Have you noticed something amiss in your weekly food shopping jaunts? No, it’s not the price of everything. That’s too obvious. It’s not what you can visibly see. It’s what you can not see. Products are getting smaller, weighing less in size yet have been put or placed inside the same old wrapping before these changes come in to play. We’re all so obsessed with costs that we are failing to look at weights, measures and sizes.

Look at these two tins of Aldi black pepper. They both are the same weight but the new tins are smaller (less production costs). I paid .99 cents for the tin on your left about a year ago. The new tin on the right cost me $2.65. That’s a 168% increase in cost! What do I do? I use less.

Many financial ‘experts’ are touting food inflation is under control. All you have to do is buy the loss leaders each week and create your daily meals around all those bargains. Really? Have you looked at this week’s weekly specials? There wasn’t one bargain loss leader in sight, especially for meat, pork, poultry and our all out favorite, bacon! (fruits and some veggies are in season now so their discounts are moot)

Here’s a shot of my favorite go-to bargain supermarket, Shop Rite:

The same holds true for my all time favorite go-to shopping giant, Aldi. Unless you want frozen chicken legs at .59 cents a pound or leg of lamb at $10 a pound (who eats leg of lamb in the summer?) Aldi did NOT have its usual array of bargains. Note: fruit is in season so it doesn’t count.

We could say the reason why there are no bargains right now in the protein department is because one of the largest global meat suppliers in the world (located in Australia but with several meat packing companies located in the United States) was hacked for ransom ware. I have no idea if JBS (click here) paid the terrorists’ fee or if Biden will ever smarten up and declare these thieves to be terrorists. Nonetheless, meat isn’t going on sale any time soon. We should tell those inflationary numbskulls to zip it because they don’t know their butt from their elbow. If you haven’t stocked up already you may want to rethink that.

My husband was complaining that I’m buying too much food till I whipped this out. My kids and grandkids were over this past week and everybody wanted hamburgers and hot dogs. Thankfully I scored a few pacs of Hebrew National dogs on sale a few weeks ago at $1.99 for an 8 pack. And I scored a few pounds of good quality chop meat, also at $1.99 a pound. The chopped meat was on sale for $2.49 but I used a digital coupon and got an additional fifty cents off per pound. Aldi was selling hot dog and hamburger buns for only .49 cents for an 8 piece bag and I bought a few in preparation for this summer. All nicely stored safely away in my freezer.

I told my husband to zip it!

It’s not only our food supplies that are under inflationary attack (as well as cyber). Apparently our streaming service providers are getting into the inflation act. When I logged onto my faithful Amazon Prime Video account (which comes free when you sign up for their shipping program @$119 a year) I found that there was very little choice in free movies. In its stead were thousands of movies for either rent or to buy (note the dollar signs on each of the movies). WTF? I now had to pay to see a movie, any movie? The free choices were all old movies that I’d seen years and years ago. If I wanted to see anything recent or of good quality, I had to pay an additional fee. Ditto for the ‘free’ Amazon music choices. If I wanted to hear a celebrity album of their greatest hits or recent releases, I had to pay!!!

I’m not the only one noticing the upcharges in streaming services. Clark Howard did a whole podcast on the subject (click here). Clark calls it ‘stream sneak” and offered cheaper alternatives. Here’s a list of the current charges all streaming services are billing. As for me, I’m not paying an extra dime for anything. We have an antenna installed with our smart television (and we live in the mountains and we actually get 30+ channels!). WE WATCH THE FREE AIRWAVES WHICH I WISH EVERYONE ELSE WOULD DO! Forget about Roku or the Amazon Firestick. Free streaming stuff is getting harder and harder to come by. The airwaves are free and if you buy a decent antenna you can get a lot of stations with top quality entertainment. My favorite channel is Decades (click here for a list of their free shows). I’m enjoying watching the old shows from back in the 1960s (when America followed a proper rating system and offered only top quality entertainment!)

Also note that we bought two Apple products over this past year (iWatch, iPad) and each purchase came with a one year free AppleTV+ subscription. We utilized one subscription at a time and we got two free years of Apple TV. While the programs aren’t that hot, nonetheless, it’s free so we watch. Soon as the freebie nears its end, I’ll cancel.

Lastly, its Sunday, the end of another busy week and I usually post photos of some dishes I cooked up during the week. I have to tell you that I tried on a bathing suit the other week. Now, what does that have to do with my cooking? Plenty. I’m on a diet. I started WW (Weight Watchers) and I’m in to a whole new way of cooking. My first week was hard, but now on my 3rd week I’m loving the new eating program I’m on (Blue). Starting next Sunday I’ll start to show my ‘diet’ dishes which have been nothing short of delicious AND healthy. I’m so happy to be on a structured plan. The WW software is da bomb! I’m loving it more and more each day. I lost a few pounds. I’m feeling better about myself and the world outlook. Just keep those nincompoops away from me!

I made a veggie summer pasta salad: tri color(carrot, spinach, semolina) veggie rotini pasta, artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes, black olives, capers, minced red onion, chick peas, feta cheese, parsley, salt & pepper, olive oil vinaigrette and voila’…….I always have something good to eat as a meal before freaking out and stuffing my face with junk:

Next, being ever my frugal self, last night I made brown rice (zero points), sauteed peppers and onions (zero points) and chicken sausage on the BBQ (3-4 points) and had a lovely dinner. We saved a portion of the sausage & veggies and this morning hubby turned it into a frittata (eggs are zero points). I’ve been splurging on fruits through out these hot summer days (all zero points) and enjoying sipping my 40 ounces of water daily (zero points). I’m happy to say that my size 18 bathing suit arrived yesterday whereby I promptly sent it back. It was too large. I re-ordered a size 16 and I know I’ll be getting back to my size 14 before this summer is over. Happy and pleased to say the least!

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