Prices for Produce and Fleish- Per Pound or Per Peice?

Mirabelle

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 4:16 pm

Seraph wrote:

Mama Bear wrote:

seraph I can try next time I go to the store to check some common prices for you, but I shop at a relatively expensive store because it's near my house, clean and spacious, and a 10% discount for over $50 orders if paid up. there are cheaper stores everywhere, there are bargain hunters like my MIL who know how to buy Smile

. I just buy at one store, and yalla.

Thats fine, I'd like to know prices in williamsburg, even at the more expensive stores. I have no clue prices in the US and I want to know what prices people are dealing with before I give across the board suggestions for how to cut back on costs. I know veggies arent as cheap in the US as they are here, but I wanted to know if they come out cheaper than fleishigs.

If I remember, next time that I am shopping in Lakewood, I will get you those meat prices.

I wonder if Lakewood is cheaper than Williamsburg?

I got so used to the cheapy Lakewood prices that my eyes almost fell out of my head when I attempted to buy meat at a kosher store in the East Brunswick area (an hour north).

bnm

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 4:17 pm

Seraph wrote:

Mama Bear wrote:

. I just buy at one store, and yalla.

nope. cheaper to make a meal with chicken cutlets for me- I get cutlets for 3.50 a pound-I buy family packs and divide it about a pound per supper. just a bag of cabbage is more than that already or if I buy 2 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers and a pepper for salad can go over that...

JAWSCIENCE

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 4:38 pm

I will chime in for the Manhattan people.

Meat: per pund.

Fruit: usually per piece although some things like apples are per pound
Vegetables: some things per pound, potatoes, peppers but many per piece, broccoli, brussel sprout, lettuce head
This is true even for the guys with carts on the corners.

In the store there are no scales around. It is expected that if you are shopping there you can cough up whatever the price is.

Seraph

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 4:55 pm

bnm wrote:

Seraph wrote:

Mama Bear wrote:

. I just buy at one store, and yalla.

I'm not asking per head of cabbage- I'm asking price per pound.

bnm

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 5:06 pm

Seraph wrote:

bnm wrote:

Seraph wrote:

Mama Bear wrote:

. I just buy at one store, and yalla.

I'm not asking per head of cabbage- I'm asking price per pound.

cabbage, lettuce, brocoli and such stuff I buy prepackaged/frozen. eggplant goes according to the pound but I would need tons of eggplant if I would want to replace the meat/chicken part of the meal with eggplant. a bag of frozen brocoli can be anywhere from 3.50 and up, same price as chicken.

amother

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 5:45 pm

I live in an oot US community. We have a food co-op here, and they sell produce, meat/poultry/fish, beans/rice, and dairy products for prices very close to the distributors'. Most items are priced per pound, some per item. Same for the local kosher supermarket, and national chain.

Mrs Bissli

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 5:55 pm

On produce, it also depends on where you shop. City-centre convenience stores have everything pre-packaged. Supermarkets are combination of prepackaged and loose items, loose items are basic staples like potatoes, apples, though they also come in bags like 1kg. We usually buy fruits and veggies from local stalls where they sell loose items in tray/bowl with unbeatable prices. This past week we got 8 carrots, 2 huge aubergines, 6 medium size courgettes, about a kilo of satsuma, 7 bananas--for GBP1 each.

nylon

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 6:28 pm

bnm wrote:

And if you did, you'd have a new problem, because eggplant doesn't provide as many calories or as much protein per pound. You can't simply calculate the per-pound cost for meals--you need to calculate the nutritional value per dollar.

This time of year, the only cheap vegetables are root vegetables in the Northeast. Cabbages are also OK. Apples, citrus (still not cheap cheap, but reasonable) and bananas for fruits. Seraph, I saw what you bought recently, and all that produce would have been very expensive by me. I can get good deals in summer (I live OOT, plenty of farms) but January is tough.

Mama Bear

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 7:27 pm

veggies are not cheap here. and anyway when we give a veggie it's the frozen Bodek kind. Vegetables here are used for 2 things: breakfast/lunch salad, or inside a soup. fresh vegetables as a side dish are rare, unless you are making your own stir fry, which isnt out of cheap vegetables: youre putting in mushrooms, snow peas, fresh greenbeans, baby corn, red pepper... the only vegetables that are really cheap are root vegetables and those are used inside soups. Only on pesach do some enterprising cooks use root vegetables to make vegetable patties or stir fry...

Mama Bear

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 7:35 pm

Liba wrote:

Mama Bear, do serve salads, like cucumber tomato salad or only bodek frozen vegetables?

tahts breakfast and lunch. the veggie side dish at supper is the broccoli/cauliflower mix, the peas/carrots/corn/lima beans/green beans mix, stir-fry mix, or any other frozen bodek pack. once in a blue I might have a nice fresh salad from purple cabbage, purple onion, toasted sesame seeds, or a carrots/tomato salad, but those are mamish for nice times like chanukah or if theyre left over from shabbos.

bnm

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 7:45 pm

if you want to see prices,

watsonsale.com has the sales circulars of a bunch of supermarkets that they update each week. I shop in KRM, this week they had a mix of ground meat and chicken for 2.50 a pound, at that price why not serve it mid week?

if I serve 'fresh' root vegtables, I cube and broil or slice, I tend to do simple vegies but once in a blue moon will make a kugel/quiche but those are only using bodek vegies, I don't use a food procesor due to some issues it involves here and I don't have strength to grate it by hand. vegetables in the winter tend to be frozens varety or soups, I do make salads every once in a while. am planning on serving shwarma, pita and 'isrealy' salad this week, burgers (made out of sale ground mix) with cabbage salad, sweet potato fries (bought ready sliced and frozen) and one day I'll bake a cauliflower/broccoli bodek mix with a ketchup mayo mix and bread crumbs on top... we aren't that into regular potatoes, my daughter and husband refuse to touch it unless ts very saucy or mashed.

nylon

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 7:51 pm

Mama Bear wrote:

Mrs Bissli wrote:

2 huge aubergines, 6 medium size courgettes, about a kilo of satsuma.

lol talk about language differnces: what on earth are those???

aubergine - eggplant
courgette - zucchini
satsuma - a variety of mandarin orange

I don't serve as many good fresh veggies during the winter but I do try to serve some. I do freeze fresh tomato sauce and pesto, but I don't freeze enough to get me through the winter.

JAWSCIENCE

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 8:03 pm

DO you only serve the frozen bodek kind for kashrut reasons/don't trust to check yourself?

Is yes, is this very common? In lots of places you just can't get bodek stuff so people would have to stop eating vegetables if they were not allowed to check themselves...

bnm

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 8:09 pm

JAWSCIENCE wrote:

don't want to to check my own. if I wouldn't use bodek I would stick to squash, eggplant, sweet potatoes and peppers and mushrooms

Mama Bear

Sun, Jan 02 2011, 8:30 pm

Liba wrote:

Wouldn't the cabbage salad be a lot lot cheaper? Why is it just for special occasions, is it a lot more work?

cabbage salad = lot more work, the kids dont like it, and it isnt much cheaper than theh frozen veggies. broccoli and stir fry at least my kids like too.