Wars, disease, natural disaster all disrupt the food supply; plan ahead or eat dirty turnips

     Shown above for your viewing pleasure is Scarlett O'Hara declaring that she will "never be hungry again." It's provided as a reminder that there have been times in our history when food has been in short supply.
    If the O'Hara family had purchased 50 cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup at Thanksgiving for 50 cents a can, 50 pounds of pasta for 50 cents a pound, 50 pounds of rice for $18, 50 pounds of sugar at 25 cents per pound, and so on and kept it all in an emergency supply closet they might have weathered the early days of Reconstruction with plenty to eat. And since such stockpiling inevitably reduces one's grocery bill, Mr. O'Hara would have had extra money to invest in something besides Confederate war bonds. Perhaps he would have been able to pay the taxes on Tara.
    But they didn't, and so were reduced to eating raw turnips and wearing curtains.
    Each of us has the same choices that the O'Hara family had. We can choose to pay too much for groceries, and should disaster strike be reduced to eating dirty turnips just pulled from the ground. Or we can buy large quantities of heavily discounted, non-perishable groceries when they go on deep discount. In the event of a disaster causing empty grocery shelves we can eat out of the pantry for a couple of months.
    These are perilous times. An extremist Muslim group has now established itself in a territory and declared itself a nation. These terrorists are absolutely ruthless, and if they can find a way to harm the United States, they will.
    The world is at war with Muslim extremists and the extremists are winning. Ruthlessness can be an effective weapon of war; just watch Apocalypse Now. Those who enjoy filming themselves slitting the throats of innocent people and killing Christian children will do anything they can to harm those they hate -- and that means us.
    In other news, the Ebola virus appears to be highly contagious in its current form and is spreading around the world. A Spanish nurse who treated an Ebola victim has come down with the disease despite taking every precaution. And though the disease is not believed to be airborne, many scientists now believe that it can be spread through a direct or close proximity cough or sneeze. The Ebola virus has an extremely long incubation period of up to 21 days and symptoms often come on slowly, allowing those infected with the disease to easily spread it. The checking of temperature of those boarding airplanes is absolutely ineffective as a means of screening for the disease.
    War zones are the greatest incubators for infectious diseases known to man. Look at a map and count the places where no government is truly in control. Tremble in fear, for our world has become a giant Petri dish.
    The icing on the cake is the fact that Barack Obama has refused to police our nation's borders, allowing those carrying deadly diseases and terrorists to enter the country at will. The terrorists who will launch the next attack are likely already in this country, and now there is nothing we can do to stop them.
    One final worry: there is about a one-half to one percent chance per year of a major natural disaster that will be so severe that it will completely disrupt our food distribution network. Scientists say it is a matter not of if, but when we will suffer a Carrington Event that will likely cripple our entire electrical grid, and perhaps disable virtually all motor vehicles.
    And let's not forget the possibility of a major earthquake in the central United States. One of the largest earthquakes in continental U.S. history was the New Madrid earthquake of 1811. There has been a dramatic increase in earthquake activity along this fault line and Wal-Mart has started to prepare for a New Madrid disaster.
    Enough gloom and doom for now. The fact is that everything is probably going to be just fine.
    Of course, if one were to be forced to play Russian Roulette one is "probably" going to live. That doesn't make it a good idea. "Probably" simply isn't good enough. We need to hope for the best but spend a small amount of time and effort preparing for the worst.

At Wall's I found dishwashing detergent that works for half the price of modern stuff that doesn't

Four years old and full of
delightful, effective phosphate!

