Price of Bologna jumped 50%!!!

**fuzzybunny** · 08-25-2007, 01:01 PM

I know we have ranted about this several times in the last few weeks but it's very frustrating!! I went shopping 2 weeks ago and store brand bologna was
99 cents for a pound. This week the "Every day low price" is 2 for $3. Has there been some terrible bologna shortage in the new lately? Has some goverment agency but a egriegious tax on all the leftover bits of animals that make up bologna?? Did terrorists blow up the Kroger bologna plant? What the heck is going on?? Gas prices alone can not justify a 50% hike in 2 weeks!
Ak!!!

Last month I got a 4% raise. It's supposed to be a "cost of living" increase. Sounds good and equaled $80 more a month.... of course the landlord raised the rent $200!!! So before we even factor in the higher cost of transportation, utilities and a frickin' 50% hike in the price of bologna I am still $120 worse off each month than I was before the raise!!

Sigh! On the brighter side, for whatever reason I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning and I usually sleep in on Saturdays. I deceided to get my shopping out of the way since I was up, so I hopped on the MAX and headed to Fred's (the least expensive of the grocery stores I can reach via mass transit). After the bologna trauma and several other similar shocks I was walking down the meat case reflecting on the very probable reality of economically enforced vegitarianism when I got to the marked down meat section.

Usually it just has a couple of really expensive cuts of meat that aren't a good deal even with the mark down. This time however, it was packed with pork chops and other stuff. Apparently Saturday morning is the time to hit the mark down meat case. I got the only beef roast @ $6 and a good sized pack of boneless pork loin chops for under $5. I also got a pork roast for about $5. The non-marked down roasts were running $10 or more. Since I'm single that's enough meat for a month or more. I found a reprinted cook book from the depression era at the library so this stuff is going to
S-T-R-E-T-C-H!!!

I'll be making sure to get up early on shopping Saturday's from now on.
Christine

**Dancing Lotus** · 08-25-2007, 04:18 PM

I know how you feel. I dont normaly buy Doritos chips but the other day we wanted some so I thought what the heck. I was shocked at the price, 3.49 for some stuppid chips. I dont think so I will by the store brand for a 1.00.

I have also noticed that whole fryer chickens are a lot smaller then they use to be. And named brand milk was 6.49. My dh didnt get a raise this yr.

By the way a 200 rent hike is crazy.

**starsapphire** · 08-25-2007, 04:50 PM

Yep I feel your pain, I think we are all victims of the general cost of living going up. And on top of it DH and I are working on eating alot better for health reasons so my food budget has increased some, even with having cheap and/or vegetarian meals a couple times a week. Living in Cali doesn't help.

**Jaded** · 08-25-2007, 05:34 PM

The meat price hikes are supposedly because the grain used to feed the cattle has gone up, due to so much corn being used for ethanol. Yeah, right. Fat chance of that. They just saw a chance to screw us.

I'm trying to use other protein sources. Guess beans (and Beano) will be on my list for this week.

**YankeeMom** · 08-25-2007, 05:41 PM

Look at it this way, the shock of the bologna price lead you straight to the meat deal

I feel your pain though. I was just reminiscing with dh about how we used to be able to shop for our family of six for $300-350/month. Not anymore. Between my youngest son developing a case of "hollow leg"

and the price of everything else increasing, everything I do to bring our grocery bill just barely cuts it anymore.

**bagpipes00** · 08-25-2007, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by starsapphire

Yep I feel your pain, I think we are all victims of the general cost of living going up. And on top of it DH and I are working on eating alot better for health reasons so my food budget has increased some, even with having cheap and/or vegetarian meals a couple times a week. Living in Cali doesn't help.

Starsapphire, I KNOW what you are talking about. I'm here in LA, the WORST (in my opinion) place to live in terms of cost (we're going to try to save our money and move further north). I am from Florida, so obviously it was a shock to my system to see the prices when I moved out here 2 years ago. We too are trying to eat better. I am on Weight Watchers, and have since March, lost 42 pounds. But better health, it seems, comes at a higher price, so my food budget is higher too.

**nuisance26** · 08-25-2007, 06:55 PM

~It's fascinating to me how things like bologna can go up in price. Seems like they should be giving away things that are made from the less desirable parts. I just commented to DH this week that I saw salt pork advertised for $4 a pound on sale. Salt pork is just salted fat with a vein of meat running through it. It was a bit outrageous IMO! And I feel your pain in the cost-of-living-raise thing. My DH got about the same percentage. We were not better off after the raise because our property taxes went up $400 this year, sales tax went from 6% to 7% plus the higher costs of transportation and food completely ate it up. It sometimes seems like we'll never get ahead. It doesn't make me feel better but it helps me to complain less when I remember that alot of people didn't get a raise at all this year. Imagine how they all must be feeling the crunch!~

**freyadog** · 08-25-2007, 07:35 PM

Ok now what? How do we know what to shop for when there aren't any loss leaders? I havent a clue where to even start. For a very long time I have shopped only loss leaders. I read Kroger and Food Lion and I was shocked at the prices in the ads.

