Happy March First

February's a fun month. It has Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day and President's Day all rolled into one. But March has St. Patrick's Day and that's a FOODIE HOLIDAY! Yes! We're talking corned beef and cabbage and anything Irish. I mean, let's face the facts, roasted groundhog is NOT a very tasty meal! And how much chocolate can you eat anyway? I don't know any Presidents there were Foodies, either. But St. Paddy's Day offers some real culinary potential.

Along those lines, Freddie's Sunday ad dropped the price on corned beef to $1.49. Now, we're talking. I thought $1.79 awhile back was decent. So $1.49 is a whole lot more decent. That last little corned beef we bought sure hit the spot. You can bet we're going pony over to Freddie's today and score some more corned beef. Yippie, skippie!

Hey, speaking of beef, I got a beef with Freddie about beef. It seems like for the last 300 weeks in a row that Freddie has put a VERY HIGH $$$$ cut of beef on the front page of the Sunday ad. it seems like it's always some sort of real expensive steak. This week is no exception--it's New York Steaks for $4.99 a pound. What the heck are they thinking? Don't they realize we are in a full blown recession and people are not buying expensive cuts of beef? Meanwhile, they bury the $1.49 corned beef on the inside page. Does this make any sense? No, none whatsoever. They could have put the corned beef on the front page and created a feeding frenzy! I sure hope they feture something else soon--like cheep chikin' or fatty ol' poke chops. Something! Anything! Please, Freddie!

Unfortunately, Freddie's ad falls flat about getting past the corned beef feature. Orange juice is back on coupon special for $1.98 a gallon (99 cents per half gallon). Betty Crocker Helpers are a buck a pop. We've stopped eating them because they have enough sodium in each box to jump start an ocean.

Organic Braeburn apples are 78 cents a pound. Once again, something's going on with apples. This is an insanely low price for a USDA certified organic apple. Washington State apple producers must be sitting on a lot of inventory and getting real nervous--kinda like cat on a hot tin roofed apple shed. My guess is that the recession has cut deeply into overall apple consumption, especially in key Midwest and East Coast markets. My guess is that Washington State is going to have to move a LOT of apples here pretty soon and we're going to see apple prices fall through the floor. I'm not sure that low apple prices will stimulate demand. I think they are practically going to have to give away apples to clear the storage for the 2009 crop. It's highly unusual to see a quality apple this cheap on March 1!

Well, there's nothing else of note in the Freddie ad, not even cheap cabbage. Go figure. But at least it's worth a cruise there for the corned beef alone. Bon voyage, shoppers!