What's On Sale This Week?

 I just got back from Philadelphia. A coworker might come over for dinner tomorrow. And I have some stuff from before my trip, but I should replenish. Also I'm hungry right now so I might come up with good ideas.

Bravo: nothing. well, white button mushrooms are always $3/lb there and you can get as few or as many as you want, so I still might end up going there.

Brooklyn Harvest Market: Frozen ravioli are 4/$5 for 13 oz. They would be good with the zucchini pesto I made before I left. Super Pepsi (the kind with the most caffeine.. aka Pepsi Zero Sugar) is 3/$5. Beef hearts are $3/lb. They don't usually have beef hearts.

C-Town: Butternut squash is $1/lb and I just remembered when I made a salad of it using it raw, with gorgonzola and nuts.

Food Bazaar: Nothing. Well, the apples for $1/lb inspired me, but I'm not going all the way there for just apples.

Green Corner: Lemons are 3/$1 and my coworker might want a cocktail that could benefit from lemon. Nothing else is remarkable.

Ozzie's: Lemons are 5/$2 here. Will I walk 0.75 miles each way to save 7 cents per lemon at Green Corner? (I don't know.. I might.) Canada Dry's family of pop is 3/$5. Coke products are "buy 2 get 1 free" and they are $2.50 each, so that's the same price presented in a more confusing way.

Western Beef:  I didn't see anything.

Maybe I'll make sourdough pizza with mushrooms and maybe yellow and/or orange peppers. And A fennel and apple salad. And a butternut squash with nuts and gorgonzola salad.

Grocery Sales for the First Friday of Lent!

I hope I see some fish! I have been stocking up on canned fishes. Which will also be good if coronavirus wipes out food supply chains. I will already have lots of canned food.

Green Corner: They didn't update their circular, but they are celebrating. This is the top of last week's circular.

Food Bazaar: Instant mashed potatoes are on sale. I am going to make gnocchi tomorrow, so maybe I'll go get them. I don't really know what a good price is for them, but they're on sale so it must be better than normal. I was hoping for a good sale on fish sticks but there is only a bad sale. Potatoes are $1.5 for 5 lbs, so maybe I'll go today and get whole potatoes and instant mashed potatoes.

Western Beef: Barilla pasta is $1/box. Barilla has more of the interesting shapes so it might be worth it to go for orzo or ditalini. The mashed potatoes are on sale here too but I don't even know if they are cheaper than Food Bazaar because I forgot how much they were there. $2 for 13.5 ounces here. Grapefruit is 3/$2. It's not on sale, but they have big jars of pickled hot cherry peppers and regular red peppers that are $4 for 2 lbs or so, which is a great price and I will get those if I go.

Bravo: I haven't shopped here in quite a while. It got gentrified like C-Town, but is always worse than C-Town. There's not really anything on sale there this week.

C-Town: I went there yesterday and the cashier tried to ring up my romaine ($0.99/lb) as green leaf lettuce ($2.49/lb) and then I spent more money than I expected so I thought it was still on my receipt. It wasn't, but it was still stressful so I'm unhappy. Anyway, the sales:

Asparagus is $2/lb. Galbani mozzarella is $4/lb. A fennel is $2.

Key Food: Polly-o mozzarella is $4 here. A pound of mushrooms is $3. I still have a pound of mushrooms from a week ago, but maybe I'll eat them so I can buy more. Here, 26.7 oz of mashed potatoes are $3, which seems better than Food Bazaar and Western Beef.

What's on sale this week, now that I'm back and need food

Lots of posts today! I wonder what I will eat in the coming week.

Ozzie's: Still hasn't updated the website since August!

Green Corner:  Pork shoulder is $0.89/lb. (That's another thing you can't get cheap in Pittsburgh). I could celebrate Oktoberfest with that. Chicken quarters are $0.49/lb. Chicken cutlets are $0.99/lb.

Bravo: nothing i want to eat

C-Town: nothing i want to eat. even though i'm hungry. maybe this isn't a good time to write this post

Key Food: Iceberg lettuce is $1. Tomatoes are $1/lb. A pineapple is $2. I like them because they are decorative. Mozzarella is $2 for a pound. Gorton's seafood is 50% off, for all your fish taco needs. Butternut squash is $0.79/lb. It's soup time. (So is acorn, spaghetti, and kobucha.) Green or red cabbage is $0.49/lb. What a deal on red! That's a good price for green too. Tonic is $0.60.

