What grocery items are always worth the extra $1-$5?
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Farmer’s market tomatoes. I went through my whole life thinking I hated tomatoes. Turns out, I hate grainy tomatoes that taste like nothing, and real tomatoes grown nearby and picked ripe are wonderful.
Absolutely. I was the same way then my mom make a margherita pizza mostly from scratch with tomatoes she grew herself and it was life changing
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Fresh corn tortillas.
Tequila.
Haircare stuff
Husband bought "the good eggs" once and has not looked back since. I used to keep chickens and the bougie store eggs are much closer to those than they are to the factory farmed thin shelled light yolked ones.
The best eggs are eggs from a farm that are unwashed and you keep on the counter. They taste a zillion times better and last for a long time. I get 3 dozen for 15 dollars at the local farm. It's honestly better than the store.
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I'm two ways about this.
In recent years I've become quite a coffee lover. I've experimented with a lot of brewing methods, and got into small batch beans from independent roasters, with interesting qualities like being aged in whisky barrels (that one tastes and smells sooo good)
At the same time though I grew up in a family where the only coffee my parents ever drank was instant - a teaspoon of granules with some hot water and milk and maybe sugar. When I go over there to visit that's what I'll get, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at it. In some ways it's got that taste of nostalgia lol.
As a fellow up the arse coffee lover - I moved away from drinking fancy coffee every day. Not just because 250 grams are, at best, at 16€ and I drink about 35 grams a day on an average day, but also because it takes away the "specialty" if you drink it daily, regularly, ordinarily. I now have a go to coffee (pre ground even) that I enjoy drinking as my "normal" coffee and treat myself to a cup of specialty every now and then, and a bag now lasts me a month. I enjoy it much more and I save a lot of money - although my go to coffee is also not the cheapest crap.
I also started out with instant coffee btw - took some with me with milk and sugar to school in a small water bottle when I was a young teenager (and girlmore girls was on so I had to get into coffee). Just reading your comment gave me a flashback to being 14 and my mom giving me the "good instant coffee". Memories and vibes.
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Pasta. It takes pasta dishes from "eh, it's food" to "this is really good".
Ever since I tried bronze pasta I cannot look at regular pasta the same way. I cannot buy that yellow stuff anymore.
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Canadian maple syrup.
There's nothing wrong with new england maple syrup, but yes, real maple syrup not "pancake syrup" with maple flavoring.
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That sounds like a big increase in pain-in-the-ass for not that big an increase in savings. I'm happy to trade money for convenience on this one.
There is also a potential health difference. Lunch meat tends to be loaded with preservatives and falls into the category of "processed meat".
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Just had some of the worst “store brand” honey mustard. How do you mess that up? Tasted like they watered it down by adding extra vinegar. Watery. Gross tasting. Lesson Learned.
Came here to say Dijon mustard. A jar of mustard lasts me 6 months, so a couple extra bucks for the good stuff doesn't amount to much.
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Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Real parm instead of the canned stuff.
Chicken breasts - you can get massive pumped up chicken breast for the same price as "normal" chicken breasts. The problem is when you cook the big ones, they just leech out all their liquid.
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Real parm instead of the canned stuff.
Chicken breasts - you can get massive pumped up chicken breast for the same price as "normal" chicken breasts. The problem is when you cook the big ones, they just leech out all their liquid.
The huge ones are just gross.
I think "woody" is the technical term.
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Coffee. It's something that I refuse to compromise on. It may be especially important to me because I like to drink it black. If it doesn't taste great without adding anything to it, it's not with drinking at all in my opinion.
Coffee seems to be one of those things supermarkets regularly price cycle.
If i buy 4x 1kg bags when it's 30% off, i rarely have to buy any at full price.
This doesn't work for artisan's coffee you buy direct from the roaster obviously.
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I've seen a few people saying that it's cheaper to buy stuff that's in season over the years but I've never seen prices drop on in season stuff before. Idk if it's just a thing where I am but the supermarkets seem to just pocket the difference and leave the prices the same year round.
This is less applicable to supermarkets a d more applicable to local green grocers.
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Butter, life is too damn short to cook with and eat shitty butter.
Also anything that goes between me and the ground, my bed, my shoes, and my tires.
I can say from personal experience this applies to vegan butter too. Get Miyoko's, or Violife if you absolutely have to, but for all that's good don't get shitty butter.
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4-ply toilet paper.
If the IBD folks don't unite under this answer they are probably living with bidets.
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Paper Towels and Trash Bags - the cheap ones just don't hold up as well
Toilet paper too! As someone who needs to use it for peeing, it likes to stick if you get the cheap stuff. Not fun!
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I'm going to sound like a hater, but the food in season and local is what you should be eating, and that will always be the cheapest. If you're talking processed food brands and shit in boxes in the middle of the store, I'd argue none of it is worth the extra money, its all bad for you, stop. That said, the frozen arby's curley fries are bomb, and no one does cheesey things like cheetos or smartfood.
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Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Honestly a lot of stuff I like to get the nice version. Most packaged products you can get away with cheaper, but paper products you wanna splurge on, and produce you wanna get from a local store with good stuff rather than your local megamart when possible. A farmer's market or even just a neighborhood grocery store is usually gonna have fresher, tastier veggies in my experience. A little more expensive, but worth it.
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Honestly a lot of stuff I like to get the nice version. Most packaged products you can get away with cheaper, but paper products you wanna splurge on, and produce you wanna get from a local store with good stuff rather than your local megamart when possible. A farmer's market or even just a neighborhood grocery store is usually gonna have fresher, tastier veggies in my experience. A little more expensive, but worth it.
The paper thing stopped being true in the past year around here. Name brand paper towels are now so thin, store brand is thicker at half the price. Q-Tips don't have the same cardboard in the middle, less cotton Kroger brand is closer to the old q-tips (but still a step down from what I grew up with).
Toilet paper is basically a toss-up, the nicer store brands are about comparable to the non-specialty name brands now. For the extra strong or extra soft, name brand still wins, but it's changing.
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it’s just a bit slow. i’ve waited 20 minutes just to buy a battery before
have you done this? what did you think?
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I like buying local California olive oils, then I know it's real.
Yep. Read “Extra Virginity” and you’ll likely never buy imported EVO again.
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Real parm instead of the canned stuff.
Chicken breasts - you can get massive pumped up chicken breast for the same price as "normal" chicken breasts. The problem is when you cook the big ones, they just leech out all their liquid.
150% on real parm.
I’d also argue for getting whole chickens (and spring for the nicer ones too). Roast it, pull off the breasts and eat those, eat the drumsticks if you enjoy them, or use the entire rest of the carcass for making really good stock.
