What grocery items are always worth the extra $1-$5?
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While I agree, the price difference between "maple syrup" (maple flavoured corn syrup) and maple syrup is way more than $5. A bottle of genuine maple syrup is $20+.
Costco sells real Canadian maple syrup at a fair price (cost plus a few percent).
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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.
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.
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Olive oil, although it's not really 1-5 extra where I am. There's a lot of advice to buy cheap oil for cooking, but that's not really true. The truth is that a lot of 'extra virgin' oil is sold in an old, rancid state, and you have to upgrade into the mid tiers to get away from that.
Buy the best olive oil you're willing to spend money on, even for cooking.
Good ev olive oil is something else. Once you try you can never go back to.
I lived most my life using and tasting the highest quality cause my dad works in the agricolutural field, writing contracts for farmers and etc. and, while not so good paid, the job comes with the upside of the presents from said farmers.
Liters and liters of the highest quality oil italy can produce. I think we never (since he had this job) boight a can of oil, and its a pretty big save too considering that kind of oil easily goes for 20€/L.When i was out for university, my tight budget meant i had to resort to just "Olive oil". Not EV. Not 100% local. I though "how bad can it be, its still pressed olives!" Bad, very bad.
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Canadian maple syrup.
It's all run by a cartel!
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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.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I've never seen prices drop on in season stuff
That means you forgot the 'local' part. Cheapest supermarket get their stuff from the cheapest sources worldwide (= lowest quality as well, worldwide)
You really have to look if you want to buy local, but then it's worth it.
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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.
You'll still probably get better flavors when things are in season locally. Also, you'll need to check, but often the frozen version of produce is cheaper when the fresh version is in season, and frozen is easy to stock up on.
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i was hoping someone would say this as well! heaps of evidence out there about tonnes of adulterated olive oils. usually with cheap hyper-processed seed oils
I like buying local California olive oils, then I know it's real.
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I agree with every part of this.
A while back I was standing in the butter section, waiting for a couple to move so I could grab my pricey-but-worth-it butter, and overheard them talking about how butter is a scam and it all tastes the same no matter what. I had to hold back a chuckle. They of course grabbed the cheapest option and went about their lives in complete ignorance of the glory of high quality butter.
I still wonder if I should have said something to encourage them to try a better butter, but they talked about it with such blind confidence that I didn’t feel right about it at the time.
Ever double blinded yourself with Kerrygold (or w/e) vs. regular stuff? Always try to do this and surprise myself with some products
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My husband and I got curious about the variance in canned tomatoes one day, so we got one can from every brand we could find. We had a blind tasting session where we tried each one without knowing what brand it was (palate cleansers in between) and ranked them all out of 10 with some comments. We didn't share our rankings or thoughts with each other until the Big Reveal at the end when we found out which tomatoes were which.
Turned out we actually preferred some of the cheaper brands, and the most expensive ones got worse ratings. There wasn't a direct relationship between price and preference, but it was interesting.
It was a fun day. We also did the same thing with soda water.
Love this!!!
Try with coffee and butter n stuff?
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I will add that I’ve yet to find a decent tasting store brand soda or sparkling water. I have no idea why it’s so difficult for them to get the flavoring right.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Kroger diet cola. It's better than diet coke. Always fucking out of stock though around me.
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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.
Kerrygold
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+1 to eggs! I dream of having chickens but have heard it's a game of pros and cons
We just got chickens, im not sure they're cheaper then buying but certainly more available.
I do have a constant fight with hawks though trying to eat them
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Cream cheese. The store brand might be okay for maybe baking with, but you can't spread that excuse for caulk on a bagel and say it's anything near as good as the Philadelphia brand.
The store brand might be okay for maybe baking with
False. The store brands don't blend well, and you end up with little balls of raw cream cheese in your cheesecake.
Kirkland's is the only store brand I've tried that's OK, but Costco store brand stuff is all miles ahead of the other stores.
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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.
All of them really. Once I find a brand I like, I'll stick with it. I'm usually not paying attention to prices anyway. I'll even go to another country just so I can get the proper brand of tomato paste. (It's not that bad, just around 15km away).
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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.
Mozzarella (talking about the balls of fresh mozzarella you get sealed in with their brine).
Can't do store brand anymore after having tried Galbani.
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Mozzarella (talking about the balls of fresh mozzarella you get sealed in with their brine).
Can't do store brand anymore after having tried Galbani.
It's pretty easy to make those with some high fat milk, rennet, and cheese salt
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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.
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.
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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.
Pasta. It takes pasta dishes from "eh, it's food" to "this is really good".
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But the parent company owns both of those brands though?
Aldi is two different companies, North and South. One owns Aldi America, the other bought Trader Jones.
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It's pretty easy to make those with some high fat milk, rennet, and cheese salt
I mean, yea. But it is also easy to buy them, they're everywhere and fairly cheap. The Galbani one is also just 1€ or so more expensive.
To be clear, making your own is fantastic, it's just not anything I'd want to do 2x/week
