Grocery Shopping Notes

With so much talk about rice shortages and prices going up, I thought I would make some notes about what I found when shopping today:

There were instances where things were bare from shelves, but not staples nor produce, unless you count frozen juice concentrate a staple. Plenty of rice, sugar, beans and flour. Our cashier asked if we had been able to get anything and I said Yes, and asked if the shelves were bare because they were shorthanded or because people were buying more. She said it was going off the shelves faster than they could stock it. However, there could be several reasons for this:

It’s the first Saturday of the month. We have a huge retired population in our area, many receiving veteran’s benefits, black lung settlement payments, disability, etc.

Stimulus payments. Even if you haven’t received yours yet, it’s perceived to be OK to spend the money for the electric bill if you know your stim money will be here before it’s due.

Media attention about scarcity of rice. This would seem to not be the case, due to the ready availability of staples. I was able to get 20 pound bags of both rice and beans. Paid more than I’ve ever paid, but I got it without having to throw down in the middle of the aisle to do so.

More notes:

The store was very busy. Of course, it was Saturday afternoon, a prime shopping time for a lot of people. It’s not a time I usually like to go shopping, but we have a commitment tomorrow and we weren’t able to go yesterday.

It’s no longer cheaper to buy 5 dozen eggs. They were the same price per as buying a dozen and a half.

My “sale store”, the store I go to, to buy sale items, had a lot of “luxury” meats on clearance. Brand name sausage, organic chicken and mushroom brats, etc. “Regular” meat wasn’t on clearance, but there were some great sales, even one on boneless chuck roast that wasn’t listed in the sale flier. Despite it being Saturday afternoon, they had a great meat selection and I was able to get exactly what I wanted, about 40 lbs or pork chops, 25 lbs hamburger, and 4 roasts. I also bought 2 gallons of milk there and 3 lbs of apples and spent $113.00. My savings there was $167. That, and what I bought at Walmart, took every bit of my food budget and my misc. budget for this week, but the freezer is so full I don’t think I can get one more pound of hamburger in there.

The potatoes were horrid. This actually scares me more than hearing of rice shortages. I had to go through several bags to find bags that didn’t have rotted potatoes in them. Either the stores aren’t safeguarding their food as they should be, or these are very old.