Friday @ WINCO

Paycheck Friday at month's end at WINCO is basically total mayhem. People are running around willy nilly, crashing carts and just being really silly. Kids are crying and screaming. It's basically chaos and mayhem. It's just my kind of element! I love it! Bring it ON! When WINCO is at its worst I love it the best. If you really, really want to see what "people watching" is all about, then go inside WINCO at its worst. It's awesome. It's spectacular. It's amazing and it's a CIRCUS!

Anyway, my wife and I had a fun time there this afternoon. She went shopping for some various herbs and spices to complete her revamp of our spice rack. I roamed produce and scored some excellent green chiles. I got real lucky and scored some awesome small crimini mushrooms, too. I even had a conversation with one of the taciturn produce guys. I told him I felt insanely lucky to score the tiny button mushrooms because it meant I could have an awesome omelet tomorrow. Man, he sure lit up on that remark and his eyes got real big and he said, "Yeah, aren't they GREAT!" It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Meanwhile, some clueless lady next to me asked a question, "DO they taste good?" The produce guy and I looked at each other, rolled our eyes and we each gave some nebulous answer and walked off. I said, "Well they taste at least ten times better than regular mushrooms." Of course, the woman didn't believe me and she turned up her nose at those brunette schrooms and filled her bag with the tasteless white ones. Oh, well, you can lead a woman to mushrooms but...nah, I won't go there.

I bought some nice white onions--I haven't checked their pedigree yet. They calc'd to 40 cents each. I bought two token jalapenos and they calc'd to 12 cents each. These jalapenos are huge. I think I will put them on the calipers and take their picture. They must be Mexican mutants. The green chiles were especially fat and meaty today. It was a good box out of Sinaloa, Mexico.

Judging from the weather data, Sinaloa is getting body-slammed with hot, hot heat right now. I'd suspect that means the pepper plants will be jamming and cramming and the price will probably drop even farther and soon the peppers will flood the American market. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see huge, big, fat green chiles for 98 cents a pound at WINCO. That's an awesome price, even for Mexican chiles.

Pork has been on the slide recently, too. I haven't checked into the reasons why yet. I probably will this weekend. Something must be happening to the pork pricing structure--pork cuts are going through the floor in recent days. It's going to be real interesting to research the "why" of this unusual development.

We're barely two weeks away from St. Paddy's Day and even WINCO hasn't yet started discounting cabbage. That's very odd. I keep wondering when they are going to pull the trigger and knock the pants off cabbage prices. The countdown to cheap cabbage is ON!

There really wasn't much happening otherwise in WINCO. There's still some decent red bell peppers for 68 cents each. Remember, they are "use 'em or lose 'em" peppers. If you buy 'em, you better get 'em home and do something with 'em, pronto!
They don't have much life left. (NOTE: The last time around, we roasted 20 of these puppies and then froze them in Food Saver bags. They are GREAT peppers in that context. But be careful, buy 'em and use 'em. If you snooze, you lose!)

Well, the only other development worthy of note out of WINCO today is that they have brought back their peanut grinder. They pulled that puppy faster than a speeding bullet during the recent Great Peanut Scare. Well, it's back and the price dropped. It's $1.58 per pound for fresh ground peanut butter.

There only one other side note to today's WINCO discussion. I love buttermilk. I can buy a half gallon of Darigold buttermilk at WINCO for $2.08. to me, that's like FREE buttermilk! If you're a buttermilk fan, you simply can't find a better price for a few thousand square miles. Enjoy!