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.

Dandelions and Fruits

Fruits are in season, so that means they taste as good as they're gonna taste all year and it means they're on sale. Last week I got blueberries and strawberries for $1.50/container each. I think they were 8 oz and 1 lb respectively.

I also learned about the technology of the food processor, so now I can make beet salad in 4 minutes instead of a half hour. It does my grating. Beets are $0.99/lb loose. Sometimes they have their leaves attached. The price is the same, so sometimes if I want leaves I get the leaf ones. Then I can make beet salad with grated beets and carrots, lemon juice and oil (canola or olive, depending on what I want it to taste like) and parsley. When I visit my parents, I add goat cheese and toasted nuts. But recently here I have been adding blue berries. What a lot of colors that has. Probably pretty healthy too. Raw colorful vegetables are healthy.

My usual side salad is chicory or escarole with a dressing made with olive oil and either lemon juice or red wine vinegar. Lately I've taken to adding slivered fennel and quartered strawberries to that. It's pretty good. Agnes likes strawberry salad.

The other day she was coming over, so I was going to make strawberry salad for her. Jesus didn't have the chicory or escarole out yet, so I bought dandelions for $1.49 for a bunch. I never had them before, but they looked interesting. I got home and tried and leaf and it was SO bitter. Too bitter for a strawberry salad, especially one for Agnes. So I went back later and got escarole.

I decided I could use dandelions in a pasta. I used whole wheat pasta, sausage, a shallot, and some fennel. Top it with lots and lots of grated cheese. The dandelions get less bitter if you cook them down and if you salt them and if the sausage is fatty. I tried making it again with chicken sausage a week later and it was too bitter.

Most stores sell whole wheat pasta in boxes that are only 13.25 oz instead of 16 oz and they still cost more than regular pasta. I found a bag of whole wheat pasta that was 16 oz and only $1.33 at Trader Joe's, so that's where I'll shop next time I made dandelion pasta. I don't know what else I can use dandelions for yet, but I like them.

Never thought I'd say this: I'm getting sick of going to grocery stores!

In the past 2 days, I have gone to:

• Trader Joe's wine store
• Bravo, to try to find something to break a $20 bill and check prices
• Associated, to actually break that $20 and get dried chick peas
• C-Town to look for $2 apple juice, which wasn't there. But I got cheese, orangeade, and orzo.
• Key Food where I got hot dog buns and I can't remember what else
• Western Beef for hot dogs, chicken, some vegetables, etc.
• C-Town to look for apple juice agian. Wasn't there, but I got oil and Diet Mug root beer
• Associated, where I did get apple juice. And jalapeno peppers.
• BQE liquors for liquor

My bike quit working while I was at BQE, so I walked home. I still have to go to Key Food for hot dog buns tonight, Gem for aluminum foil trays (unless Key food has a good price) and probably some bodega to get beer to bring to a party tonight. Tomorrow I have to go to Jesus for vegetables and herbs and Associated for ice. And then I am done.  Except for cooking.

I'm done until Thursday when I have no food because all these trips are for a party that will be over.

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.

Grocery Disappointment

It is very hot. I haven't been leaving the house much. Yesterday I went to grocery stores. I didn't buy anything at Key Food because they seemed to have taken down all the signs saying what was on sale for the week and I didn't want to operate from memory. At Associated I got a bunch of things, but I'm happiest about the ham. At Jesus, I was going to buy tomatoes, but they were all a color between pink and white.

Maybe today will be better. I still have 8 days to get 5% back on groceries with my Chase Freedom card.

Limes, etc.

Western Beef's lime prices have been plummeting. Before I went to Pittsburgh for Memorial Day, they were 15/$2. I know all about Pittsburgh lime prices ($0.50 each at best, $0.69 or $0.79 more frequently) so I brought my own. When I got back, Western Beef dropped its price to 8/$1. And this week, they are 1/$10! (And spelled wrong). I have been drinking many many Moscow Mules with them and the Good-O ginger beer which is $1.25 for 2 liters. It's nice and spicy too. But with limes at these prices, I might make ceviche.

I haven't been shopping much otherwise. I have only used the stove once in the past week. I eat tomato sandwiches because tomatoes are $0.79 or $0.99/lb and I eat ham sandwiches because I love the Hormel Ham from Associated that is $3.99/lb. (I don't like ham with crust on it. I like cheap good ham. Boiled ham. Cooked ham. Not baked ham.) I eat hard boiled eggs because eggs are way cheaper these days than I've ever seen them in New York.

Grocery Shopping by Database

This woman who works for the NY Times created a database of her recipes and prepares shopping lists very specifically.

My database constructs my shopping list in three phases: First, I push a button that produces a checklist of recipes by name, along with other household items. I then select the recipes I intend to prepare in the coming week, as well as other things I need to buy. The tags make it easy to select a dish from each category.

When I’ve made my choices, I push a second button, and all of the items, including the recipe ingredients with their quantities, appear on one long list. If two recipes call for one onion each, my list will indicate that I need to buy two onions; it won’t list onion twice. I flag items that I already have and don’t need to buy.

