Lidl on Grand St opened yesterday and I've been there 4 times so far

 In general, I like it, but they need to figure out their basket situation. They only have carts and big baskets you drag around on wheels. Those are too annoying for New York. Stores get crowded. Let me get by people!

Worse, on the trip I just got back from, there were none. They're just stacked up at the cash registers from past shoppers. I hope they figure this out.

So far I've bought tortilla chips ($1.50), 3 jars of salsa for $5, flour for $2.30, a big jar of pickles for $3, a bag of lemons for $2.30, cannelini beans for $1, two cans of tomatoes for $1.70 or so, tortillas for $1.50, tater tots for $3, and hot dog buns for $1.50. Oh, and mushrooms for $1.19

Things I might buy soon: wings for $1.49/lb, hot italian sausage for $3, a big bag of frozen whole sardines for $8, butter for $3, a baguette for $1, Greek yogurt for $3.35, and queso fresco for $3.

I got an air fryer recently so I like things I can air fry, like wings. And hot dogs. And mushrooms. And pickles.

Beefsteak tomatoes and kaiser rolls

 I saw that Ozzie's had beefsteak tomatoes on sale for $0.99/lb so I went there for lunch yesterday. I couldn't find any though because they were either out or a guy stocking the shelves was hiding them. Instead I just got 2 boxes of 100 tea bags each for $2 each.

I went today before breakfast to try again. I did find them. I also got 2 kaiser rolls for $0.40/each. The bread area is so well stocked in the morning! I never go there then. I took the plastic bag I put my last bread purchase in because I still had it and I don't want more plastic in the world.

So now I have my lunch planned. Maybe some of my window herbs are big enough to harvest for a tomato sandwich. Or I can cut up my Vidalia onion.

Western Beef

I go to Western Beef a lot more these days. If I walk 1.3 miles east, I pass very few people and then am in a vast store. If I walk 4 blocks west, I pass way more people. Even if I walk 3.5 blocks west to Ozzie's I pass more people. So I go to Western Beef.

I went today because I thought pop would be cheaper than it is up here. It was not. But I did get 3 lbs of bacon for $10. When I got home I saw that it was weird pieces "Great for recipes."

I got a 24 oz jar of red peppers for $3. I found a dozen eggs for $1.19! I paid over $4 for eggs last Sunday. I got a loaf of bread for $1.29 I think. Three bags of pasta for $1 each. I got weird shapes: both ditali and ditalini. I also got 2 flavored seltzers. Then I walked home.

I went grocery shopping for the first time in over 2 weeks

Key Food still publishes a circular, but they don't abide by it in-store. So of all the things I was looking forward to, only mushrooms were a good price. I left without buying anything because the lines were also long.

Since I had empty bags, I went to Ozzie's Fresh Market. I got popcorn, milk, and white bread. The shelves were stocked a little better and there were no lines at all.

Then I went to Jesus and got celery ($2) and a bag of 3 romaine hearts ($1). The romaine was the only good deal all day.

Ozzie's raised the price of club rolls

I frequently buy club rolls at Ozzie's. They were 3 for $1 for as long as I can remember, including as recently as Saturday. But today they were 5 for $2. So an increase of 7 cents per roll. Consequently, my roll expenditure fell from $1 each trip to $0.80.

Tomatoes

It's tomato time. They are $0.99/lb at any store that wants you to buy tomatoes. They are more than that at farmers' markets where they are better and more than that at grocery stores that don't care if you buy tomatoes. (Just like how Associated, Food Bazaar, and Western Beef never care if you buy pasta from them. Some stores just aren't interested. You have to get pasta from C-Town or Key Food. Whole wheat pasta from Trader Joe's.)

Since Friday, I learned how to make panzanella. I had heard of it, but before I looked on wikipedia before making it Friday, I thought it might be soup. It is a salad. It's a salad of stale bread, tomatoes, cumbers, red onions, basil, olive oil, and whatever. I made it Friday and I thought "this is going to be the kind of thing people ask me to make more." And then Agnes loved it so I was right

On Sunday, I had some more stale bread but not much more inclination to cook besides missing my panzanella, so I went to get more ingredients. C-Town's circular said it had plum tomatoes for $0.99/lb and diet Mug Root Beer for some good price I don't remember (but it was probably 3/$4).

