Mashed potatoes in a bucket

Went to my neighborhood Tom Thumb to get some groceries and dinner. My youngest went with me. We were pretty hungry and grocery shopping while being as hungry as we were probably isn't the best idea.

We didn't do too bad. We had to get some treats for a party my youngest was attending. We purchased Safeway branded chocolate-covered donut holes — 50 for $5. Yum! In fact, I purchased two tubs so I could have my fat-building dessert at home all day!

For dinner, we decided to get an over-roasted chicken. You know the kind they have these days at any big-name grocery in the middle of some aisle near the deli that was actually baked/cooked by the deli. They are usually like $4.99-$5.99 depending on if you have their rewards card.

Anyway, my youngest said we needed a side item to go with it. Which normally we don't but today we needed one. My youngest picked this bucket of mashed potatoes for like $3.00. I guess we could test it for such a low price. Besides, unless it's just completely horrible and disgusting, I'll eat it because I was born, bred and raised to NOT waste food!

So, long story short, these are pretty darn good! I was a little iffy when buying and initially warming them up (they're in a microwavable container) but the oldest, youngest and I liked them. I don't think the wife had any but I'm sure she would have liked them as well.

Sometimes you gotta live on the edge, especially with food. If it works out, cool. If not...try again.

90 cents gas rewards at Tom Thumb!

I've been to Tom Thumb a few times to grocery shop over the past week or so but I haven't had to get gas since I haven't driven twenty minutes each way to play tennis each weekend like I used to a month or so ago.

Anyway, today, I had to gas up my van. The price per gallon was $3.19 but using my gas rewards that I've built up, you can see the price I ended up paying in the image below. That's a 90 cent savings! This is a huge bonus as my van normally takes anywhere from $50-$60 to fill up from almost empty. Today it was $37.50!

Grocery shopping not just about the groceries

With the grocery store "rewards" cards for the major grocers, it's not just about the groceries anymore. Add the fact that the big grocers of Kroger and Tom Thumb have apps, it makes it even easier to learn about or get deals.

A few months or more ago, I moved from one side of the neighborhood to the other...basically about a mile across town.

The previous side was closer to Kroger so I shopped there more for my groceries with my Kroger Plus card. Originally, the Kroger Plus card gave gas points that I could use at the pump depending on how much I spent. It only worked at the gas stations that were Kroger gas stations. The Kroger I shopped at has a gas station in the parking lot but it is a Chevron. So, these gas points were useless to me except for when I drive through Euless, TX which is the only place where I know a Kroger with a Kroger gas station exists and is in my paths of mostly traveled. A couple of years ago Kroger teamed up with Shell to provide these points and so the same gas benefit was now available. Good since there is a Shell a few blocks from the Kroger. I grocery shopped at Kroger a lot for this "benefit" as well as they were the only close grocery store that had self-check out registers.

My current side of the neighborhood is closer (very close) to a Tom Thumb where I use my Rewards Club card for groceries. This store is much smaller than the Kroger where I used to shop and it doesn't have self-check out. The convenient location is great but the selection isn't always for what I'm looking. I occasionally have to drive to another Tom Thumb which is a few blocks or so down from the Kroger I used to frequent. Anyway, I always use my Rewards card when shopping at Tom Thumb because it gives me really good BOGO deals or cheaply-priced items that I frequently purchase.

A little sidebar—I sometimes, but rarely lately, shop at Albertsons because each store has their own good pricing on certain items I like and Albertsons has had many a good deal, on meats particularly. Although Albertsons no longer uses a rewards card (marketing ploy), they do have some very good deals once in a while. However, Albertsons is far from either side of the neighborhoods I've lived.

I mentioned it before that one of the perks of the rewards cards is gas points. Since I've been shopping at Tom Thumb, I've earned some fuel points here and there. Recently, I earned $1.70 off my price per gallon at the Tom Thumb gas pump. The price on the receipt below shows $2.09/gallon. The price before using my fuel points was $3.79/gallon. That shit's unheard of!

So I guess the point of the post is use your grocery rewards cards, especially if it's for a Kroger or Tom Thumb.

Tuna looks like "tuna"

Sent by Super Jay from his HTC Evo Shift on the Super Jay Network from Sprint!

Sunflower Market in Dallas

Last weekend the wife and I finally made it to the Sunflower Farmers Market. It's not a "farmer's market" like you (or I) would think. You know the one...every 'farmer' has a booth on an aisle on some outdoor parking lot or grassy knoll. It's essentially a grocery store, a small one, but one nonetheless.

A neighbor of ours was talking about it one day. We've seen the ads in the newspaper but have never been much less thought about going. I'm first a Kroger guy through and through. Kroger usually has the deals on the things I like and there is a store about two minutes across the highway. Most of the time I check all the ads from the three big grocers (Kroger, Tom Thumb, Albertson's) and compare their prices. If I can get milk and eggs cheaper at Kroger but bread and cereal cheaper at Tom Thumb, I make two different trips. If Albertson's has something to add to the mix, then I am making a third grocery trip. Luckily, Tom Thumb is about two to five minutes down the road and Albertson's is about five to ten minutes away. I love the convenience of where I live.

The neighbor likes to purchase what is considered "premium cuts" of steak like rib eye or prime rib. Most of the time for me, a steak is a steak as long as the taste and texture aren't like the sole of a shoe! A quarter inch thick is just as good as a half inch thick. Now don't get me wrong. I've had really, REALLY good steak that I can cut like butter from restaurants but that's once in a long while, a treat, for me and/or the wife. I'm talking outdoor grilling at home with the family and/or friends.

