HI,

I was at Woodman's last night.

There were far away more bags and selection, if you bought a five-pound bag. These were priced in the $3-$4 range, but don't hold my feet to the fire on that info. There were only a single source for 10-pound bags of Russets for $5.89, which is 2X to 3X than I normally paid in the past.

I bit the bullet, because it seemed uncomfortable not having any potatoes around.

During the pandemic, I always kept eggs, milk, flour and cabbage.

BTW - Eggs are cheaper at Woodman's. I think large eggs were $2.19 a dozen and medium eggs were around $1.69. I buy one of each.

While the state of Illinois has suspended tax on food, your local governments have not. A $5 purchase in Highland Park had a four-cent tax or 0.008%. A friend showed his receipt where Chicago's tax is 0.01438%. It is possible, it is less but the store he went to did not break down the taxes like they do at Jewel.

Regards,
Cathy2

tjr said

Guess we'll be eating more rice. Until that goes up.

The low water flow in the Po River in Italy is having a big impact on rice and Parmigiano cheese production, so expect short supplies and higher prices down the road. Most of Italy's rice production is in the Po Valley. CNN reported a while back that dairy farmers not only had feed supply problems from the drought but also getting enough water for the cows to drink.

Potatoes were $4.99 at the Kosher Jewel om Howard last night. I don't go through that many potatoes, and so I have no problem paying $2 a pound for potatoes at the farmers market. Plus the yellow potatoes taste like they already have butter added to them, and so I don't have to add butter, but I never make mashed potatoes anyway. I make this potato broccoli frittata occasionally in the summertime, but my one broccoli plant I have in my garden has not produced any broccoli yet, and Henry had a really small broccoli crop this year, and Nichols charge too much money for their broccoli. I also coat a small pan with a small amount of olive oil, and then slice some potato, and add it to the pan, and then I cover the potato slices with whatever spice I have handy. I often use curry, turmeric and chili powder, and then I put the potatoes in an over for 10-15 minutes.

ekreider wrote:The low water flow in the Po River in Italy is having a big impact on rice and Parmigiano cheese production, so expect short supplies and higher prices down the road.

Darn, just when my pre-pandemic supply of Romano Pecorino from Angelo Caputo's (3.99/lb!) has finally run out. Guess I'll have to downgrade to WI Romano or Parmesan.

Louisiana rice remains $7.99/20# bag at Butera. For $8 it's a lot of food. Lately, I've gotten hooked on Basmati at around quadruple that price, still not that expensive.

Cathy2 wrote:BTW - Eggs are cheaper at Woodman's. I think large eggs were $2.19 a dozen and medium eggs were around $1.69. I buy one of each.

Regards,
Cathy2

Eggs have been crazy at $3.29-3.59/doz when on sale. Even ALDI was $2.89/doz in Phoenix last week.

However, the Kroger affiliate and Safeway have eggs on sales for $1.49-1.99 for nearly every week or two since June. I would buy more this week but I have six dozen in the refrigerator. A lot of egg salad in the future ...

Some good news, that Woodman's price is down from July when I think mediums were just over $2. Whole chickens are back to 99 cents/lb at Tony's. I guess the avian flu thing is on the way out.

Pecorino Romano is not produced anywhere near the Po River. From Spruce Eats:

Pecorino Romano is an ancient Italian cheese made from 100% sheep's milk. The milk comes from sheep bred in the wild and fed on natural pastures in Lazio, the province of Grosseto in Tuscany, and the island of Sardinia. It is one of four Italian sheep's milk cheeses that benefits from protected designation of origin (P.D.O.) status and continues to be made using only traditional methods in its areas of origin.

These sheep only produce milk for a few months in the spring.

ekreider wrote:Pecorino Romano is not produced anywhere near the Po River. From Spruce Eats:

Pecorino Romano is an ancient Italian cheese made from 100% sheep's milk. The milk comes from sheep bred in the wild and fed on natural pastures in Lazio, the province of Grosseto in Tuscany, and the island of Sardinia. It is one of four Italian sheep's milk cheeses that benefits from protected designation of origin (P.D.O.) status and continues to be made using only traditional methods in its areas of origin.

These sheep only produce milk for a few months in the spring.

Slacker Sheep

Some pricing in the markets these days just does not make a lot of sense.

A few months ago, I went into a Walmart in Ohio to pick up some Mountain Dew for my FIL. Buring 2 12 packs was $1 LESS than buying 1 24 pack. My FIL's reaction was "that is how it usually is."

This past week, Safeway (AZ) offered 8 oz shredded cheese for $1.67. Included, unbelievably' was Parmesan/Romano blend. 5 oz cups of the same were $3.99.

