I don’t think 6.21 for thick cut is a bad price these days. My regular grocery store is like 9.50 a pound now for the brand I like which is a hard no. Sams club has it in a 3 pound pack for 5.50 a pound. I did buy some at Aldi for around 4.50 but that was a few months ago so it may have gone up.
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bacon very expensive atm, I think of meats it has been the most hit by inflation (maybe chicken is more?)
this week it was on sale 375g/$6 for the ‘no hormone/no antibiotic’ or 500g/$6 for regular thickness conventional
or 1kg/$16 for the better thick cut. In comparison, it used to be on sale for 9.99 two years ago.
1lb = 454g or 0.454kg
or divide by 2.2 from cost per kg to get cost per lb
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cries in canadian 
If it wasn’t for my freezer stash we wouldn’t be eating bacon for a while. Its wild!
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I feel like bacon recently got really expensive. I can get the cheapest store brand on sale for $3.99 a pound, but then I hate it because it doesn’t taste great. Right now I’m buying the “natural” brand at the health food store from $6-$8/pound. I also get the Kirkland one sometimes, although I find it…stringy. If you have a Sprout’s in your area, I really like the one they have at the butcher counter, it’s thick cut, and $6.99/pound
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Thanks everyone! Good to know I’m not alone on high bacon prices. I decided to skip it this week and go with breakfast sausage instead. Husband is going to do the shopping for us at Weis on Monday, shouldn’t be too bad since the list is small. I think it’ll be like $80ish.
Meal Plan
Breakfast- Sausage Hash Brown Frittata /// Fried Eggs
Lunch- Wraps (brisket/chicken/veggie burger) /// Soup (hen and somen)
Dinner #1- Falafel + Tomato Pesto Cilantro Feta Potato Freekah + Lemon Yogurt Dressing + Pickled Beets
Dinner #2- Beef Chili & Spanish Rice w/ Pickled Jalapeno, Tortilla Chips
Dinner #3- Vegmeat Hawaiian Pizza
Extras- Mango Cocktails, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Instant Noodles, Candy, Apples, Oranges, Protein Smoothies, Pita Chips and Hummus
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We’ve actually cut bacon out of our shopping exact for super special occasions. The price was just way too high. Instead we buy hams when they go on sale (looking at you upcoming Easter holiday!), and then chop them up/use them where recipes call for bacon. Not quite the same, but a huge cost savings.
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This week’s menu:
Broccoli & potato pasta
Baked chicken & veg
Steak & coleslaw
Tacos
Dessert will be fruit and chocolate muffins.
It’s looking like we’ll be keeping Duckling home from school a couple of days so we might do extra baking.
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That’s a really good idea!
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A great vid from our queen
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Do you have a recipe???
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Hey! I don’t have a recipe but I basically did this, and you can switch it up a lot. Peppers are good, you can add olives, roasted carrots, persian cucumbers, onions, pine nuts, golden raisins, etc.
- Cook freekah.
- Halve 2 pints cherry tomatoes
- Chop 1-2 bunches cilantro (mint, dill, and flat leave parsley are also good)
- Bake some cubed potatoes in a bunch of oil and lemon juice
- Combine everything (including cooled potatoes and whatever feta you have, pesto, and sesame seeds), add some extra olive oil and lemon for good measure.
- Cover and put in fridge, like tabbouleh this is better after it sits!
Here’s a pic, bad lighting since it was nighttime so I had to use a filter, it’s topped with falafel and a lemon yogurt sauce and has a side of pickled beets.
ETA: Also for people who don’t know freekah, it’s a grain that tastes kind of midway between bulgur, brown rice, and barley. It’s nutty and meaty tasting. It’s a very old grain and is used a lot in Middle Eastern cooking but for some reason hasn’t gotten to the well-known status (outside that cuisine) that couscous and bulgur have. I recommend it because it is delicious and easy to cook (just boil/simmer)! I buy mine on amazon but if you have a big Middle Eastern population in your town you will probably find it in their grocery stores, sometimes Mediterranean stores carry it too but that’s more hit or miss.
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the butchers used to regularly have bacon ends/trimmings for 30% less which we’d use as lardons, but I haven’t seen them for probably 9 months.
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week’s plan
Saturday - roast pork lettuce wraps
Sunday - zucchini fritters
Monday - roast anaheim peppers, ground pork, corn, lettuce, tortillas (Corn Chimichurri Pork Tacos Recipe • A Simple Pantry)
Tuesday - roast pork, lettuce, glass noodles with pickled carrots and cucumber, omelet, nuoc cham
Wednesday - lettuce, sweet potato, gruyere, egg, honey-mustard dressing
Thursday - chicken salad with mayo, roasted anaheim chili, cheese, over roast sweet potato
lunches
M: lettuce, bocconcini, orange segments, red onion, candied salmon (spices? tbd)
T: rice, lentils, cucumber, bocconcini, tahini-sriracha
W:
R: grilled cheese with kimchi
F: lime-cilantro rice, roasted anaheim chile lentils, soft boiled egg
Question for you guys that I’ve been thinking about for literal weeks: do you think growing your own food saves money?
I was reading through some Prudent Homemaker posts that @AllHat posted, and she mentioned growing food as a money-saving strategy. I think of gardening as a fun but expensive hobby I have that produces food, but was wondering if you guys have found ways to make it break even or save on costs.
I’ve been thinking about potential ways to save money on gardening. I haven’t been able to pull this off at scale, but I bet a more flexible and patient person could.
- Get seeds or starts from free seed libraries or Buy Nothing
- Garden in existing soil, vs raised beds and containers
- Not have to start from zero every year (since we moved across the country, I wasn’t able to save much equipment from year one to year two)
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It does save money but the cost is your time. Absolutely re: getting seeds and starts, growing in ground (which I prefer for most things anyway), using free mulch, creating your own compost, etc. Buy fruit trees as bare root trees (take longer to produce but way WAY cheaper). Don’t use tons of pesticides/insecticides. And in temperate climates you don’t need special irrigation systems either. You absolutely don’t need anything fancy to garden, but there is an entire economic sector built up around it now to make you think you need all these things.
I’m probably going to be documenting my garden set up starting this year, if you want to follow along.
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What you choose to grow can make a big difference: greens/salad mix and herbs are the ones I always see listed as money savers. Things like onions and potatoes can be bought so cheaply and take up so much space that it rarely makes financial sense to grow at home.
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Oh, and the irrigation thing makes sense! I forget that not everyone gardens in wildly dry places.
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And, yes! That sounds so fun.
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Some things are basically zero cost, zero effort. If you poke dried beans into the dirt near a fence or tree and abandon them forever, they will grow and do fine and at the end of the season you will have tons of dried beans. I put a lot in the ground because some won’t survive.
Same for sunflowers and squash and lots of other “beginner” plants.
The Metis (an indigenous group in my area) would plant a whole huge garden like this, usually several acres. Then they would leave to hunt all summer. At the end they would come back and harvest whatever had survived. The garden would be overrun with weeds and animals would have taken some of the harvest, and in drought years everything would be dead, but for the amount of work put in they got a reasonable return. On the years that I can be arsed to garden, I pretend to be Metis.
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It’s definitely a time/money trade off, and it gets cheaper for both those things over time. I’m good at scrounging things out of the trash and buying seeds on clearance, but I’m willing to settle for imperfection.
I invested in raised beds last fall because I want to plant some perennials (raspberries and asparagus) that will pay off over time.
And you have to be willing to eat what you can grow, which is basically beans and squash some years.
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