Anyway, this friend and neighbor said he got rib eyes from Sunflower Market for 40% off. I don't know what that meant in the sense of actual price but 40% off anything is a damn good deal. We planned on getting some rib eye ourselves and checking on other deals but we never made it. We are busy people and Sunflower Market is not 2-5 minutes down the street. It's more like 10-15 minutes south down US 75 to Haskell and then east on Haskell until about a block from Ross.

A week passed and I saw the newspaper advertisement again. I saw that they had $4.99/lb for rib eyes. This sounded like a fairly decent price so I decided, "I'm checking this place out this week no matter what!" The wife and I decided to go during my lunch hour on Friday of that week (that was two Fridays ago).

This particular time they had a few good deals on things like steak, certain beers my wife and neighbors drink, Boar's Head roast beef and a few others. For comparison, the Boar's head deli roast beef was two dollars cheaper than at Kroger as was the beer. I already talked about the steak. At the same time, there were items that were more, sometimes much more, than at Kroger. A dozen eggs was about twenty cents more (organic vs. organic). The bread was about the same (Mrs. Baird's whole grain white). Clementines were about a dollar more per pound compared to Kroger. So, basically, it's just like how I compare the ads from Kroger, Tom Thumb, and Albertson's...you have to know the prices acros the stores and find which one is best for the products you are wanting to buy.

I decided to purchase the rib eyes. Not knowing totally for sure how much of a deal I was getting, I rationalized by thinking that the rib eye (I bought three for no more than $4.99 each because they were either a pound or slightly under) was just like buying a fast food 'value' meal. If I spend something like $5-$6 on a #1 at Taco Bell, Wendy's or McDonald's, then $4.99 was a bargain on a thick, juicy steak.

After seasoning and grilling the rib eyes like I do a 'cheaper' cut, we decided once again that steak was steak. The rib eyes were great but I've made great skirt steak, fajita steak, and whatever other 'cheap' steak they have at the major brand grocery stores. I will continue to test and investigate price as well as taste of steaks from the many different stores but I don't think a rib eye or prime rib is necessarily the CHOICE steak.

But at a good price, it's doesn't hurt to purchase one and enjoy it...especially if your friends are impressed with such meaningless things.

Oh yeah, the point of the picture. I got a little off topic with the rib eyes instead of talking about the turkey bacon. While we were at Sunflower, I saw this display for bacon. It looked pretty good in the picture even though it said 'turkey.' I thought, "how bad could they mess up bacon?"

I decided to wake up Sunday morning to make breakfast for the wife and kids. I'm that kind of guy. I opened the pack to find the bacon to be sliced in neat little precise pieces. I sliced the pack in half as not to waste the other half if I didn't like it. I figured we could at least use it for baking beans or something.

Longer story shorter: the kids and I agree said, "It tastes alright but we prefer the 'pig' bacon. It's just better because it's crispy and fatty not just crispy like this. The turkey bacon is more like frying Spam but if I wanted Spam, I'd just eat Spam!"

Well said kids. Well said.

Dinner at Central Market on Lower Greenville

The wife and I have decided on a weekly date night for us to get away for an hour or so, by ourselves, while the kids are at home. We've only done it a few times now but it's been pretty enjoyable just to get out for a bit, especially for the wife.

So, tonight I decided that we'd try Central Market. I'm not a fan of Central Market. In fact, I think they are overpriced for their groceries and although their "fixed" food looks good and tasty (and so far has been), I think it's slightly overpriced as well. I'm not a "fancy food" expert so I could be way off but I just don't like to pay too much for "basic food."

Anyway, we live and learn on what is good, tasty and worth the money and that which is not. The wife went with her standard visit to the salad bar where as I wanted to venture out a little bit. I ordered 1/2 lb of the shrimp salad and 1/2 lb of grilled flank steak with honey garlic. Her salad was rated at $7.49/lb and each of my items were priced at $17.99/lb. The price of mine is why I went with a 1/2 lb because there was no way I was paying $35 just for my shit. Total bill cost with tax was $24.31.

The shrimp salad was passable, very passable. The salad consisted basically of shrimp, diced celery and some dressing. That's it. The counter attendant did give me a decent amount of shrimp but I think for $8.64 I could have just bought a shrimp ring at Kroger for $9.99 and it is currently a BOGO. So, I'd get 60-80 decently priced and tasting shrimp for roughly $11. The celery was like needless filler.

The grilled flank steak with honey garlic was pretty tasty. It wasn't oo, ah awesome. It wasn't fork-cutting tender. It was however well grilled and marinated nicely. I could see a pound for $9 worth it but $17.99? That's just ridiculous.

On the way out, we picked up some dinner for the kids. We saw the "dinner for two" meals in a bag. They had a meatloaf dinner that had a good-sized portion of meatloaf, two rolls, a side of garlic mashed potatoes (probably like a 1/2 lb) and a side of amandine green beans for $13.99 plus tax. Once we got home, we opened the dinner-for-two bag and found that it contained way more food than we got with the individual orders combined! We got jacked. If we'd known any better, we would have gotten 1 or 2 dinners. I think we could have easily split one dinner between the four of us with the amount of food that was included.