And at Butera this week, chicken thighs are $1.69/ lb and legs at 1.29/ lb. Leg quarters were only $0.99/ lb

jlawrence01 wrote:Some pricing in the markets these days just does not make a lot of sense.

A few months ago, I went into a Walmart in Ohio to pick up some Mountain Dew for my FIL. Buring 2 12 packs was $1 LESS than buying 1 24 pack. My FIL's reaction was "that is how it usually is."

This past week, Safeway (AZ) offered 8 oz shredded cheese for $1.67. Included, unbelievably' was Parmesan/Romano blend. 5 oz cups of the same were $3.99.

And at Butera this week, chicken thighs are $1.69/ lb and legs at 1.29/ lb. Leg quarters were only $0.99/ lb

Pricing never makes sense to me. At the local 7-11, 2 20oz bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper are $3.75 (plus .20 bottle deposit = 3.95) at Winco, they are $1.98 each, so 2 for 3.96 plus the .20 so $4.16. You'd think they'd be cheaper at a discount grocery store than a 7-11.

Po river...Parmesan...Pecorino Romano

Yeah, I was thinking of the substitution effect. If there's a Parmesan shortage, then some people at least will sub Romano, jacking up the price of that cheese. True gourmands wouldn't do that, but schmos like me would. To be honest, I prefer the sheepish taste.

Butera leg quarters

I bought a bag of those a few months back. They were pretty beat up. I got maybe 5 full quarters, a few thighs with pieces of leg plus a leg with a small chunk of thigh.

Cook's Illustrated has a Wisconsin parmesan cheese that they also like, if the imported Italian cheese is more than you are willing to spend. Whole Foods puts their Italian parmesan cheese on sale on rare occasions. Except for when I make pesto, I don't use a lot of parmesan, and so I bought a package of Italian parmesan at Whole Foods at least three months ago, and I still have half of it left. The most I use at one time on pasta, is one ounce. If you get the good stuff, you don't have to use as much.

A microplane grater really fluffs up grana cheeses. The pile of grated cheese looks large compared to the reduction in size of the source piece. The large surface area of the bits lets the flavor of good cheese come through. I haven't weighed it but doubt that we rarely use even half an ounce on pasta for the two of us.

jlawrence01 wrote:And at Butera this week, chicken thighs are $1.69/ lb and legs at 1.29/ lb. Leg quarters were only $0.99/ lb

Bear in mind, though, you're paying for a hefty hunk of backbone with a leg quarter.

Katie wrote:

jlawrence01 wrote:And at Butera this week, chicken thighs are $1.69/ lb and legs at 1.29/ lb. Leg quarters were only $0.99/ lb

Bear in mind, though, you're paying for a hefty hunk of backbone with a leg quarter.

I never seen that at the stores that I shop at as I do not shop at Butera's. However, that would be an asset to me as I would remove them using my new cleaver and save them for chicken stock. Chicken bones for stock are also $1.29-1.49 in most stores.

I love my microplane. I got one years ago when I had a $10 off coupon for Carson's. Most of the time I use a half an ounce of parmesan when I use it to put parmesan on my pasta. That is why it takes me at least three months to go through a half pound of parmesan cheese, and so $22 a pound Italian parmesan at Whole Foods, is less than a dollar a week for me.

I was kind of in the neighborhood, and so I went to Walmart today to get this cholesterol supplement I have been taking, and Walmart sells it for $14.99. Mariano's has it B1G1F currently, but it is $38.99 there. I hate Walmart, and I only go there when I can't find the item anywhere else, or when it is way cheaper than any place else. I was also interested in some garden clippers they had for sale, but there was no shelf tag for them. I then told myself that I would just go to one of the price checkers in the store. I then walked around the store trying to find one, and could not. I finally went to the electronics section, to see if anybody there would scan it for me. Some body finally came up to the register and scanned it for me. She then told me that Walmart has gotten rid of all of their price checker stations they used to have, because they figured people could just download the Walmart app, and find the price on their phone. This is one of many reasons why I hate Walmart.

Bananas are currently $.48 a pound at Aldi's, $.49 a pound at Walmart, $.59 a pound at Whole Foods, $.65 a pound at Mariano's, and $.69 a pound at Jewel. Milk is $2.92 a gallon at both Walmart and Aldi's. I tried to find out how much 10 pounds of potatoes were at Mariano's, but they did not have a shelf tag for them, and the store does not have any price scanners. Walmart was way busier than Mariano's was today. I don't understand what people see in Walmart.

NFriday wrote:Walmart was way busier than Mariano's was today. I don't understand what people see in Walmart.

