So, What Is Strategic Shopping. #fritz

Steaming hot, falling off the bone. Salad dressing lasts for months, celery a week or ten days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#fritz

So, what is strategic shopping?

Well, I mean, it involves thinking ahead…

Strategic shopping is when you’re not just thinking of lunch, or dinner, you’re not just thinking of tomorrow or this week. Let’s be honest, you’re not going to eat a whole jar of mayo, or horseradish sauce, or barbecue sauce, all in one day, or one week, or maybe even a month if you’re a scruffy old man like me.

The real fucking challenge is when you're shopping with a twenty dollar bill all the time, now that takes some thinking, ladies and gentlemen. 

Yesterday the lean ground beef in a plastic tube was six dollars, down from seven dollars. The meat section at Walmart looked all right--last time, there was a big gap where the Buttig sandwich meat would normally be. The frozen foods had some big gaps, which might be supply chain disruption or even a staffing problem. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to it, but that is not like Walmart. Oh, and I spent less than twenty bucks... #snork

You can kiss a duck's tail, but you have to be quick. That is my last potato, incidentally...

A truckload of stuff might have gotten hung up somewhere. I got a rack of ribs, about three dollars off. Eight dollars for Lou’s Barbecue pork back ribs. These are (or were), the sweet samurai flavour. The cheaper brand that are the same price are clearly an inferior product, when I roasted them for 22 minutes they literally fell apart halfway through when I tried to turn them over. Yeah, these ones are better, and I note from the website the product can be frozen. I still have half a rack left, (uncooked as yet), in other words, and I might just do that.
 

The tomatoes will be gone in a week. The cheese a lot longer, right?

***

The cheap hamburger buns were absent. I had to buy a more expensive brand, bigger buns and all, but still a dollar more. There's a big difference between different price-points. For example, cheap hot-dog buns from the dollar store are an inch shorter than a better brand from a gas-bar! I doubt if you're saving much. It's more a matter of producing a product, whether in terms of size, packaging or quality, that fits the retail model of the typical dollar-store retailer. Sometimes you don't have four or five bucks for instant coffee, and there is that tiny little jar at Dollarama for $1.50 or whatever...

***

What with one steamer at $3.27, (beef merlot), I got five items for twenty-two dollars and some cents.

I came home with a toonie and a few nickels and dimes. Oh, yeah. Beer.

#fritz #shopping

 

I got mushrooms as well.

***

Okay, now it’s the next day, today rather than yesterday.

I had exactly $24.95 and a list of six items, carefully considered. I went to Food Basics where I know where everything is.

 

With mayo, one can make tuna salad...

The chicken was an impulse, but bearing in mind plenty of fresh buns, lettuce, tomato, mayo, it fits in well enough with the plan: cheeseburgers, perhaps a pot of chili, sandwiches, salads, the occasional meaty meal, and it's all healthy and nutritious food, with some personal engagement in its preparation. I saved $1.30 on tomatoes on the vine, for the only real savings today. Total of $22.25 and I have a toonie and a few small coins left.

 

#fritz #shopping

 

I could do spaghetti sauce...

The best revenge is in living well, ladies and gentlemen, and part of living well involves some kind of lunch once a day or so.

Right?

So, I have half a roast chicken breast left over, as well as two-thirds of a baked potato. All part of #strategic shopping and #leftovers planning. That will make a pretty nice sandwich, and of course for that we have fresh buns, lettuce, tomato…onion, mayo, (right?) and even Monterrey Jack cheese as well as the package of processed American cheese we picked up this morning for $2.99.

Spices, pasta noodles, sugar, salt, flour... a few staples.

 

#fritz

 

So, as you can see by the photos, I have a few staples, a few fresh things, meat, vegetables, beer, all that sort of thing. Oh—with mayo and onion and such like that, buns, in a pinch we can always do good old tuna sandwiches.

 

One can only speculate as to what I might buy tomorrow.

Freezer: One sausage, two wieners, seven meat patties, one chicken breast, one steamer, four or five fish cakes, a few frozen fries and some frozen red and yellow pepper. A bit of tomato sauce and possibly a bit of frozen peas and a frozen dough-ball in the door. Even then, we can scrape up wieners and beans, make chili or spaghetti sauce, get rid of the old French fries, which have been in there a while. Bake bread, or get more ingredients for pizza, etc.

 

END

 

Poor old Louis (he means #fritz – ed.) has books and stories on Amazon.

See his works at Fine Art America.

 

Thank you for reading.