She certainly takes grocery shopping seriously, but I think she's taking the joy out of it. Her husband says she has Just-In-Time inventory. I kinda do too--I go to grocery stores several times a week and buy what I want right before I use it.

Maybe if I were shopping for a family, I'd appreciate her approach more.

Tomatillos!

I just learned about tomatillos. By that, I mean I finally bought some and used them. I made salsa verde. It was the best salsa verde I ever had. Then I made more salsa verde by adding new things to the old, but it wasn't as good.

I got tomatillos at Associated for $1.69/lb. At Jesus they are $1.99. At Western Beef they are $1.99. At Key Food they are $2.99. At Giant Eagle in Pittsburgh, they are $3.99. I lucked out by buying them at Associated without comparison shopping. But you make your own luck--they seemed like they'd be cheapest there based on how their other prices go.

I didn't really look up a recipe for salsa verde other than to check wikipedia to see if I had to cook the tomatillos. (You don't, but you can.) I ended up using this many tomatillos, a jalapeño pepper, some shallot, some cilantro, and some lime juice.

 They come in papery wraps. Tear it off.

 Inside it is not like a tomato. It is more like an eggplant. They are all members of the nightshade family.

Then I put it all in my quart container for Chinese soup take-out (I don't usually go to restaurants, but sometimes I want a quart container and soup is a good way to get one) and used my immersion blender. And it was done.

NY Times Magazine writes about coupons

I don't really use coupons because I don't like talking to people, but I do like reading about grocery shopping.

Coupon Clipping as the Key to Economic Rebirth

Forty-five minutes before midnight on a wintry Tuesday evening, Cathy Yoder and Monica Knight, a pair of 30-something Boise women who run a popular coupon blog called Fabulessly Frugal, strode with purpose through the parking lot of their local Albertsons supermarket. It was the third and final night of “doubles” at Albertsons. This biweekly happening, during which the store issues coupons that double the value of manufacturers’ coupons, is to dedicated coupon clippers what the full moon was to Druids. Yoder and Knight, who are Mormon and have nine children between them (Yoder: seven; Knight: two) had spent the day working on their blog and then taught a three-hour couponing class — all without a drop of forbidden caffeine. Yet with the supermarket in sight, they grew visibly jazzed, like Vegas high rollers entering a casino. “We’ll have it all to ourselves, and we’ll know all the cashiers,” Knight said.

This article is so good. They know the price of everything! This is my favorite part of the whole thing.

Later I asked Knight whether she ever buys a brand of ice cream or shampoo, say, at full price. “I don’t really,” she told me. “Cathy does. Like, she admitted that she buys chocolate-chip cookies just because she likes them.” 

Cinco de Pie-O Shopping

Tomorrow I am hosting Cinco de Pie-O. It's exactly what it sounds like. I am going to make pizzas, a lentil-based shepherd's pie, a quiche, a kool-aid pie, and a shoofly pie. Other people are bringing other pies. I might make guacamole too.

I lost my to-do list on the way to the store, so I don't know if I bought everything or bought it right. On the way home from the second grocery store, I lost my money. Someone ran a couple blocks down the street to catch up with me and give me my $4 back. No one runs down the street for your to-do list. Someone is probably out there achieving all my goals and throwing the party I want to throw.

That's a lot of stuff I don't usually buy, so I don't know if I got good prices.

Key Food's having its 75th birthday this week, so I got a dozen large eggs for $0.75. I don't know how much I paid for frozen pie crusts. I paid $2.49 for a graham cracker crust. (I'm making too many things, including a crust for shoofly pie and all the pizza doughs to make all my own crusts). Crushed tomatoes were $5/3 as usual.

At Jesus, I got 12 limes for $2. That's about as good as you'll ever see. Avocados were $1.99. I guess if I want to make guacamole, I need to go buy avocados now so they ripen some. I don't think I will. I got a big bottle of sriracha for $4.99. A container of tomatoes was $1. I think I'm going to cook them on the pizza so they don't have to taste great. I couldn't find basil, so I have to go back. I got cilantro for $1.

At C-Town I bought a 101oz can of extra virgin olive oil for $14.99. I never had a can before. Mozzarella was $3.99/lb.  I wanted to get the $2.99 kind they had in their ad but I didn't see it.

Now I still have to get avocados, lime juice, and booze. Or maybe just booze.

Chase Freedom

Chase Freedom gives you 5% back on groceries starting today and up through June!

I'm not entirely sure, but sometimes I think it treats the liquor store like a grocery store.

No More Chewing

After a grueling day of numbers today, I went for a walk. At the liquor store I bought 2 bottles of cheap whiskey and 1 bottle of cheap Scotch. At C-town I got a half gallon of milk, 2 liters of root beer, 2 liters of ginger ale, and 2 cans of chick peas. Lest you think I might chew them, I am turning them into hummus.