Saturday, February 12, 2011

Emptying Our Pockets to Fill Our Cupboard

Author's note: I will begin this post by venting some frustration, but will wrap things up by looking for collaborative solutions to the problem.

Hello, everyone; it's Dana posting.  I feel as though I've been losing my sanity over grocery shopping lately.  How can this be, you ask?  Well, I am frustrated beyond belief by the amount of money we find ourselves spending, even though we're doing so many things to keep it reasonable.  We make our weekly menu plan, shop at different stores, pay attention to sales, harvest home-grown vegetables in the summer, etc., etc, etc.  Somehow tonight we walked out of Tops (admittedly not the best place to save money on groceries- and yes, please do take that as a challenge, Tops!) with a HUGE bill, and only about 5% of it was organic.  Poor Jon is frequently the brunt of my angry tirades about the ridiculous price of groceries and the weekly anxiety I feel, knowing we have a very small income.

Frequently, we shop at the Lexington Co-Op, and while I love the feeling I get buying beautiful organic food (and encountering the wonderful employees), I nearly experience a panic attack when I see the receipt.  I will qualify this by saying that the co-op has some of the best prices on bulk foods, but we spend WAY more on produce and other grocery items there.  So we try to balance this by shopping elsewhere for the non-organic items on our list (if we were independently wealthy, we'd probably buy everything at the co-op and not bat an eyelash).  Yet somehow, we're STILL hemorrhaging cash at the check-out. 

Maybe I shouldn't be so price-conscious. Maybe it's crazy for us to try to eat healthy, balanced, mostly-organic vegetarian meals.  Maybe NOT!  It should be a right, not a privilege, to have access to reasonably priced natural foods.  And I will FIGHT for this for everyone.  What I would like are your suggestions on ways to work around the exorbitant cost of good food...what do you do to save money?  Where do you shop?  Do you have a CSA membership?  Do you know a farmer?  I welcome any ideas and thoughts, as well as your experiences and feelings about grocery shopping in WNY.  Thanks for reading my rant!

5 comments:

  1. Dana...I feel your pain. I can't believe how much stuff costs. I've become a very selective shopper, meaning I go to certain places for certain things. Have you tried PriceRite for produce? It's one of the (few) things that bring me there. The produce manager is a former manager at the Co-op. I'll ride my bike with the trailer and fill it mostly at PriceRite and be a little shocked by the price, then travel down Elmwood and stop at Wilson Farms and fill it a little more and be about equally surprised, then go across the street to the Co-op and pick up just a few items and be really surprised. None-the-less, I still go there...the food is great and the staff is awesome (but geeze-o-man is it expensive).

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  2. Budways for meats, their produce, while not perfect is cheap for baking \ cooking. It isn't the place to go if you want to most perfect looking apple to sit around for a couple weeks on your shelf but if you are looking to bake an apple pie... it's perfect!

    We also go much of our produce shopping at the Clinton Bailey market, you can get some great deals between it and the Niagara Food Terminals across the street. Cheapest hash-browns ever!

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  3. Thanks for the suggestions, gentlemen. We are limited in the distance we can go (in the winter) for groceries as we are either on foot, bike, or bus and time is an issue. PriceRite is the place we go for some basics, although I prefer to buy organic, and they have very little. Have either of you ever signed up for a CSA or worked directly with farmers?

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  4. The bulk section of the co-op is really fantastic but also check out their special order list (it's on the website). If you order items by the case, there is a significant discount. Guercios and Pricerite have the best prices on non-organic veggies. Love the blog!

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  5. I realize that this comment may be a bit out of date, but my wife and I have been participating in an organic CSA (www.porterfarms.org). We enjoy it very much. The cost for a share is $330 for 22 weeks. That comes to $15 per week. During the off season (winter) we pay $7 for for just two organic peppers. Through the CSA we get a grocery bag FULL for each of the 22 weeks! We have been participating for four years and have been coordinating a distribution site for the past three. There is a distribution site in the Elmwood Village area (Auburn St). Porter Farms also offers a "guest bag" if you just want to try it out for a week. And if you don't get in at the beginning of the season, they will pro-rate your share.

    There are a few of other organic CSAs but I think you might have to go to them. Check out www.localharvest.org. It is a National database of farms, CSAs, etc. Good luck!

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