I will give you three reasons why my friends and I shop at Walmart:

1) From Day 1 of the pandemic in 2020, they had the ability and the technology to put together orders for pick up and delivery than any other company in this market. Within three weeks, you could place an order with Walmart on a Monday, pick it up on a Wednesday and actually receive 90% of your order. On the out-of-stocks, about half of the time, you would get substitutions about 50% of the items.

In comparison, if you ordered from Fry's (Kroger), you would have to wait for 6-7 days plus you were darned lucky to get 50% of the items you ordered. This improved gradually but it was months before it got to 80%.

If you ordered from Safeway which used a service - maybe Doordash, they did not offer pick-up for over a year. Instead, they delivered at a hefty price. First, the price of the goods were 20% higher than the store price. Also, you paid a hefty fee to have it delivered to the house. A load of Oroweat bread was delivered to my neighbor at $5.49 by Safeway while I was paying $2.99 at kroger.

2) I have been doing a lot of comparisons between pricing of food items in the Phoenix area between Winco Foods, Walmart, Frys and Safeway. Winco is almost always lowest priced among the store brands, slightly less than Great Value. However, on name brands, non-sale items, Walmart is significantly cheaper than their competitors. Also, in some categories like dairy and salad greens, they are a lot less expensive.

3) When I was in Chicagoland, I used to get paid by a certain vendor to interview shoppers on Saturdays at the local Jewel store. The manufacturer wanted to know about the shopping habits of people purchasing their products. I would say that at least 60% of the Jewel customers said that they only shopped at Jewel. In addition, 15% stated that Jewel was the ONLY supermarket in Crystal Lake. (At the time, there was a Walmart, ALDI, Dominicks, Joe Caputo's, and Joseph's Marketplace.)

So if you are a working class person who does not have a lot of time to shop around and needs to live in a budget, it is pretty easy to see why people are happy to shop at Walmart.

The reasons I shop there are simple:
1) Having a Walmart store in the area forces the local supermarkets to be competitive, In Woodstock, IL, once Walmart opened breaking up the Jewel monopoly in the town, prices on milk and eggs immediately fell 20%.

2) During the pandemic, they performed while the rest of my supply chain failed or was not available.

3) There are several items that I cannot source locally that is stocked by the Walmart

I know some people here will not set foot in a Walmart, but when I was there yesterday, I did notice that King Arthur all purpose flour was only $4.79. They did not have any of the KA WW, bread, or white whole wheat flour though. The only places that seem to have the white whole wheat are Target, the Kosher Jewel on Howard, and Meijer's. I bought some last month at Target because it was $1 cheaper than the Kosher Jewel. Meijer's is the cheapest, but the closest Meijer's to me is 20 miles. WF only has the organic white whole wheat and the organic WW for lots more money.

Has anybody tried the white whole wheat from Kroeger? It is only I believe $3.49 at Mariano's. Is it any good? Thanks, Nancy

NFriday wrote:Potatoes were $4.99 at the Kosher Jewel om Howard last night.

$2.99 for a 5 lb bag of russets and $2.79 for a dozen at my Jewel.

Eating healthy costs you more money. I bought some salmon burgers at Mariano's that I had a $1 coupon for, but they still cost me $6.15 for four of them. They are way healthier than the pub burgers you can get for $.99 at Jewel on sale.

Katie wrote:I don't know about the particular prices quoted above for skirt steak at Tony's, but the weekly flyer I get from Tony's often shows prices for select, not choice, beef cuts...There may be good uses for select skirt steak but I'd rather stick to choice.

My local Tony's has advertised Choice grade Skirt at 6.99/lb for the past 2 weeks. This new week's ad is pimping Choice grade skirt for 5.99/lb starting today. I'm totally with you on checking the grades.

jlawrence01 wrote:

NFriday wrote:Walmart was way busier than Mariano's was today. I don't understand what people see in Walmart.

I will give you three reasons why my friends and I shop at Walmart:

1) From Day 1 of the pandemic in 2020, they had the ability and the technology to put together orders for pick up and delivery than any other company in this market. Within three weeks, you could place an order with Walmart on a Monday, pick it up on a Wednesday and actually receive 90% of your order. On the out-of-stocks, about half of the time, you would get substitutions about 50% of the items.

In comparison, if you ordered from Fry's (Kroger), you would have to wait for 6-7 days plus you were darned lucky to get 50% of the items you ordered. This improved gradually but it was months before it got to 80%.

