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A Humorous Look at Life in NJ

The Fine Art of Grocery Shopping 

As a daughter of parents who grew up during the depression, I learned early to the lessons of household economy that allowed my parents to survive that period with out starving. Greatest of all the lessons was grocery shopping.  My mom’s skill was honed to a point of a true art form.  It was strange because unlike the stereotypes of woman who spend all their times in mall shopping their lives away, my mom was anything but that. The exception to her boycott of stores though was grocery shopping. I spent most of my young childhood Sunday afternoons on a grand tour of grocery stores.  Years later I realized that she was still trying to live on a household budget pulling from all her lessons to raise a family of 7 on the food budget that was about half what the other families in my neighborhood spent.  Here are a few of her basic pointers to help you on your next trip: 

Grocery Store Food Ads- Most people advise you to make a list of the grocery items you need to purchase on your next trip to the market and stick with it.  Some will even take it a step further and recommend you plan out a weekly menu and base your list on that.  Obviously, they don’t have kids or spouses that have a nasty habit of picking what is planned for dinner to eat for their lunch on the same day, or simply aren’t in the mood for it. 

In the town I grew up in, the grocery store sales all started on the same day of the week (Wednesdays).  This allowed her a few days to pull those ads out of the paper and pour over them.  Store A might have tuna on sale, but Store B had bread cheaper, and Store C better produce…which store we would shop at that weekend?  Of course the answer was obvious..ALL OF THEM!  My mother's list was determined by the sales, and we would go to multiple stores picking up all the loss-leaders at each, a few vegetables from the chain that had the "best" (i.e. cheapest) produce, the meat from the store that had the "best" meat (i.e. cheapest), and the menu was generally planned around "how much time do I have to make this and what do we have on the shelf".

Maybe it's genetics, or the fact that I we grew up in an area that was known for its heavy snow storms (Buffalo, NY), but all my siblings share the same trait…a pantry full of canned goods and staples that we buy in bulk when on sale. My mom came to visit one January when Shop Rites Can-Can Sale was in full bloom.  You would have thought she had died and gone to heaven!  I can't begin to tell you just what a dream come true it was to her…. or how more her car must have weighed on the return trip home from all the cases of canned goods in her trunk and back seat! She almost forgot the spare tire she'd removed while packing the car! 

"Eat it before it Goes Bad!" -  Every week one meal was based on this theme.  The remains of dinners past were exhumed from the frig, along with any meat that hadn’t reached its expiration date (but was close), and slightly less than perfect vegetables.  That night's dinner was a stew, casserole, or if all else failed...soup!  Sometimes the results were rather tasty, but other times…well lets just say I sat at the dinner table a long time looking at my plate, only to have it returned to my place for breakfast the next morning. She never seemed to realize the fact that if you liked turkey on Thanksgiving by the following Sunday you hated everything with turkey in it. 

Shop the clearance aisle first. -  An item can immediately be checked-off your shopping list if you could find multiple cans in the dented can cart.  Mom always reserved 15 minutes each trip for digging through the clearance carts at each store.  Some stores also had clearance areas for less than perfect produce, which I learned to pick out the “not too bad” ones bring them home and cut out the bad spots, using the rest in soups, casseroles and stews.  

The impact of these lesson on me: .I hardly ever cook soups, stews or casseroles, and never eat them when I go out for dinner.  (After all, I'm not the only one with a mom who came from Buffalo!)

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