When I went there, I found slicing tomatoes for the same discounted price. I like plum tomatoes for sandwiches, but for a food that you want a bunch of extra juice to soak your stale bread, these were better. (The cashier rang them up as plum tomatoes. Maybe their inventory will be off, though the price was the same.) Basil was $2.59 or so, which is absurd ($1 at Jesus, $2 at Food Bazaar) so I improvised my recipe using herbes de provence. It was good.

Tonight I had a leftover tomato and still half a cucumber ($0.50 at C-Town. Off and on I see them cheaper, but it's not worth shopping around. I was happy with that price.) so I diced them and put them with a can of chick peas (probably $0.80 at Western Beef) with some olive oil that I am now out of. And capers ($3.49 for a big jar at Trader Joe's. No one can touch that price.) That was a good dinner.

It's the height of tomato season now, so I should find a famers' market to buy some. I thought I was living ok with tomatoes until 2 years ago when I ate a tomato my cousin grew. Tomatoes are supposed to taste great! I would pay $3/lb for a great tomato (I would only buy 1) but I would be jealous that my cousin gets them for free. And so does my brother by visiting him. He also grows basil. And dill. I never want to move, but sometimes I wish I could have tomatoes and basil and dill. And mint.

Western Beef had a lot of empty shelves

But I lived. I also had my bag fly out of my bike basket on the way there. Some girl picked it up for me so I got it back. And I realized I forgot to wear my helmet when I got to the store and went to take it off and it wasn't there.

I spent about $14. I got a tomato ($0.99/lb), three beets ($0.99/lb), a gallon jug of red wine vinegar ($2.99) because they didn't have Colavita on the shelves, Gulden's mustard in the squeeze bottle ($1.50), light wheat bread ($1.89) because they didn't have my normal wheat bread, 6 English muffins ($0.88), Dr. Brown's diet root beer ($1.19), a bag of Great Lakes shredded mozzarella ($1.99 for 8 oz) and 2 cans of chick peas ($0.67 each).

I ate English muffins for dinner. First I made pizzas like Agnes did Saturday (hers were better) using Colavita crushed tomatoes I had on hand, frozen Trader Joe's peppers, and the cheese. Agnes's were better. I think she let them get toastier. Or maybe her sauce was better. Then I ate another English muffin with my dilly egg salad.

I hope I like the red wine vinegar. I own a lot of it.

Cheeses Christ! The Resurrection of my Pecorino Romano

Know how when you have a lot of cookies, you put a slice of bread in with them so the cookies remain soft while taking moisture out of the bread, which gives its life up to become the stale waste instead? Well I hope you knew that because otherwise you probably have been eating a lot of stale cookies in your life.

Yesterday I made pasta (with hot peppers, onions, tuna, and capers--it was ok) and was grating some pecorino romano on it. I am down to the end of my block and it's getting hard to grate. While cleaning up, I dropped my cheese bag in the sink. Rather than get a new one, I decided to stick the rest of my block in my leftover pasta container. I wondered if it would absorb some moisture and become easy to grate again. (Note: I have brought cookies back from being too stale by using bread. I have made cookies moist after overcooking them by using bread.)

Today I tried grating my cheese. It was easy! You can take moisture out of moist foods and infuse them back into hard cheeses. I guess I will try this with bread next since that's what this whole post was about.

Everyday With Rachael Ray Magazine values its readers' time at about $2.40 an hour

Everyday with Rachael Ray features a "showdown" between two similar products in every issue. In this one, it's canned dinner rolls (e.g. Pillsbury) against the rolls you'd buy premade from the bakery. I can't find a link to this on their website, but the page looks like this.

The relevant info they provide is that the canned rolls are $0.23 each and the bakery ones are $0.29 each. Six cents is what you save! And prep times are 12 minutes and 5 seconds (essentially 0. If I'm going to count 5 seconds of prep time, I might as well count the extra second to put the roll in my mouth and the extra 15 to chew.)

You get 8 rolls in a can. They take 12 minutes to bake, so you could bake 5 batches and get 40 rolls in an hour. This would cost you $9.25. And you worked for an hour.