We usually have lots of extra for the postman food drive, food banks here in the area, scouts etc. Now I dont even know how to shop so that we can have and help where it is needed. Being rural there are many up here on this mountain that really need food stuffs help but if we are having problems with the prices going up we might have to curb as much giving as we have in the past. I sure hope things level off.

My dh is just going to have to learn to eat less meat. He wolfs that stuff down. HAHA...I fixed spaghetti for tonight while he was at work. IT was TVP and ground turkey. He didnt even know the difference. he gobbled it up.

**Luv2BeFrugal** · 08-25-2007, 08:39 PM

Things are going up here, too! Produce is really high this season (moreso than usual). I'm guessing it's the extra expense of shipping??

Gas prices have actually gone down about 5 cents...it's not a ton, but it's better than nothin'!

Gas & electric are up, too... Hopefully things will level out soon!!

**i.m.cheap** · 08-25-2007, 08:58 PM

It is bad here too. The price of DRIED BEANS is over $1.00 a pound for all varieties. Milk is $4.00 a gallon. Bread is $3.00 a loaf in the grocery store. We buy ours at the bakery thrift store when we get into "the big city", but it has gone up there, too. The grocery ads have been terrible for the last six months or so. There are few good coupons any more either.

A cost of living raise? What's that? My DH's employer never gives raises. He doesn't even get one day of paid vacation a year. He earned just under $16,000 last year. Working full-time. He has been going to college for the last two years, and will receive his A.S. in the spring. I hope he can get a better job, but most employers want a four year degree.

**Jaded** · 08-25-2007, 09:32 PM

And they say there isn't a recession...sheesh!

I don't ever remember being this stretched since I was in my early 20's with a child to raise alone, and only making $77 a week!

**Telephus44** · 08-25-2007, 10:35 PM

Yeah - it amazes me how the government figures it. I was watching Ben Bernanke's report to Congress two weeks ago, and one of the senators made a comment that if they calculated inflation today the way that they actually calculated it 20 years ago, it would be at 10.4% instead of the 2% figure that they always tout. And of course they only deal with "core inflation" which doesn't include food or energy - because apparently they don't need to eat, drive, or heat/cool their houses. (Actually, the conspiracy theorist in me knows that it's because Social Security pays a cost of living increase every year tied to inflation - so if you can report a low inflation number, you can keep Social Security costs down....think about it!)

Of course there are complex issues here causing everything to go up, and I do believe that ethanol is causing the rising prices of food, since corn growers can choose to sell their corn to ethanol plants in addition to cattle farmers and even cereal makers. I also believe that inflation - costs going up without wages keeping up - is the single biggest problem facing our economy today, but the government just glosses over it and comes up with new ways to figure and recalculate their numbers to make everything seem hunky-dory (for example - did you know that the margin of error on the "jobs created" number they trot out every month is plus or minus 250,000 jobs? It makes it seem like such a joke when they brag that 100,000 jobs were added last month).

And count me in the class of people that never see a cost-of-living increase in their paycheck. I only worked for one company in my career that actually did annual reviews with salary increases, and it was based entirely on performance, not cost of living.

I think that the US is headed for a terrible recession if not an actual depression. I just don't think anyone (ok, anyone in the government) wants to admit it. We can all clearly see it in our rising costs and the ability of our paychecks to cover them.

**Mamaw** · 08-26-2007, 06:22 AM

Everything has gone up. I know that I need to start to cook more from scratch again. I have been getting a bit lazy in that area. And I think that hitting Save a Lot and Aldis for staples is a good way to build up the pantry. Winter is a comin folks...

**Judi Dial** · 08-26-2007, 07:37 AM

Talk to a local butcher? One thing I've been trying to find for a while are chicken feet. They're supposedly very cheap and great for making stock, which when I'm organized, I do.

No one sells them here.

Another bargain is turkey wings, if I can find them. One turkey wing roasted will feed DH and myself for 2 meals, the bones go into stock. A pkg of turkey wings last time I found them was $3, so for .75 per person per meal we get meat.

Also, salmon backs, lobster shells, etc. Frequently it's the stuff that isn't used. I don't remember how you ask for the lobster shell thing, that's in the Stonewall Kitchen cookbook. I had a friend who taught me about salmon backs (the meat's dark meat rather than pink, tastes the same).

I had a butcher tell me which pork was the cheapest cut once, but I've forgotten, darn!

Also there's a book, I'll have to dig up the title, about cutting market cuts down into multiple meals, etc.

JD