Recent Shopping

Nothing to do with shopping -- just my neighbor's spectacular front yard.
They chose to install a gorgeous garden instead of a traditional lawn.

This is not news to any of us at this point, but prices are almost everywhere. I've been shocked at times over some of these prices. Perhaps I've been out of the spending loop for a while, so I didn't realize some price increases had occurred before now. Or perhaps these increases are part of the recent inflation explosion. Here's my recent shopping experience.

On my husband's birthday I went to McDonald's to bring back a lunch just for him. My husband has always loved 1/4-pounders. So I got him a 1/4-pounder with cheese and a small order for French fries, no drink. My cost for this lunch was just under $9. This price for 1 sandwich and a small order of fries was shocking to me. I could have found a deal, but I was looking for his favorites. I will say, this made my husband very happy.

At Fred Meyer (Kroger affiliate) the price on a gallon of milk went up 10 cents per gallon in just one week. The price on milk there is now 80 cents more per gallon than it was 1 year ago. For my husband's and my joint birthday celebration, I wanted to pick up deli salads from Fred Meyer, so I didn't have as much cooking work to do for that gathering. Again I was shocked by the prices on various salads from the deli. The potato salad was the only reasonably-priced salad at $3.50/lb. (And I think that's too much for basically potatoes and mayo.) The rest of the deli salads were between $5 and $8 per pound, with the majority in the $7 and $8 range. I bought some of the potato salad then turned and shopped the produce section for easy to prepare produce items to use as sides. I bought grape tomatoes for $2.99 ($4.78/lb), strawberries for $2.97 ($1.49/lb), and 23-oz stir-fry kit that made 8 servings, marked down to $2.49 ($1.73/lb pre-cooked).

The exception to all these price increases was a sale on 80/20 ground beef, at $2.77/lb in 3-lb chubs. I bought the limit of 15 pounds. While this was a sale price and for the time being a one-off price event, I wanted to mention something that I've seen happen in the past (most recent not quite a decade ago) when livestock feed prices have gone way up. In this situation, ranchers have a tough choice to make: do they pay more for feed for their large animals and then hope to get a high price per head down the road, or do they decide it's better to shrink the herd now (sell of cattle to be butchered) and avoid the down the road possibilities? What I've seen happen is the second of the two scenarios, where ranchers sell off a lot of their cattle and the market sees a glut in beef, temporarily reducing the price per pound. Unfortunately, this is very temporary, as when ranchers sell off part of their herd to save on feed costs, it means that in several months there will be far less beef on the market, and prices will go way high, staying that way until feed prices come down again.. So, when you see a low price on beef (if your household has beef eaters), buy what you find and freeze it. Don't assume that beef prices will be immune to any of this inflation. Just a heads' up. Okay, back to the post.

My last price observation is the cost of gas. In my area, the price of a gallon of the cheapest unleaded is bumping the $5/gallon mark. Gas was $4.99 9/10 a gallon near me the other day. This is the highest we've ever seen gas in my area. Even in 2008 and 2009, the highest only hit $4.18/gallon.

What price increases have you noticed in the last week or so?

Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake Vs. Homemade Ice Cream Cake

homemade ice cream cake before fudge topping

In my weekly meal post on Friday, I mentioned the ice cream cake that we had for our joint birthday celebration (husband and self). I know that Dairy Queen cakes are a popular item for many families. And they are quite good I think. However, as we were trying to keep our food costs down for our little party, and as I did have homemade ice cream waiting in the freezer, making our own ice cream cake seemed like a good use of our supplies and budget.

A note, our ice cream cake wasn't a replica of a DQ one. Dairy Queen cakes have a cake layer, some sort of mid-layer like cookie crumbs, an ice cream layer and frosting or whipped topping (I'm not sure). Our homemade cake had a cake layer bottom, ice cream layer top, and a hot fudge sauce topping served on each slice. I opted for a hot fudge topping instead of icing or whipped topping as it was easier and we had everything we needed on hand. Our homemade version was definitely a simplified ice cream cake. But simple meant it was more do-able.

To make this cake even less daunting to prepare, my steps were both spread out and helped along by other family members. I had made a chocolate fudge brownie ice cream in late February, using whipping cream, cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla, and a 1/4 batch of homemade brownies cut into dices. I kept this ice cream in the deep freeze for these weeks, waiting for our birthdays. My daughters baked the cake layer in a springform pan the day before our celebration. After taking the cake out of the pan to cool, I washed and dried the pan, readying it for assembling the ice cream cake. Later that day (when the single cake layer was cooled), I put the cake back into the springform pan and spread the ice cream (softened up in the microwave briefly) onto the cake. I wrapped the base of the spring form pan in plastic as the ice cream was leaking a bit. I popped the cake back into the deep freeze overnight. The next morning I made a hot fudge topping (sugar, water, cocoa powder, salt — bring to boil, stir in slurry of corn starch/water, bring back to boil, cook 2-3 minutes, stirring. Remove from heat, stir in half-cup of chocolate chips — improves the texture IMO). I scooped the topping into a pitcher, reheating it in the microwave just before pouring onto individual servings of ice cream cake. The whole cake was very do-able, perhaps not as "fancy" as a DQ cake, but do-able and economical. It was a help that my daughters baked the cake layer. However, if I had to do all of the cake on my own, I could have baked the cake layer a week or so in advance and kept it in the freezer until I was ready to assemble the cake.

A cost comparison

As far as being frugal, I estimated our homemade ice cream cake, including the hot fudge topping, cost between $3.50 and $4.00 and had 7-8 servings at about 50 cents per serving. A Dairy Queen cake runs about $35 and serves 8-10 at about $3.50 per serving. When I did the math on serving cost of the DQ cake I was shocked. I know these cakes are very popular. I just couldn't imagine paying that much per serving for a birthday cake.

The ice cream cake wow-ed my family. And truly, this was easier than baking a traditional frosted cake and having ice cream on the side.