If you ordered from Safeway which used a service - maybe Doordash, they did not offer pick-up for over a year. Instead, they delivered at a hefty price. First, the price of the goods were 20% higher than the store price. Also, you paid a hefty fee to have it delivered to the house. A load of Oroweat bread was delivered to my neighbor at $5.49 by Safeway while I was paying $2.99 at kroger.

2) I have been doing a lot of comparisons between pricing of food items in the Phoenix area between Winco Foods, Walmart, Frys and Safeway. Winco is almost always lowest priced among the store brands, slightly less than Great Value. However, on name brands, non-sale items, Walmart is significantly cheaper than their competitors. Also, in some categories like dairy and salad greens, they are a lot less expensive.

3) When I was in Chicagoland, I used to get paid by a certain vendor to interview shoppers on Saturdays at the local Jewel store. The manufacturer wanted to know about the shopping habits of people purchasing their products. I would say that at least 60% of the Jewel customers said that they only shopped at Jewel. In addition, 15% stated that Jewel was the ONLY supermarket in Crystal Lake. (At the time, there was a Walmart, ALDI, Dominicks, Joe Caputo's, and Joseph's Marketplace.)

So if you are a working class person who does not have a lot of time to shop around and needs to live in a budget, it is pretty easy to see why people are happy to shop at Walmart.

The reasons I shop there are simple:
1) Having a Walmart store in the area forces the local supermarkets to be competitive, In Woodstock, IL, once Walmart opened breaking up the Jewel monopoly in the town, prices on milk and eggs immediately fell 20%.

2) During the pandemic, they performed while the rest of my supply chain failed or was not available.

3) There are several items that I cannot source locally that is stocked by the Walmart

Walmart did take away their greatest perk of online grocery shopping: If they made a substitution, you wouldn't pay extra for the substituted item if it was a higher price than your original item. A couple of times they substituted name brand products for store brands that cost sometimes twice as much. With supply chain issues and product shortages, it would be too costly to continue so you pay the actual cost of the substituted item now. You can obviously decline the substituted items if you don't want them. It was nice while it lasted.

Jim-Bob wrote:Walmart did take away their greatest perk of online grocery shopping: If they made a substitution, you wouldn't pay extra for the substituted item if it was a higher price than your original item. A couple of times they substituted name brand products for store brands that cost sometimes twice as much. With supply chain issues and product shortages, it would be too costly to continue so you pay the actual cost of the substituted item now. You can obviously decline the substituted items if you don't want them. It was nice while it lasted.

That is correct. If I ordered a pint of half and half and they were out, I would get a quart at the same price.

But they still do substitute name brands for store brands (e.g, Great Value for Shamrock Farms).

For whatever it matters, I was at Costco the other day.

I cleaned my desk, I found a receipt from a year ago which included somethings I bought a few days ago:

August 18, 2021
Spanish EVOO: $14.99
Cascade GEL: $9.49 less $2.40, $7.09 final price

August 28, 2022
Spanish EVOO: $17.99
Cascade GEL: $9.99 less $2.50, $7.49 final price

I don't have that many old receipts roaming my desk.

Regards,
CAthy2

Shockingly, some good news: $1.99 butter at Tony's this week, limit 2 with coupon. I thought I was going to have to do my holiday baking with $2.49 butter.

I got butter for free last week, thanks to J4U, I also got a specialized deal for $2.49 which I did not use because it takes me a couple of months to go through a pound of butter, and I just opened a package I had in my freezer a few weeks ago.

jlawrence01 wrote:So if you are a working class person who does not have a lot of time to shop around and needs to live in a budget, it is pretty easy to see why people are happy to shop at Walmart.

There's some truth to this. Walmart is still open relatively long hours, although I haven't found any that are open 24 hrs like most used to be. It's the cheapest source, or close to it, for many non-grocery products like health & beauty, motor oil, basic clothing, etc. But, anywhere I've lived, it's not the cheapest for groceries primarily because Walmart doesn't have sales.

A lot of the people that shop at Walmart do not compare prices. They are just looking for one place to do their shopping. The Walmart I went to on Sunday, is only two blocks from a Mariano's, but I saw lots of people at Walmart buying milk for $2.92 a gallon, when Mariano's had it on sale. Walmart had at least twice as many customers than Mariano's did, and I am sure that there were lots of people at Walmart that never go to Mariano's.

The Skokie Walmart for a while was trying to attract the Jewish folks that live in W. Rogers Park when they first opened up, but I think they gave up, and I did not see any kosher items that they had when they first opened up. The Mariano's does a better job catering to the orthodox Jewish crowd, and I do see some people shopping the kosher section of the store. The Kosher Jewel on Howard does way more business with the Kosher crowd, than Mariano's does.