    Regular readers of this blog know that when I grocery shop I stock up on deeply discounted sales items -- in a big way. As a result I manage to save a good bit of money on groceries, and if the Earth is ever hit by an asteroid folks at my house will still eat for a few weeks.
    Yesterday Jinny and I went to Wall's down in Grenada. Going to Wall's is a crap shoot, and this trip was proving to be unproductive -- until I spotted the bags of Cascade Action Packs on the back wall (at Wall's).
    The packaging looked rather old, so I turned the bag over and found a disclaimer assuring the customer that the product contained no more than eight percent phosphate. I hit pay dirt!
    Phosphate -- usually in the form of Sodium Tripolyphosphate, or STPP -- is the magic ingredient that makes soap work. Liberals passed laws against phosphates in laundry detergent years ago even though they did little if any damage to the environment (almost all phosphates in rivers and streams came from and still comes from agricultural fertilizer, not laundry soap). But dishwashing detergent still contained some phosphate until 2010.
    A few states passed additional laws against phosphates and so the big corporations decided to punish all Americans by depriving us of phosphates. Most people didn't know about the changes until they noticed that their dishes were no longer getting clean.
    The "old" Cascade that was on sale at Wall's cost $1.99 per bag of 20 wash packs. The new-and-much-worse version of the same product was on sale for $3.99 at Kroger yesterday. So I was able to buy dishwasher detergent that is twice as good for half the price. I bought 35 bags, or enough for 700 dishwasher loads. We have about 10-12 dishwasher loads per week, so that's about an 18-month supply.
    For those of you who can't find any old detergent that works, The Chemistry Store online sells buckets of sodium tripolyphosphate. Just add a tablespoon to cheap dishwashing detergent and your dishes will get clean. Add two tablespoons as a laundry booster and your clothes will last longer and stay cleaner.
    Best of all, phosphates work as fertilizer. So if you have a septic tank like us, every time you do a load of laundry you'll fertilize your yard as well.
    Without phosphates Erma Bombeck never could have penned her best-seller, The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank.

Honeycrisp apples are the best fruit known to man, but I'm not paying $3.99 a pound

    I don't eat a lot of fruit since it's so healthy for you, but I do love Honeycrisp apples.
    I had never even tasted one of these until a couple of years ago. Up until that time I would only eat Fuji applies.
    The story about Honeycrisp apples is halfway interesting, and you can read about it on Wikipedia. The cellular structure of this apple is actually bigger than in most apples, which results in a juicier fruit when you bite into it. And they're sweet, too.
    I'm a bargain shopper when I go grocery shopping. I buy what's on sale and get my meat off the about-to-rot rack. But I'm willing to pay extra for Honeycrisp apples, as would most people who have tasted them.
    Everybody has limits, though. I strolled past the apples in Kroger a couple of days ago and saw my beloved Honeycrisp apples offered at $3.99 a pound. No! Just no.
    I wasn't willing to settle for cheaper, mushy, foul-tasting apples, so I bought a bag of Fritos instead. They were pretty good.

Pork neck bones were only item on the old meat rack, so I'm using the meat in a lentil soup

    I did a quick swing by Kroger this morning in hopes of finding some deals on the old meat rack. The only thing they had was pork neck bones marked down to 50 percent off, so $3.56 for 3.5 pounds.
    I've never cooked a pork neck bone before. They look a little like some of the ribs I've seen, so I thought maybe I could barbecue them. I got on my phone and did a quick Internet search and found where someone suggested I could simmer them for several hours and the meat would fall off the bones. The meat could then be used to make a lentil soup.
    So I came home, chopped an onion fine, sauteed it and some mushrooms in a quarter-stick of butter, added 12 cups of water and a couple of big teaspoons of beef base along with rosemary and other spices, and then added the pork neck bones to simmer. They are simmering at fairly low heat even as I type.
    I've never cooked lentils before, but the package says they only need about 20 minutes. So late this afternoon I'll fish out the pork neck bones, remove any remaining meat and continue to simmer the broth until suppertime. I'll throw in the lentils 20 or 30 minutes before it's time to eat. Some recipes call for a can of diced tomatoes. I'll let Lucy decide on whether or not to add any.
    Check back late tonight and I'll report on how it was!
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    UPDATE: I promised an update on how dinner turned out. It was good, and the neckbones had a lot of meat on them. However, I had to dip out the bones and sort through the meat and mushrooms by hand. Even then some little bones got through.
    Next time I will use smoked pork rather than fresh and strain it. I'll lose the meat doing this but still get all the flavor. While straining I'll saute the onion and mushrooms, pour the liquid back in and let it simmer for an hour. The mushrooms do add a lot of flavor, but have to be simmered.

If disaster strikes we have Ragu; if disaster doesn't strike we still have Ragu!

   Okay, today is probably the last day that Ragu is on sale for 99 cents at Kroger. Spaghetti is on sale for 50 cents per 12 ounces. This is about as good as it gets.

    Back in 2008 or 2009 I was able to buy about 50 bottles of Ragu for 83 cents per bottle at the Maysville, Ky., Kroger store. I was also able to buy about 70 pounds of pasta at 50 cents per pound. I have not seen sub-dollar Ragu since 2009, so these prices are as good as they come and call for  all-out buying.

