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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Did you experience barbecue sticker shock?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For me, it isn’t Memorial Day without a cookout…and from the smell of charcoal wafting through my neighborhood yesterday, I’m not the only one.
With the craziness that comes with the end of the school year, I hadn’t been doing large shopping trips for the last couple of weeks. There were so many last minute celebrations, our eating schedule was too erratic. To prevent wasting food (or continually transferring things to the freezer for later cooking), I had better luck picking up just what I needed that day or a day ahead after our schedule was set.
While I had noticed prices steadily climbing at the supermarket, it wasn’t until I did my blowout party shopping that the increases hit me over the head. I’ve never felt as pinched at the cash register as I did this past weekend.
I began looking at my holiday menu more closely to see where I could economize. Knowing I have the tendency to prepare enough food for an army, I took a closer look at serving sizes, scaling back from automatically cooking the whole box of pasta for macaroni salad, realizing I could halve the recipe and still have plenty. I also reduced the number of side dishes, keeping just as much as needed for variety. And, when people offered to bring something, this time I said “sure.”
I realize these were modest cutbacks since I didn’t want to sacrifice too much on a special occasion. I have to say, for my guests, they probably weren’t even noticeable. But, I know I am going to have to continue in this vein, going even further to keep costs down as the summer rolls on.
Did you experience sticker shock at the supermarket this weekend? How did you make adjustments this holiday because of rising prices?
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