-cooked and ready to eat or heat, is a steal at c. $1.49/lb., far cheaper than the meats in the deli and lending itself to all manner of soups and stews. Uncooked pork picnics and Boston butt roasts, whole chickens and turkeys, and chicken and pork livers are also worth bookmarking as you make your ap-point-cut rounds. And since many of us, so we read, tend to get well over twice the amount of protein our bodies can really use each day, limiting your meat consumption to c. 3 oz a day or less might be, in some cases quite literally, just what the doctor ordered.
Stock your freezer for weeks at a time when the markdowns warrant. If you are just slightly adventurous, ask your fish clerk to order you a box or two of frozen fish heads, and learn to cook them with vinegar so you can eat the bones - all of them. It's WDSL.DD (What DSL. Done Did).
A word on store brands. In the old days, "store brand" was a curious byword for "you don't get what you don't pay for" and that was fine: when our grandparents first knew the phrase, those were the days when you could literally still see traces of the chain's own branding iron in your ground round and in your hot dogs, as even today in, e.g., Bar S Franks, which are, no surprise, priced accordingly. They didn't know any better, or thus eat any better, in other words. Thanks to advances these last hundred very odd years in everything from powdered babies to Britta-filtered bath water, you can be sure that when buying the proverbial store-brands now, with the exceptions only of Chinese lead condoms and that unfortunate run of "KentuckY Jelly" in the Personal Embarrassments aisles of some of the lesser Piggly Wigglies, you are assured of losing only a marginal share, and that only among the very oldest, of those attending your next family reunion or VFW dance.
In dairy, relative bargains include store-brand milk in the gallon jug (I tend to split between whole and 1%), store-brand sour cream in the 24-oz tub, store-brand half-and-half in the half-gallon carton, store-brand light cream in the quart carton, shredded store-brand cheese in two-pound bags (I like the Mexican blend), store-brand butter in the one-pound box, and store-brand large white eggs by the dozen.
The center aisles with the shelves are, in the main, a war crime.
Exceptions include, among canned vegetables, 28-oz store-brand pasta sauce/tomatoes (esp. crushed or puree in the latter case), and among canned fruits, 20-oz store-brand pineapple for c. 99 cents. In dry goods, go for the five-pound bags of whole-wheat flour (snap-bakers' recommendations: muffins and dumplings and other quick breads, all lending themselves to endless variations in added ingredients and flavors) and, if you can find it, whole rye flour, baking powder, one-pound bags of dried split peas, lentils, and beans. I mentioned the coffee and the tea cost-savers already. Get a gallon jug of the white vinegar with its 1001 uses already. You're going to want it for your fish heads, too. Oh, and in canned fish, skip the tuna and pick up a 15-oz can of sardines and another of jack mackerel (Trachurus symmetricus).
Also go to WalMart and get as many of the large 34-52 oz bottles of hot sauce as you can use for three months. They're about $1.88 a bottle, a real steal.
Get your dried spices and herbs at a big job-lot store with a 99-cent wall of spices, such as Big Lots of Ocean State Job Lot. You may also find bargains therein on, e.g., big bags of pretty decent coffee. Even better: if you live near an enclave of ethnic markets, you may discover spices sold in bulk in clear plastic bags.
Relative bargains in the convenience/dessert/frozen category, as measured in price/100-calorie serving include store-brand ice cream in the 48/56/64 oz carton (favorites: Peanut Butter Cup and Coffee/Mocha/Espresso with Chips - as with my penchant for whole-milk, above, the higher in calories the better; if I haven't mentioned it before, I'm neither a doctor nor your mother); store-brand Supreme (pepperoni, sausage, olives, onion, peppers) Rising Crust Pizza in the 32.7 oz size, brand-name Chimichangas in the 8-unit 32-oz bag. And while you're in the freezer aisle, pick up some frozen peas, broccoli and spinach, especially in two-to-four-pound bags. You already got your carrots back in Produce. And instead of frozen fruit, which is far too expensive, you got your big bag of navel oranges and your bananas back in produce, too.
The case for beer and wine: "they" say two drinks a day max for men, one for women (alcoholic sexism, I'd say - this is 2012 - women are entitled to be just as drunk before, during and after seducing the boss's spouse as their ex-husbands - it's not just my opinion, it's the Law of Equal Harassment, and not just her ass but Now With His Tits2® With Ret Sin™). So you buy 30-packs of ice beer (favorite: Steel Reserve, 8.1% alcohol), which is higher in alcohol and lowest per unit volume, and boxed wines from three to five liters. For some reason, though, my local Hannaford sells 24-oz cans of, e.g., Icehouse, Natural Ice, Labatt's Blue, and Steel Reserve for $0.99 - $1.29, which in the case of the 99-cent brews, clocks in at less than the unit price for the same-brand 30-packs.
So there you are: fifty years of grocery-shopper's intelligence and endlessly-sorted recent-years deconstruction of the Hannaford web site, all in one hard-to-swallow blogger (or so I have been told).
You want I should walk down the aisle with you already?
Who do I look like, your fiancee?
Oh.
My condolences.
Here - in that case she needs a shave.
No, her face is fine.
And so are her legs.
And back.
Oh, sorry.
His face, legs, and back.
In that case, Sir, he can forget about the shave already.
Oh, sorry.
In that case, Ma'am.*
*After, of course, the passage from "Wild Women" by Benny Hill:
Now I was in a Chelsea bar one day,
And there was a chap stood about five feet away,
And we was both admiring a girl about twenty-one,
I said, "You just can't help but stare
At that cute little chick with the long blonde hair,"
He said, "That chick just happens to be my son."
I said, "I didn't mean to offend,
You must let me make amend,
I mean at least let me buy you another rum.
I said, "You must think me an awful cad,
I didn't know you was his dad."
He said, "I'm not, you twit, I'm his mum."
And make sure that among the choices of entree for your wedding guests, along with the beef and the chicken, already, you at least include an asterisk or a write-in blank for fish heads.
And expect from at least one of your special-diet (and perhaps, after all, special-needs) guests a bit of plateside pro-calcium evangelizing over the chewing of the bones and the eyes.
Now go grab a knife and feel taller in the dollar after the chopping of the shopping.
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