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.

What do I do with dried porcini mushrooms?

I went to Whole Foods today to buy frozen pizzas because they were 50% off and because if I spent $10, they would give me a free $10 on my next visit. They were almost out of frozen pizzas, so I got fewer than I expected and did get a brand I didn't want at all–Amy's. Oh well. That was $4 so I still needed to spend at least $6 more. I got a can of pumpkin for $1. And I got dried porcini mushrooms. They were $49.99/lb and I got $6 worth. There were some other mushrooms too. I think morels were $249.99/lb. And dried shiitakes were about $15/lb. I almost got a mix of forest mushrooms or something like that, but they were also cheap and I couldn't find anything else in the store I wanted (even a second Amy's pizza) more than I wanted to upgrade to porcini mushrooms, so I got them. And I was happy I got to use Apple Pay again.

But I don't know what to do with them! I have used them to make a vegan gravy before. I know I could make risotto. What else? Make chicken marsala extra luxurious?

The Wegmans in Brooklyn–Not Good!

Lewis made me go there today. I bought 1 hungarian wax pepper for $4.49/lb and so it was $0.52. I also rang up Lewis's marinated meat because I had a coupon on my app and his app wasn't working yet.

Butter was $2.99 which is a good price.

Overall, I didn't like it! On Twitter, I said it was like a Giant Eagle if Giant Eagle only had 1 brand of canned tomatoes. I really did like the app and using Apple Pay. I really can't understand what people like about it. It is significantly worse than the Giant Eagle in North Huntingdon, PA. And I don't even like that Giant Eagle. It's just that Giant Eagle does a way better job of executing that kind of approach than Wegmans does.

Here is my 2-star Yelp Review:

This isn't a very good grocery store. First, the things I liked: their app is good! I had coupons, it shows up on my phone easily, it integrates with Ibotta. I also liked that Apple Pay was so easy to use there. I never use that because nowhere I shop takes it, but I did like it. And the cashier was very nice. Nicer to C-Town? No, but nice.

Bad things: The parking lot was hostile to bikes and pedestrians. The hot bar of prepared foods was expensive (it tasted ok). The store seems to have been laid out by someone at Ikea, but without the method to the madness. It just didn't have things you would think a big grocery store would-there were no anchovies in jars. There were no brands of canned tomatoes except the store brand. It has Wagyu beef for $200/lb, but for a shopping experience, it is worse than the Key Food near me, the C-Town, the Ozzie's Fresh Market, every Trader Joe's, every Whole Foods, the Giant Eagle in my parent's town, the Bravo near me, and especially worse than Food Bazaar, which is an amazing shopping experience that has everything.

I do not think this store will be open very long. There cannot be enough deluded people from Rochester to sustain it when everywhere else is better.

Oysters seemed reasonably priced. Cheese wasn't. Overall, if you care about prices, and you know I do, this was a bad store. This is a store for people who don't know the value of anything.

Oh, back to positive things. The maple walnut ice cream for $2.50 tasted good. And the frozen pizzas for $4 looked good, but I didn't try them. The beer selection was good.. better than Stop n Shop at Rockaway. But not any better than C-Town.