Market Headaches

I'm not alone when I say shopping for groceries has become like a test to get into Mensa. We now shop at five markets, sometimes weekly, to hunt and find the best bargains. The other day I went to three of them in one day trying to find affordable groceries. Here are some of my recent discoveries:

Although I am hesitant about buying any kind of meat from Wal-Mart, after seeing the price for lean ground beef had swelled to $13.00/lb. at the store where I usually buy it, in desperation I bought a pound of their lean ground beef to try.

In my opinion after making a meal with it, this is not 93/7 beef. It's more like 90/10 judging by the amount of fat it shed. It was dry, tasteless and I got terrible indigestion just after I ate a very small portion of it (I actually don't eat red meat very often, so that may be the real culprit.) Final thoughts: no more Wal-Mart ground beef for me and mine.

Decent corn on the cob is very tough to find. I wanted to make it with some BBQ chicken this week, and ended up paying $6.00 for three cobs at Key. Fortunately our local farm will have their corn out by now so I can start shopping from farmers again, which is about half that price, too.

Italian food, particularly pasta, is still the cheapest meal I can make if I use generic pasta and make my own sauce. Pizza (also entirely homemade) is second runner up. I am making one or both every week now to stretch our food budget, but I add a homemade salad or cucumbers to add a bit of nutrition (I also make with pasta homemade garlic bread or bread with herb dip.) I also have a sandwiches dinner every week if I can swing it, either grilled cheese and tomato soup or tuna salad.

I now make all our baked goods except for sandwich bread, which I can't make for as cheap as I can buy it at Wal-Mart (same goes for baguettes.) I am making at home most of our desserts and certain staples (like all the bagels we eat) because I can make those cheaper. We are not going out for things we can buy the supplies for at the market and then make and eat at home, like ice cream. I'm looking for new recipes all the time, but most beef dishes are out of my reach. I'm going to try making chicken bog for the first time in the crock pot, and I'll report back if it's as good as I suspect.

It is extremely tough to keep a family well-fed while not spending hundreds each week at the markets. We're averaging about $150.00 per week for three people (two of whom are men with gigantic appetites, and then I have special needs as a diabetic) and while that is about $70.00 more than I used to spend, I consider myself lucky to be keeping our grocery cost under $1000.00 per month.

Image credit: Store shelves image by Squirrel_photos from Pixabay, Wal-Mart ground beef image from product listing page, corn image by Couleur from Pixabay, pasta image by -Rita-👩‍🍳 und 📷 mit ❤ from Pixabay