Using the price they provided for the bakery rolls, $3.49 for 12, you'd pay $11.67 for 40 rolls. So for your hour of work, you save $2.42. Which means that is how much your time is worth, all else (meaning quality of rolls) being equal.

When comparing the 8 to 12, they favor 8 because with the bakery rolls, "you're usually committed to to buying a bigger batch." I had to gloss over that to figure out how much your time is valued per hour to make the canned cheaper. But I'll still accept and address a quantity argument.

The bakery rolls are bigger. You don't need as many. And at all the grocery stores I go to, the rolls are loose. I can buy as many as I want. I usually do not want 8. 8 is either too many or too few if I'm feeding 5 people. The bakery buns and rolls let me have control.

In summary, the canned rolls are better if you have infinite time or don't value yours and if you have infinite oven space. Otherwise, they are a good example of being penny wise and pound foolish.

Still not the mayor of Western Beef (plus the most heinous use of Instagram ever)

 I went to Western Beef to get a loaf of bread. It's $1.79 for wheat bread there and you have to pay at least $2.50 anywhere else. Sometimes $3.79! I figured I'd look at the ricotta cheese too because that's good on toast. I didn't get any. What happened to the price of ricotta? I used to pay $2 for a pound of it (when it was on sale) and now it's more like $4. Maybe I should make my own?

I got a Florida avocado for $0.99. I've never eaten one before--only Haas. I bought one last year but I let it go bad.

I also bought DeCecco pasta for the first time. It was finally affordable. It was $1/box. The non-sale price was $2.19. I wonder if it's better than the Ronzoni/San Giorgio/Barilla I usually buy. I hope not, because I don't want to acquire any fancy tastes.

I wonder what this Warka beer is like. "Unique taste" and "strong beer" make me think it's awful in a way that I'd learn to like.

And I got some sardines. And then I took a picture of my receipt and used Instagram on it. I think this might be the worst, most heinous, abuse of Instagram in its storied history.

I got my Fresca.

And for $0.74! Worth the wait.

Western Beef has 2 liter Coke products on sale for $0.74 (limit 5) with an additional $10 purchase. That's not hard to do. I was almost out of pecorino romano anyway ($5.99/lb) and I live on the tuna bean salad I've been promising you a recipe for (4 cans for $3). Pre-toast is $1.79 a loaf now. Used to be $1.69, but I've been reading about the price of wheat and it costs me at least $2.50 anywhere else.

Know what I didn't buy?

Sardines! They used to be $1.15. I guess I'll just starve or buy the $1.29 sardines at C-Town and Key Food. You could argue that making a separate trip over $0.04 is stupid, but if you don't care about $0.04 I'll let you send me all the $0.04s you don't want via Paypal.

First Stop in Pittsburgh: Penn Macaroni

The Megabus dropped me off under the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and my brother was parked right there. It was around 6:30 am, which is when Penn Macaroni opens. That place was packed already! And it was, as they say, "not playin' arahnd."

 The have aisles and aisles of Italian stuff. They have a room of cheeses and deli meats. The prices on the cheeses weren't bad. $6.83 for pecorino romano, for example. (They charge more on their website.)

 This is a pretty good price on these anchovies. It can hold a candle to Key Food and C-Town. In fact, it beats them by about $1. I should have bought them, but I still have to peep Labriola's.

 Here's their pile of baccalà.  I never touched it before today. I expected it to be stiffer.  It was $8.99 for boneless. $7.99 for bone-in. I didn't buy it.

My brother bought 6 bottles of Fernet for $11/each. This isn't Fernet Branca, mind you. It's the weaker stuff. But still, it helps you digest. I saw a bunch of almond paste for $7.99. Limes were 3/$1 and ginger root was $1.99/lb, which is about a good a price as you'll find in this part of the country. Avocados were $0.99 each, which is a lot better than I expected to find. And they had cactus pears, which I have never seen before. It was a good trip.

Then we went to Wal-mart so I could get a loaf of Cellone's Italian bread and some hot pepper rings. I love that bread so much. I got home and ate 3 spaghetti sandwiches. I later ate a ham sandwich. I plan to go to Giant Eagle tonight and get more.

Following, the view of downtown from outside Penn Macaroni.