This Is Getting Serious…

Really serious! I just returned home from a much-needed grocery shopping trip.  Much needed because it’s been over 3 weeks since someone has done some serious fill-the-cart kind of shopping.  As I surveyed the empty pantry this morning I took a deep sigh and decided to make my list.  I reached down deep to find some energy to share with my son who is also still lethargic, and we headed out.

Every time I go grocery shopping these days I brace myself.  I brace myself for the increase in prices that I seem to find every single week, and it seems each trip I purchase less and less due to budgetary constraints.  I’ve noticed the prices creep up a few cents at a time, and I’ve certainly noticed that my boxes of cereal keep shrinking in size at the same time.  Today though, I was unprepared for what I encountered in the baking aisle.

Back in October, the flours I usually buy went up a little in price.  Regular price my all-purpose flour was $2.19 for unbleached and unbromated flour.  The bread flour from the same company ran at $2.29.  In October they both went up to $2.59, and pretty much stayed there through the holidays.  Then in January the price jumped a full dollar for each of them to $3.59.  I was growing concerned.  Once I bought the store brand of flour instead, but quickly found that the extra cost was worth my precious bags of flour from a mill in the Dakotas.  Today as I walked down the aisle and reached for my flour I stopped dead in my tracks.  $6.59.  For real. Six dollars and fifty-nine cents for one bag of all-purpose and six dollars and fifty-nine cents for one bag of bread flour. Unbelievable.  That’s $13.18 for two sacks of flour that I use practically every day.  And that didn’t count the white whole wheat and the rye flour I was going to buy today as well.

I looked around, wondering if perhaps my preferred brand of flour had switched to an organic operation, thus justifying the price jump.  Nope, no such thing, and sadly I also found that the other brands of flour were comparable in price, varying by just a few cents each. I knew that prices were going up, but this…this is a 150% price increase in just six months time.

So what did I do?  Well, sadly, I didn’t pick up the extra wheat or rye flours, and instead opted for the smaller 5 pound bags of all-purpose and bread flour from King Arthur Flour.  I need some time on this one…we’ve become spoiled with me making all the bread that we use as a household, and I hate to leave that behind due to inflation.  There is a solution out there, and for me it’s going to mean hunting around for a few weeks to see if I can come up with an alternative.  Buying flour at a wholesale club has never appealed to me- there is no savings in price, and I find the product to be very inferior.

Overall I spent about twice on groceries than what I had wanted to.  It seems that nothing is being left behind in this.  It’s also ironic that I purchased a package of fresh chicken wings for $7.00 because I thought they’d be a fun change for dinner one day this week, and then two steps later I added a whole fresh turkey on sale that only cost me $7.50.  There’s definitely something wrong with this picture, and had I had my head on straight, the chicken wings would have gone back on the shelf.  All of the sudden, the gardens that we’ve been planning have become far more important than simply a hobby.  And as the snow thaws I need to follow through on making a few appointments to check out some local farmers and their offerings for the year ahead.  If my grocery dollar is going to fall so short at a traditional grocery store, it seems that I should instead give that dollar to someone who appreciates it.

What are you doing about this grocery war? Am I the only one who has experienced true sticker shock in the grocery aisle?