When it comes to grocery shopping, be ever vigalant

On a day looooong ago ( we won't talk about how long ago), my mother and I went grocery shopping for my first grocery shopping trip as a homemaker.  I remember her words as we exited the car; "Let the battle begin".  Make no mistake.  The grocery stores job is to separate you from as much of your money as possible and your job is to not let them.  Period.  As consumers it is our job to make sure as little money as possible is taken from our wallet for merchandise which, lets face it, ends up in the septic tank.    I have remembered those words over the years, and tried to live by them when it comes to providing food for my family.  That being said, even I have fallen off the vigilant band wagon periodically.  Such a time happened to me this week and I wanted to share what I learned. 

I usually shop once a month and throw in small really good sale purchases if they come up during the month.  Since I shop once a month I will usually grab a few pounds of lunch meat.  I leave one in the fridge and the others I freeze,  The draw back to freezing lunch meat is it ends up kinda watery.  Well the other day I was making lunch for Dh and I thought to myself, "I am gonna drain off the water of this package and weigh it to find out how much it is taking off the over all weight of the lunch meat.  So I weighed the pkg of lunch meat after draining off the extra water and found it only weighed 11.58 oz.  At first I was shocked thinking "I can't believe I lost that much in a 1 lb pkg of lunchmeat!".  Right on the tale end of that I looked at the weight of the pkg and what I used to buy as a 1 lb package was now 14 oz.  So the good news is I only paid $2.99 for 11.58 oz of meat and 2.38oz of water as opposed to paying that for 11.58 oz of meat and 4.38 oz of water.  I am being sarcastic right now.  Neither one is great but I do have a lesser of two evils.  So my answer to this?  I roasted a turkey last night an will use it for lunch meat.  The turkey cost me .59 a lb and no extra added water.  So my being asleep at the wheel maybe will help you as well.  So the lesson learned is to pay attention to package sizes especially when it looks like the sale price is better than normal.  I wouldn't be surprised to find that the package size has shrunk and you are being scalped.  When you think about the price per pound I was willing to pay for lunch meat ($4.13 lb) I could by the round or sirloin tip roasts, cook it and carve it for lunches and come out better!  My Dh will be thrilled with that one!  Always, always, always re-evaluate purchases.   Okay, resume your normal day.  See ya guys!