The cost of eating

Last night, my husband and I had to make a trip to the grocery store for a few necessities, like milk, tea, lunch meat, etc. and I was just appalled at how much prices have gone up in the last few weeks.

The sale price for chicken breasts was $1.99 a pound! On Sale! That is simply insane. Generic canned corn was 79 cents a can. When did that happen? Granted, I do not buy a lot of canned vegetables since I put up most of ours, but the last time I looked they were around 50 cents a can. Some times, if the store is having a case sale, you can get them 3 for a dollar. But almost 80 cents a can is insane. For generic. I didn't even look at the name brand. I was afraid to.

All of this is convincing me more and more that I am not putting up enough food. We need to be able to eat out of jars or the freezer and not have to make bi-weekly trips to the local grocery store. I have canned some chicken and beef, but I am thinking I need to do more. I need to find a couple of bags of chicken legs and thighs for 59 cents a pound (sometimes I can still find them for that) and can them up. 10 pounds bags will make around 8 or 9 pints of meat and 7 or 8 quarts of broth. So for $5.90, that is a minimum of 8 or 9 meals, but really closer to 12 since I don't always use a whole jar of meat per meal for the 3 of us. And the broth is quite useful for a lot of things too, not just soups.

I have canned a lot of fruit this year. Mostly peaches and plums but I have done a few blueberries and some cherries. I think I have enough beans to last the year, but you never really know. I didn't put up enough corn this year but that is one of those things that sometimes we eat a lot, sometimes we don't. I don't know, I guess we will be OK.

I plan to start curing some more Canadian bacon today. My son really likes that for sandwiches in his lunch bag. And it freezes well so I might as well. And the pork loin was on sale for less than $2 a pound, which is quite a bit cheaper than over-processed lunch meat.

I really don't know how people on fixed incomes or low incomes with families can afford to eat. I realize the over-processed convenience foods are cheaper, but you don't actually get much food value out of those.

There has to be a balance somewhere in all of this.

Why I hate shopping

I had to take my daughter shopping last night for a Secret Santa thing they do on the Newspaper staff at her school. A small gift every day for a week with a bigger gift ($5) on Friday. The kid she was supposed to buy for has been in the hospital for 2 weeks with histoplasmosis. She doesn't know him that well, and he wasn't there to write down the stuff that he liked/wanted, so she is having to wing it.

So after I drop off my son at scouts, we go to the Mass Merchandiser to try and find something for him. We walk around looking at all of the crap on the shelves, realize that it is all crap, and wind up getting a Pez dispenser and some assorted candy. She will be giving him a can of Pepsi one day as well. We decided that for the Friday gift, I will just make up a candy/cookie tray. Lame, I know, but at least it is heartfelt. For the Monday gift from her Secret Santa, she got a tube of chapstick. Kinda makes you wonder just how seriously these kids take it.

Anyway, there is just nothing out there is in the wide world of shopping that I either want or need. I have what I need already. Looking at the shelves in the stores just depresses me. Over priced, cheaply made, over packaged, and much much over advertised crap.

If someone actually wanted to get me something I would like, get me a side of Beef. That, I could use. Granted, it wouldn't be terribly practical to wrap and put under the tree, but you could always wrap it and put it in the freezer with a note under the tree.

It just seems that merchandisers are trying so hard to get every last dime from consumers, that they over look the need for quality. And the manufacturers that do believe in quality price their stuff so far out of the range of the normal consumer as to be a joke. So again, we are just bombarded with crap and told to like it. Well, I won't do it!

No more cheap, plastic, slave labor, Chinese, mass marketed crap will be bought by me. I will be looking for small businesses that produce American goods from American materials to stock my home. I will not be supporting MegaMart in their efforts to destroy small town America, I will not be supporting the Chinese government in their efforts to infiltrate the United States through our Capitalist greed, I will not bow down to the advertising agencies and spend more than my income for a holiday that is supposed to promote Peace, Love, and the birth of a Holy Child.

This Christmas, I am going to make it about caring, not about money. The few gifts I have to buy will be meaningful instead of pricey. It isn't about how many gifts, or how much they cost, but what that gift will mean to the person who gets it.

I am done with the shopping just because it is Christmas.