Food Bazaar: As mentioned in a previous post:

Kielbasa is $2.50.

Brooklyn Harvest Market: Since I learned one is moving close to me, I'll check their circular to see what it's like. A 12 oz jar of roasted red peppers is $1.69. Mozzarella is 3 lbs for $5 here. I guess this store celebrates Columbus Day too. A fennel bulb is $2.

Not bad. Its sales seem like normal grocery store sales.

Cheating on C-Town

I cheated on C-Town today. With a different C-Town. My main C-Town, the one I mean when I write C-Town, is about 4 blocks from my house. It's not very big. It's produce is increasing--a while ago, it had none, then it got some cabbages, tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce on a stand in a space in the back, and now it has a real section. But the prices are gentrifying faster than I am. I still go. I like all my stores. But I find myself buying less.

Usually when I shop elsewhere, it's at Key Food, Associated, Western Beef, Food Bazaar, or Bravo. In that order of frequency or money (but not geography, because Bravo is the closest of all. It used to be called Cat Pee). With so many stores, I don't go to extra C-Towns.

But there were two forces that led me to another one this week. One is that Chase Freedom gives 5% back on groceries from April through June. June is almost over. So I should buy pasta and sardines and whatever won't go bad now. C-Town's circular said Ronzoni was $1, but when I went in twice, that wasn't true. Second, C-Town's circular said they had Heinz mayonnaise (new). I went twice, and didn't see it. If any of my other stores had had pasta this week for $1 or less, I would have just bought it there. I checked them all. None did. So I went to the other Williamsburg C-Town.

Now, I've been there many times. I used to be good friends with someone who lived near there and shopped there frequently. And since I'm an avid shopper and he was an adept cook, I accompanied him often. I didn't think much of it then. Today was different. Today I liked it because it respected the weekly circular. But it also had the best price on tomatillos I've seen ($1.49 instead of $1.69) and the best price on jalapeno peppers ($1.29 instead of $1.49). I didn't buy those things, but I liked it. It carried braunschweiger. It didn't carry Iron City. It doesn't tweet to me or have tumblr. But it's a nice store.

I bought 6 boxes of pasta (they were out of spaghetti, so I got thin spaghetti, which is worse. And I don't eat as much pasta these days). I got strawberries ($2.50), leaf lettuce ($1.59?), Heinz mayo (on sale for $2.99), Fresca ($1.67... eh), chamomile tea ($3.99? $2.99? I don't know the correct price for that, but needed it for the Gin test kitchen), and maybe something else. I don't recall. I spent $20, which is a big trip for me.

I wouldn't have bought so much, but Agnes said she'd come over for the Gin Test Kitchen and I needed to make her dinner. I had just eaten so I wasn't clever with ideas. I went for the strawberry/fennel salad I invented on Sunday. It has a bitter green  (ideally, but I used leaf lettuce today), strawberries, fennel, and red wine vinaigrette. I put some balsamic in it today too cause I had too much oil and didn't want to use the rest of the red wine vinegar. It's pretty good. Agnes agreed that it's pretty good. I forgot to serve it with pecorino romano. I bet it would be good with some croutons too. This is a salad I want to build upon and create variations of. It's the best salad I've invented since apple coleslaw.

Key Food has some good sales right now. So does Jesus.

I haven't been that interested in eating or cooking lately, but that might be because there weren't any good deals. I had a good time at Key Food today though, and later I'm going to figure out how to cook things.

Key Food had mozzarella for $1.99/lb. I got that. Earlier I got 2 lbs of ricotta for $2.99, which is the best price I've seen in months. So I have cheeses again. I bought Hunt's barbecue sauce for $1.29, which I think is a good price. I don't buy it very often. Fresh mushrooms were $0.99 for an 8 oz package. I got some iodized salt for $0.69. It's usually $0.79, so don't make a special trip. I got iodized because I don't want a goiter.

I went to Jesus on the way home. They have avocados for $1, but I didn't get any. I bought fennel for the first time. I don't think I've ever even tasted it, but from what I learned in my studies, it looks like dill and tastes like absinthe.