If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that a key to keeping my food budget low is stocking my pantry when prices are low.  That way, I have a wide variety of ingredients that I bought cheaply to use for your menu planning. 

November is always the month to stock up on ingredients for baking -flour, sugars, canned milk, etc.  Turkeys are often also cheap, though if you  keep kosher, you probably won’t find any super buys this month – if you do, please share them with me!  I don’t use most of the typical baking ingredients, since we don’t use white flour or white sugar, but what I will be buying this month is canned goods.

Canned goods are not traditionally cheap during this time of year, but due to a variety of factors involving the US and Chinese economies, they will be cheaper than usual for a short period of time – I don’t think it’s probable that it will last for more than a few more weeks. 

I look through the flyers of all the local supermarkets each week, and for the last few months have been appalled at the absolute lack of anything that I would call a bargain.  I used to stock up on loss leaders, but I haven’t found even the loss leaders worth buying.  But this week, I’ve seen canned goods on sale in every local major supermarket, and every one of the sales is worth going into the store for. 

A friend told me she doesn’t use many canned goods, and couldn’t see the point in getting any.  I don’t use many canned foods either.  But they can be stored long term (so it doesn’t matter if you don’t use them quickly), are great to have in a pinch, and anything I use a little of is worth getting a lot more of if I can get it cheaply and find space for it (like when I got canned pumpkin in the 29 oz cans for 15 cents each a few weeks after Thanksgiving – at that amazing price, can you see why I got enough to last over a year, even after making pumpkin loaves and muffins for breakfast on a weekly basis?! :)).  Canned veggies substitute well for fresh when you’re out of them, they don’t need refrigeration or freezer space, and canned fish is a cheap source of protein.  Personally, I don’t eat canned corn or peas, because sugar is added, but I would use it for a stew or casserole ingredient for my family after rinsing it.  Green beans are fine.  And canned tomatoes in all forms (whole, diced, pureed, sauce, crushed) come in very handy – I usually buy at least twenty large (28 oz, I think) cans at a time and that holds me over from one shopping trip to the next.  I can my own beans because it’s more economical, but buying canned beans is still a cheap source of protein.  Canned fruit is a nice addition to salads; I use mostly pineapple in its own juice and some mandarin orange segments, and occasionally get cranberry sauce as a side dish for Shabbos when I can buy it cheaply enough. 

Canned goods will be getting more expensive in December on the wholesale level because of Chinese steel costs going up (in case you don’t understand the relevance, a large percentage of US canned foods are packaged in China), and I wouldn’t expect it to take much longer to trickle down to the retail market.  Scrap metal was a hot item all summer – a number of times people knocked at our back door to ask if they could take something metal they saw in our yard, something that had never happened before, and suddenly there was a sudden drop a month or so ago – these little things that happen in our backyards are reflective of much larger economic forces at work, and this all will be affecting the prices of our food supply soon. 

And look at it like this – if you buy canned goods at a 25% discount and in two months they are even the same price as they are usually right now, you’ve still made at least a  25% profit, right?  So it’s a good way to invest your food budget dollars to buy ahead and lock in your investment! 🙂

 I was out today getting the canned goods I wanted, and though I usually try not to look in other people’s carts (though everyone who passes me seems to look at mine, and then take a second look as they’re passing, lol!), today I was curious if in light of the economic challenges so many are facing, if it would be reflected to any degree in how people were food shopping.  Particularly, I was interested if anyone but me was buying more than a couple of cans of veggies (name brands all at 50% off or more), or anything suitable for long term storage.  Nope, not at all – not in one of the three supermarkets I went to.   Lots of ice cream, sodas, single yogurts, though.  Sigh. And so many people say that food is so expensive and they can’t afford to buy more than enough for three days at a time…..

Also, as of December 15, 2009, I was told by the owner of a salvage store that I go to, olive oil will be going up 15%.  So if olive oil is something you use, buy some extra now.  (I use very little regular vegetable oil because it’s horrible health-wise, and extra virgin olive oil is one of the alternatives I use, so I bought several large bottles last month.)

Shop smart, shop cheap, and shop ahead – you’ll always come out ahead!

Avivah