Grocery sales

In our part of the country, the sale papers for the area grocery stores used to arrive on Wednesday for a sale that lasted through the following Tuesday. In Mama's area, they seem to arrive on Tuesday for a sale that begins the next day. These days the sale flyers in our area arrive late, and they are getting thinner.

I find it somewhat ironic that I never used to read these flyers. For years, My Prince would bring them in from the mailbox and then hand them over. It was almost as if he expected me to actually read them and then shop for what was on sale. Not I! I thanked him for the papers and then, once he was gone, took them to recycling. I knew what I needed to buy and how to find it, so I didn't need no stinking sale flyers.

A couple of years ago, My Prince began doing the unthinkable: he went grocery shopping! It appears that he decided to read the sale flyers, make a shopping list, and hit the stores. Indeed, he read all the flyers and then went to all the stores in our area. The day he came home with 20 cans of salmon, each purchased for $1, I decided to pay attention to what he was doing. He was, after all, filling up my fridge with things I didn't usually purchase, and we were running out of room in the pantry. Who knew the man would eat that many grapes?

When I began to have more time, I joined him in reading the sale flyers. For a while doing so was to help him decide what to buy (as in "Don't bring any more of that home!"). Eventually, we began to divvy up the stores, and now, he being an apparent descendant of Tom Sawyer, I'm back doing the shopping alone.

We did try to go together a few times, but his belief that you only buy what is on your list and therefore only go down the aisles where those things are located combined with his hearing problems was a bit of a disaster. If it wasn't his face turning red when I tried to divert the shopping expedition down an "unlisted" aisle, it was me talking at a pitch he could hear with everyone else staring and thinking what a fishwife I was. Not a pretty sight.

These days I still leave the actual sale flyers to My Prince. He goes through them to find the things he thinks we need now or should buy for the future. I prefer to go to the web sites of the grocery companies and check off the items that I want to buy electronically. I still have the old-fashioned paper list. I also have the much-circled flyers (that I double check to make sure we really need that much shrimp). But the basis for all my shopping these days is the print out that I get when I have created an online shopping list from the weekly ads on a company's web site.

Not every one has these handy web sites, tho. HEB is my main store in Austin; it has everything I need online at www.heb.com. We often shop at Randall's; once again, it has all I need at www.randalls.com. At least once a month we make a trip to Sam's Club, which, sadly, has neither weekly flyer nor online shopping list. It's a paper list for Sam. As it happens, we only buy certain things there these days, and we generally stick pretty close to the shopping list. Whole Foods is where I get bulk items, but the nearest store is several miles away. It's a rare trip, so we don't mind that there is no sale flyer and no online shopping.

In Houston, things get a bit trickier. HEB, Randall's, and Whole Foods are all on the other side of town from where Mama lives. "The other side of town" is one thing in Austin. It's a whole other state in Houston. On her side of town, we have several shopping options, but almost nothing on line. Fiesta, Food Town, Sam's Club, Sellers Brothers all have nearby stores. All but Sam's Club mail out weekly flyers. None of them have online shopping lists. Indeed, only Fiesta even has a web site (that I can find).

Kroger is the only store in the area with the online shopping list. Happily, I can go online while still in Austin and see what I need to pick up at the Kroger in Houston before I leave home. Once again, Kroger has everything I need online: www.kroger.com.

As prices go up and up, we'll be taking a closer look at sales. Nowadays we only buy meat when it is on sale. Many of the canned goods that we buy are sale items on which we stock up. We are at the mercy of the market on fresh fruit and vegetables, but we do tend to buy more of what is on sale and less or none of what is not. It's easier for me to find the best deals when the sales are available on line. I can organize my trips and plan meals from home rather than on the fly. I can only hope that more stores get their stuff up on the web sooner rather than later.