Weekly Circular Store Shelf Mismatch

 

Grocery shopping did not go well.  As a kosher consumer, Rabbi of my shul, the Orthodox one, two Rabbis ago, now some 25 years ago, cashed in some friendship favors with the head of a local supermarket chain.  One store in the Jewish population center would create a kosher meat department, deli, and bakery.  As a result, those of us who once schlepped 45 minutes to independent Kosher butchers in our magnet city's Orthodox neighborhood, filling our freezers to capacity every couple of months, could now buy what we needed mostly for supper in a much more convenient way.  Supermarket business is notoriously competitive and at low profit margins. Having all the people with kosher homes shopping there to the exclusion of other grocers, made the friendship pay off for everyone. Well, not exactly everyone.  As local Kosher oversight committees around America made similar arrangements for their observant Jews, the independent kosher butchers closed their shops in all but the places of highest Orthodox presence.

I also had my transition, as did my Jewish community.  We have become older.  Parents of late teens and college kids at the start of the project became empty nesters.  Rabbinical transitions and animosities among key players took its toll.  Kashrut attracts older people.  As actuarial realities and sunbelt migration play out, there are fewer kosher consumers.  But those who remain, continue our personal loyalties to that particular store, despite a selection of beef and poultry far less diverse than it once was.  The misdeeds of Rubashkin's Agriprocessors ended economical kosher beef.  Its substitute suppliers keep us afloat with ground beef, cubes, and minute steaks.  I've not seen liver in years and briskets only near the Festivals when people make big dinners for extended families.  The deli has become a pawn as key people who truly have not been treated well by dominant local Jews, protect their turf.  Yet our loyalty to that store in that location remains firm.  I seldom make a purchase from the deli, deterred by expense.  Same with the bakery, which rarely offers anything baked in store for what I am willing to spend.  Indeed, the store's hechsher has the logo of the departed Rabbi, not the current mara d'atra of my synagogue.

What I seek out as specialty kosher for my basket, though, is a pittance of what I put in my cart each week.  The economics of food processing has made available every imaginable mass-produced edible with a factory-applied kosher insignia from one of several international supervision agencies.  My full cart has kosher, but not locally supervised.  The same packaged stuff available anyplace.  But I shop at the place where I can also purchase kosher raw beef and chicken, though I rarely prepare either other than for Shabbos and Festivals.  Even my kosher Thanksgiving turkey I buy someplace else.  My Rabbi and his supermarket CEO chum called it right.  Kosher brings loyalty.  So do better prices, which this store seems to have.  And top tier employees, where they seem to struggle.

Every Wednesday, the postman delivers a packet of supermarket advertising.  It contains circulars from about a half dozen competing markets, each of colored newsprint, about eight pages long.  I extract the one from my grocery, recycle the others.  I take it to the desk in My Space, extract a page from one of those 8.5 x 3.5 pads that I harvest from periodic non-profits solicitation envelopes, take out a pen, most commonly a red Flair pen, and begin my review of the coming week's supermarket promotions.  The page from the pad has a logo with lines for writing on the front, blank white on the right.   On the front, I note what I definitely will purchase. Either it's a deal too good to pass up, or I need it.  Typically that fills a little more than half the sheet.  On the blank reverse, I write those items that I will consider as I shop.  That list fills an entire column, then a third or so of the next column.  After I am done, usually two sessions spread over a half hour to get through all eight pages, I write on the front what must get because I am running low, irrespective of its inclusion in the weekly sale circular.  The circular and shopping list then get clipped together with a home on the far reaches of my desk until ready to drive to the supermarket.

Short essential list:

1. K-Cups; House Brand #36
2. Stovetop Espresso Maker
3. #2 Pencils which I buy each year
4. Papermate stick pens, which did not write last year
5. Spiral Notebook purchased each year
6. Chex Mix
7. Tastykakes

Essential has a context.  I have enough stationery.  My doctor thinks I snack too much.  Have enough coffee pods to last a while.  But my stovetop espresso maker failed some time ago from a deteriorating gasket that I cannot easily replace.  Essential becomes things I will eventually use which can be obtained at a price low enough that I will not anticipate a similar bargain in the near future.

 

I entered the store expecting to purchase little more than this, as I did not want to spend a significantly greater amount of time there to explore the much larger number of items on the back side of the sheet.  This store puts its advertised circular bargains right near the front entrance.  I put two boxes of Tastykakes in my basket.  Usually they have sale K-cups there, but not this week.  I wheeled my cart to the coffee aisle, taking a box of 36 for my cart.  School supplies just entering the Back to School season, though school will not reopen for another six weeks.  I found a minimal pile of spiral binders, wide rule 70 sheets each, my usual Back to School annual purchase. I put one yellow and one red cover in my basket.  No advertised pencils or stick pens.  A sign pointed to a supply at aisle's end.  None there either.  Looked at cereals and snacks without finding Chex Mix.  Wouldn't even know where to find the espresso maker, the one item that would add to my enjoyment.