    In 2009 Maysville, Ragu was retailing for $1.33 on a week-to-week basis. So 83 cents was 50 cents less than the usual price. Today Ragu goes for a whopping $1.79 in Oxford, or even $1.99! So getting a jar of the stuff for 99 cents is a real bargain.

    There are some cheaper sauces than Ragu. They taste really, really bad, and are a false economy since nobody will eat the pasta and it has to be thrown out. Some of the more expensive sauces are quite good, but Ragu is best in my book for economy and taste.

    Twelve ounces of spaghetti usually goes for about $1.29. You can sometimes get it on sale for 79 cents, but 49 cents is about a low as it will go. I'd rather get a pound for that price, but 12 ounces is about all four of us eat in one meal anyway.

    Now that our cabinets are overflowing with pasta and sauce, one of two things is going to happen.

    First, we might have Armageddon in the form of economic collapse, nuclear war, a solar-flare-induced pulse which wipes out all electronics, or just massive riots by Obama's minions should their Food Stamp cards stop working one weekend; anything which might result in all the food being stripped off the supermarket shelves and not being replenished.

    Should that happen we'll have two month's worth of pasta with sauce. Obviously, I have other food items purchased at deep discount which we can alternate with the spaghetti, including 14 boxes of Lucky Charms cereal I bought when it was marked down by about 70 percent. Lucky Charms has a one-year shelf life and will keep my daughter happy in the event of a total societal collapse. My dad used to say the cereal box was more nutritious than the cereal, so if a crisis actually strikes after we eat the cereal we can then eat the box, too!

    Fortunately there is only about a one- to two-percent chance in any given year of a catastrophe so great that the food supply is disrupted. So what that means is that we'll probably just eat this spaghetti and sauce over the course of the next year. Since we have spaghetti at least once a week anyway, it's not like we're making a lifestyle change.

    The only difference is that instead of paying $1.79 for our jar of sauce we will have paid 99 cents. Instead of paying $1.29 for our spaghetti we'll have paid 49 cents. Which means that over the course of 52 spaghetti dinners we'll spend $76.96 on pasta and sauce versus the $160.16 we would pay if we just pranced into the store and bought these items without regard to price.

    The above cost analysis doesn't include the cost of ground beef, which should always be purchased from the old-meat rack. Lucy likes no meat. I like to use a half-pound of ground beef. Jinny and Ash want to use a pound-and-a-half of meat per jar of sauce, which is unhealthy, but sometimes I just can't stand the yammering.

    Of course, when the jar of sauce costs 99 cents you can always just make two versions, one with two much meat and the other with meat used properly as flavoring. You lose the savings, but everyone gets what they want. Sometimes peace in the valley is worth it.

Use Kroger's Amazon gift cards and save lots of money on gas

    Here's a money-saving tip for the holidays. If you're planning on doing some of your shopping on Amazon.com, buy a gift card at Kroger to pay for your purchases.
    Kroger is offering quadruple fuel points on gift card purchases, so a $100 gift card purchase translates into a 40-cent discount on a gas fill-up. A $500 gift card provides a $2 per gallon discount on gas.
    My car only has a 16-gallon tank, but a 40-cent discount still comes out to $6.40. Add in the value of the airline miles you get for purchasing the gift card with a credit card and you're looking at maybe an additional $1.60. Getting an $8 discount off the top is a pretty good deal. And of course Amazon doesn't charge sales tax for many of its customers.
    Kroger offers a number of other gift cards in addition to the Amazon ones. If you think you will use one of them right away, by all means buy one and get the fuel discount.
    If you heed my advice and buy a gift card, please take one more bit of advice. Rush home and apply the gift card to your Amazon account right away. If you lose the gift card you save nothing!

