The price of meat today

I’m famous for my grocery store follies; I can’t seem to go shopping without bringing home way more than I’d gone for. More than that, however, is that I keep bringing home the wrong things.

I should point out, however, that my eyesight plays a huge part in this ongoing problem. I need reading glasses – badly. I think I have at least twenty pair or more (I get them at the dollar store). The problem is that I can never find them while shopping. I could be searching for them for half an hour and still not find them. Then, when getting in the car, they fall out of my purse and into my lap; it never fails.

I’d gone to the store to stock up; we needed pretty much everything. Like everyone else these days, we have to be careful with our budget, so I’m always on the lookout for a deal. I was especially trying to find meats of any kind on sale.

I noticed a big sign announcing shank portions of ham for only $1.29 a pound. Since ham is normally expensive, I gravitated to the cooler and began to pick up and compare. I’d say I was like a pig rooting for truffles, but since I was rooting for a pig, that wouldn’t be in the best "taste."

Another lady was perusing the hams as well, and I pointed out the deal. She, too, began to go through the ham. I’d picked mine, but thought that I’d look at the other hams. Then I spotted it; a HUGE spiral cut ham for only $10.59. I grabbed that bad boy, and threw it in my cart. To be nice, I alerted the other lady about the deal, and she, too, tossed another ham into her cart. We high fived each other, and off I went.

I came home, crowing about the steal I got on the ham. Matt picked it up and asked me how much I paid for it. Gloating, I told him. And that’s when he said, “That’s not the price of the ham; it’s the weight”.

I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when the woman who took my advice found out the same thing. But this wasn’t my only grocery store adventure this week.

Yesterday, my best friend, Michele, and I went out. I had to go to the Wal-Mart for a prescription, but when we got there, it wasn’t ready.

To kill time, Michele and I went over to the meat department. Before us was a sea of gold labels announcing reduced for quick sale cuts of meat. Unfortunately, since we were only going to get my medicine, we didn’t have a cart. We balanced our treasure in our arms, and went to see if my prescription was ready. It wasn’t; we had to wait.

So there I sat, sitting on the gray bench in front of the pharmacy with over fifteen pounds of roast in my lap. To say we got strange looks is putting it mildly.

I wonder what those folks would think if they knew that as I sat there with a stack of red meat, I was waiting for my high blood pressure medicine.

When I got home, I was putting my roasts in the freezer. And that’s when I noticed that on one or two of the packages, I’d only saved a dollar or less. Not quite the deal that I thought I was getting.

Later that night, Michele made a discovery of her own; she wanted me to know so I wouldn’t feel so bad. On one roast, we had made an exceptional deal. It originally cost $11.34, but the final price was $7.21. But how much did Wal-Mart math tell us we saved? $1.81.

Now I don’t feel so bad.