The Wednesday Ads

Smith's and Albertson's weekly ads come out on Wednesday.  That makes the Wednesday newspaper interesting no matter what else is contained therein.

Most folks know we have a very low opinion of Albertson's.  Albertson's is the most over priced grocery we've ever shopped in aside from a few high dollar specialty markets.  It amazes us that Albertson's has any customers at all.  People who shop there must just dearly LOVE throwing money down the drain.  It's always a surprise each week when there is even one item worth visiting the store to buy.  This week there actually FIVE items!  Amazing.

OK, here's the ONLY deals we could fine in the ALB ad.  The first is Hunt's Fire Roasted canned tomatoes.  If you've ever had fire roasted tomatoes, you will know what a true delicacy they are.  They put ordinary canned tomatoes to total shame.  Well, canned fire roasted tomatoes are PRICEY!  ALB's has them on sale this week for 88 cents.  That's as low as you will ever find them anywhere.  Down in Arizonas, they never went below a dollar this winter and they were close to two bucks most of the time.  Don't view these tomatoes in the same category as generic canned tomatoes--they are darned close to gourmet quality and WELL WORTH the mere 88 cents a can this week.  If that's all we could find in this week's ad, that alone would make the trip to ALB's worthwhile!

The second and third items are what we call "Summer Staples:" ketchup and mustard.  ALB's has the 24 ounce Hunt's ketchup with "no high fructose corn syrup" (HFCS) for a mere 88 cents, too.  Stock up at this price for the whole summer.  Ketchup is often cheap during the summer but the cheap-o special are nothing but HFCS dyed red.  The ketchup with no HFCS tastes like good old fashioned ketchup and it's generally not very cheap.  For some reason, food producers like to charge more for stuff without HFCS.

I don't know if you've noticed this but mustard has become somewhat pricey in the past few months.  A dollar used to be a good price point for most normal mustards.  Now it's generally two bucks.  Gulden's spicy brown is a decent mustard and ALB's has it for 88 this week. Once again, stock up.  What often happens with us is that we run out of mustard and then we are forced to pay the going price for it when we simpl have to have it.  It always galls me to pay two bucks for mustard when I know I could have stocked up before summer. You won't find a decent brand of spicy brown mustard cheaper than this probably all summer long.

Hunt's Manwich sloppy joe sauce is also 88 cents.  We generally keep a couple of cans of it around "just in case."  Yeah, I know there's a lot of HFCS in that mix--it's basically rebranded BBQ sauce but it's still good in a pinch and it's about half price of what you might have to pay if you needed some in a pinch. Two cans will get us through the summer with a can to spare.

Last not not least is Jennie-O 93% lean ground turkey.  This stuff is one of our dietary staples.  It comes in 20 ounce packages and it's so versatile it's amazing.  It's good stuff.  ALB's normal price is ridiculous--$5 a pkg.  That's highway robbery when you can buy it at WINCO for $3.  Well, ALB's is doing a "twofer" on the turkey so that drops the price to $2.50 and makes it cheaper than WINCO and well worth buying.  If you were only going to buy one pkg. who would care about a 50 cent savings over WINCO?  Well, we freeze this stuff to have a lot on hand so we will be buying 4-6 pkgs and that makes the 50 cent/pkg savings worthwhile--especially since we will be at ALB's anyway for the other above deals.

While we are on the subject of ALB's, let me give you just two examples of what a rip off that store is.  In their ad this week, they are touting a half gallon of store brand orange juice for $3.  Whoopee!  Well, guess what?  Smith's will give you a whole gallon for a mere $3.50.  Typical ALB's.  The other one is the two-pound brick of Tillamook cheese.  ALB's put it at the top of their circular for SIX BUCKS while Freddie is selling the identical item for FOUR!  That means that ALB's is fifty percent higher than Freddie's.  So typical of ALB's rip off pricing schemes.  Well, enough ragging on Albertson's--let's move to Smith's.

Smith's is still running their 10 items so-called Mega event.  Note that they changed the graphic in the Campbell's soup special so I suppose that means they will have even fewer of those soups available for this special.  We did call Smith's Corporate to complain about their deceptive advertising last week.  Well, the ad is no longer deceptive so I guess that's cool.  There's not a lot going on at Smith's.  Milk ($2); orange juice ($3.50), yogurt (.33 cents); 8 ounce store brand cheese ($1.66) and Breyer's 64 ounce ice cream ($2.50) are the only interesting items we can see.

Both ALB's and Smith's have identical prices on chicken parts this week--99 cents a pound for thighs and the other various parts.  We will be buying bone-in chicken breasts out at Freddie for 99 cents until Saturday and then probably switch to thighs from whichever store we happen to visit.  Both Smith's and ALB's generally have good quality chicken parts.  I wouldn't EVER buy chicken parts from WINCO.  For some odd reason, WINCO's chicken parts look really bad.  They have always looked really bad and I don't even bother to glance at them any more.  They must get their chicken parts from the chicken part outlet mall or something--maybe the chicken part dollar store.  I wouldn't touch their chicken parts with somebody else's ten foot pole.

Well, that's about it for the Wednesday ads.  We did finish our research on olive oil--we just haven't had time to post it up--maybe tomorrow--we're running behind today.  Have a great day & Many Cheers!  jp