Time to buy a year's supply of cream of mushroom soup, other pantry items

    I stumbled across Campbell's Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Chicken soups this week for 69 cents a can. I bought 10 cans of each. I still have some left from last year when I stocked up at 60 cents per can.
    I'll be watching the price. If it drops some more I'll probably buy another 10-20 cans of each.
    Thanksgiving and Christmas are a great time to stock up on these two items, as well as Pet Milk, sometimes sweetened condensed milk, and a few more items used in holiday cooking. Grocery stores heavily discount these items in order to attract customers doing their holiday shopping.
    One need but read the news from the northeast to know that disasters can happen and food supplies can be disrupted. One way to plan for these disasters is to buy a bunch of expensive freeze-dried food and such. The other way is just to stock up of groceries when they are on sale.
    A few years ago I actually bought 50 cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. It was only 50 cents a can and I figured we would eventually eat through it. Over the course of a year or so we did, and saved a bit of money, too. When I found a good quality pasta on sale for 50 cents a pound a while back I bought 50 pounds. I don't know that I'll ever see Ragu spaghetti sauce at 88 cents again, but last time I did I bought 30 bottles.
    So don't worry about buying a lot of expensive emergency supplies. Just make sure that you have a full pantry. Keep an extra bag of sugar, an extra bag of flour, a few bottles of cooking oil and just lots of non-perishable food in general on hand -- all bought on sale of course!
    You might think disaster will never strike, but one of these days you'll pour your morning coffee and find the cream has curdled. If you have a pantry full of Pet milk you can at least get through the day! And if that's the only disaster you ever have, you'll still save lots of money by buying lots of your groceries while they are on deep discount.

Cheap luxury abounds, but I failed to load up on the best wine deal of all

    I just drove Lucy home from camp in Minnesota, and managed to stop by a St. Louis Costco to check out the wine selection. I've found that where the liquor store is outside the Costco store, as in Tennessee, the values aren't that great, but in states where wine is sold inside the Costco it's a good deal.
    This was certainly the case in St. Louis.

Kendall-Jackson Grand Reserve (not Vintner's) Chardonnay, $14.99
La Crema Pinot Noir, $16.99
Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio, $17,99
Conundrum, $17.99
7 Deadly Zins, $10.99
Mirassou Pinot Noir, $6.89
Coppola Diamond Claret, $11.99
Meiomi Pinot Noir, $17.99

    The prices above are anywhere from four to eight dollars per bottle less than one would expect to pay at a retail wine store that had pretty good prices. Needless to say my local wine merchant may forget what I look like for the next month or so, although I might still make an appearance every now and then to buy a bottle of Las Rocas, which the St. Louis Costco didn't carry.
    The Costco also had an Italian red which had a Wine Advocate rating of 94 and a pricetag of $39.99 (I wish I had snapped a photo so I could remember it!). Generally a red wine with a Robert Parker 94 rating will have a price of $150 or more, usually $300-plus. Part of me wishes I had bought a couple of bottles, but I'm just not in the mood for $40 wine. My budget isn't, anyway.
    What I really regret is not loading up on the $6.89 Mirassou Pinot Noir. It's a decent everyday wine that's obviously easy on the wallet, and the $6.89 price is about $4 less than retail. I was so mesmerized by the Kendall-Jackson, Conundrum, and other low-end premium names that I failed to take full advantage of the best value in the store.
    It's certainly not worth a special trip, but next time I pass through St. Louis I may buy a few of the $15-20 bottles of wine, but I'll concentrate on finding a couple of dozen bottles of decent wine under $8.

Call Kroger at 866-245-1858 for your Angus beef refunds!

    If you shop at Kroger chances are there is some free money waiting for you. All you have to do is make a call.
    My old Daily Mississippian friend Julie Evers Crump posted on Facebook about the fact that Kroger is giving refunds to people who purchased "Angus" beef in its stores over the past 18 months. Apparently the stores occasionally sold non-Angus beef at the higher Angus price and is now issuing refunds.
    Julie said she knew people who had gotten as little as $2 and as much as $300. I got $77.99 which will feed my family for the better part of the week if we are careful. I think this roughly represents the difference in price between Angus and regular choice beef.
    I had gotten a phone message from Kroger telling about the refunds but had just neglected to call. I told my cousin about my good fortune and he said he had gotten the call but hadn't bothered to call Kroger, either. I have no idea what the deadline is on this, but I wouldn't delay calling too long!
    For what it's worth, my best recollection is that I usually buy Angus beef off the deep-discount, about-to-go-bad rack. It's the only way we can eat beef in our house! I figured I wouldn't get any refund for this deeply discounted beef. But judging from the size of my refund, I'm guessing Kroger credited these discount purchases.
    The number to call is 1-866-245-1858. The woman I talked to was just as nice as could be. The money was credited to my Kroger card and will be subtracted next time I shop.