Memorial Day Grocery Sales

I hope they have good ones. That Key Food beer deal was a scam, because Key Food didn't have rebates. Just a sign about rebates. They eventually put something up for getting a Coors rebate, but nothing else. That deal is back again this week.

I guess I'll start with Key Food. A big bottle of Heinz ketchup (38 oz) is $2.50. Memorial Day is good for condiments. They have Hellman's on sale, but I want Heinz mayo, which is hard to find. I wanted to do a project at school researching why Heinz and Kraft both had mayo brands after their merger, but I had to do it on Starbucks instead. Breakstone cottage cheese is $2.50, which is a good price for that if you only eat that brand. I find that still too expensive, but I know someone who cares. Peaches are $1.47/lb. They probably aren't very good in May, but I also like using peaches in savory applications (i.e. salads with corn) and having sour hard peaches works ok then. Spike's salsa is $1.50/jar, which is good, but then I have to eat tortilla chips.

That's it for Key Food. They like all my pictures on Instagram about food, so maybe I'll ask them why they scam me about beer.

Associated: Peaches are $1.49 here--2 cents more. Various incorrect ketchups are on sale at irrelevant prices. 16 oz of sausage is $2.99, which might be good. These sales were not very good.

Bravo: 38 oz of Heinz ketchup for $2.49. I don't go through ketchup that quickly anymore since my little boy exroommate moved out, but I still might get some. B&G stuff is on sale. It was at Key Food too. I guess it's pickle time. 2 liter Fresca (and other Coca-cola products) are $1.25. Fresca is good. I heard that LBJ liked it too.

A sad postscript to the Fresca tale + Party Plans

The last two times I've gone to C-Town looking for Fresca, they've been out :(

But I'll move on. I'm having a 4th of July party in 6 days and making a lot of food. It's going to require all my grocery skills to minimize costs. I'm going to make hot dogs 3 ways, plus hot dog salad, beet salad, chick pea/orzo salad, pesto pasta salad, and probably some other things. Probably pimento cheese. I don't know what the three ways of hot dogs will be yet. Definitely baked potato dogs. Maybe taco dogs? Banh mi dogs?

Expansion of Grocery Capacity in Williamsburg Heights*

Two of my local grocery stores are expanding a bunch. C-Town added a back room that has all its beer and snacks and pop. That's why I told them to start getting Fresca. Where the pop used to be, they now have bread. Where the bread and snacks used to be, they now have freezer and coolers and some cheese. I haven't eyed that stuff that much yet.

Associated is also expanding. Who knew the building next to them was unused? They moved into that. I can't even tell how it will all be laid out, but yesterday I got a bit lost trying to discover where they put the eggs. The medium eggs were $1.69, which is hardly better than Key Food now. I bought medium eggs to keep uncooked and large eggs to have a dozen hard boiled ones on hand. I also bought 1.25 lbs of jalapeno peppers ($1.49/lb) to pickle, but my jar only holds about 0.75 lbs so now I have to use up all these hot peppers and don't know what to do.

*Williamsburg Heights is what I've taken to calling the areas around the Graham and Grand stops of the L. When I moved here, I wondered if this was East Williamsburg or Bushwick. As more people moved to the Montrose, Morgan, Jefferson, and Dekalb stops, meaning actual Bushwick, it became clear that if I said East Williamsburg I would not convey my location. So I went back to saying Williamsburg (my zip code is Williamsburg's). One of the good things these hurricanes we get has done is give me flood zone maps. So Williamsburg Heights is the area that is not in any sort of flood zone around the Graham and Grand stops of the L. It hasn't caught on yet, but it might as well.

A Fresca tale

C-Town added a new room (which I'll write about later) and has room for Fresca now. So I asked them to carry it. Then I went to the beach and drunktweeted them a picture of the Waist Watchers fake Fresca we were drinking. So they got it and tweeted me back that it was in and on sale until Thursday.

When I went to buy it, the price rang up without a sale. So I tweeted my receipt and said they forgot to tell the cash registers about the sale. C-Town said "I owe you a Fresca" and asked for my address to have it delivered. That was funny, so I allowed it. I also said I'd be home all day because I tried using my key as a bottle opener and I broke it. Later that day when they delivered Fresca, there was a surprise bottle opener/corkscrew thrown in! Wow.

Friday is new grocery circular day.

I got my tabs open. Now let's see what's good this week.

Key Food:
Diet Coke etc is $4/4. They include Fresca in the list, but every time Key Food puts Fresca on sale, they clear the shelves of it and only have Coke and Sprite. I actually haven't seen Fresca there for ages. I have a good Fresca story for another post.

Hunts BBQ sauce for a dollar. I go through phases of loving bbq sauce. I might as well get some.

Only two things at Key Food worth getting.

C-Town:
Beef is $2.69/lb. Maybe I'll eat raw meat this week. Tomatoes are $0.99/lb! I just bought some yesterday for more than that. I'll eat all the tomatoes. I like them. Hunt's BBQ sauce is $1 here too. Actually, $0.99. I'll save a penny. Diet Mug Root Beer is $1 again! I went in yesterday to get $1 Diet Mug and they were clean out, so I got cream soda. I like that too.

Food Bazaar (I really only care about the seafood department here):
Lobster's $6/lb. I never made or ate a lobster. I probably won't now either. I also never made or ate a whole fish. I should just eat smelts.

Western Beef:
I can get a bag of chicken legs for $0.69/lb. It's a 10-15 lb bag though. I'd need to have a lot of people over. I can't inflict 10 lbs of chicken on my roommates. Wait, I can. One just left the country or 2 weeks. I can throw away all her stuff!

I'm sick of this. Nothing else was good at Western Beef. Nothing was good at Associated.

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.

4 Grocery Stores

I went to 4 grocery stores today. I bought the most expensive bananas ($0.79/lb) and I paid $1.89 for Fresca. I should be shot.

What you can get for a dime

This is my favorite song about what you can buy for a dime.

Also, you can buy Fresca for $1.25 at Key Food now.

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.

I buy a lot of Dairy

I went to Key Food today to buy Fresca, which is advertised at 5 2 liter bottles for $5, and San Giorgio pasta, which is supposed to be 5/$4. They have no Fresca. Sometimes they carry it, but not when it's on sale I guess. And there were no signs up for the pasta, and I don't trust them so I didn't fix either of my problems.

I got milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, and Gatorade. I'm only missing buttermilk.

I only really want to eat toast anyway, so who needs pasta and Fresca?