Near the front door they keep a customer service area.  In this computerized era, the clerk can type in a number and find it.  I waited my turn, a short wait.  The young man greeted me, though he looked like his coffee break might have gotten overdue.  I asked him to get me a circular, then I circled from the ad what I could not find.  No pencils or pens in stock.  Chex Mix with the snack aisle, where it was not when I went back to look for it.  He did not even have the espresso maker listed in his store's computerized inventory but he told me which aisle it would be in if and when the store stocks it.  Rainchecks for pens and pencils.  No Chex Mix to be had.  And the Espresso Maker exists only on newsprint received by a few million households in my metro area, not in the store or even in the inventory of what the computer can affirm as present on site.  Rain checks have to be generated by their computer as it includes a UPC code to scan for the discount.  Phantom items like my desired stovetop device have no way in modern grocery retailing of providing me the discount, even if the item appears on their shelves past the expiration date of the weekly circular.

So basically, the best and brightest of the grocery world lured me into their store expecting bargains that they were not able to fulfill.  In my younger years, the 1970s or so, an age of emerging consumerism where people read Consumer Reports and watched interviews of Ralph Nader on talk shows, we called this Bait & Switch.  Advertise an item at a low price, not have it, consumer gets similar item at full price or does other shopping in store.  It was at the time part of strategy to squeeze a few dollars from each shopper.  Most merchants offered rain checks, handwritten vouchers to purchase the advertised item at the sale price later, but it required the consumer to wait her turn at the customer service desk.

Unavailability of advertised items still occurs, though no longer part of profit enhancing strategy.  Replacing it seems more the growth of businesses to massive proportions with centralization of shared tasks, dependence on technology which never runs glitch free, multiple satellite outlets, serving millions of consumers, all in a competitive but oligarchical environment with a few similar enterprises trying to make their branch store the one I find most attractive.  My grocer has hundreds of stores, but rather than being centrally owned, they are regionally owned and franchised by a central distributor.  Somebody has to decide what will go on sale in what region each week, tell that to the staff that advertises those decisions who prints and mails the weekly circulars.  Then somebody else has to secure a supply of those thousands of different products, obtain them from suppliers in an era where expected distribution does not always happen, bring the products to the individual sites, and record it for the clerks who interface with the customers to call up each individual item by current supply and location in that store.  Plenty of steps to break down, and as I learned, they do break down.  There was no Chex Mix even though the computer said there was.  

Sometimes the merchants can anticipate iffy supply.  The circular will say "where available, no rainchecks."  That way they can advertise Kosher Chicken everywhere but only stock the stores which have enough Jewish customers to buy enough of it.  Back to school, Valentine's Day, and Christmas have seasonal items which will run out and not get restocked as the targeted events pass.  But the items I wanted, especially the espresso maker, did not have that restriction.  Still, I could not be assured that my store will ever have it or that I can receive the advertised discount if it ever appears on their shelves.

Retailing in America, at least stores, have earned the shopper's skepticism.  They invite you to get something at a good price that you cannot have, after making an effort to drive there, bring your own shopping bag, and looked on the store's shelves for more than you came for.  Electronic shopping doesn't have that albatross.  Circulars from Amazon do not arrive.  Even unsolicited pop-ups are rare.  People sign on when they know what they want to purchase, though the browsing options are ample and easy to use once a category gets selected.  Shoppers learn of discounts once ready to select.  A blue shirt may have a different price than a lemon yellow shirt.  I looked up the espresso maker, known in e-tailing as a MokaPot.  No shortages.  But not at the price my grocer advertised, either.  I guess, like some of our political candidates, they dedicate themselves to they/them but rarely to you.

Kosher at Aldi

With some fanfare, a new Aldi opened along the corridor where I purchase groceries. Aldi, never Aldi's, per company insistence.  The string of food stores begins with Trader Joe's to the north, then Shop-Rite, my principal store with best prices and largest Kosher selection.  Across from that sits Sprouts, usually the best produce and a large section of coffee beans with specialty grinder, though higher in price.  Further south on the Sprouts side of the highway sits a Giant, where I get my prescriptions.  And the new Aldi opened across from that, with an Acme, the most ubiquitous chain in my region, a mile south of that.  Kosher means Shop-Rite and Trader Joe's.

Yet Aldi has enough uniqueness that I had to see what's there.  For sure, Kosher is not on their radar, yet not absent either.  The chain, an international one headquartered in Germany, boasts lowest prices.  Many podcasts explain their business strategy.  As the videos claim, my local Aldi has a lot less floor space than all the others except perhaps Trader Joe's.  Shopping carts are rented for an American quarter inserted into a slot.  There are no designated shopping cart return aisles scattered through the small parking lot.  Return the cart to the front and the quarter deposit will pop out of the slot.  Aldi sells many fewer products than the others but at least some variety of things that shoppers will want.  Produce introduces the shopper at the front entrance.  Basic stuff:  grapes, cucumbers, mushrooms.  Most fruits and vegetables come in small packages.  No bins to choose your own apples or onions and weigh at the cash register.  Of packaged goods, proprietary house-label packed products are often the only option.  Breads and pastries have some variety.  Snack foods nearly all private label.  Pastas take many shapes but few brands.  Cereals  have the popular choices, nearly all private label.  Same with spices.  One aisle, much publicized, are non-food items which seem a good value for the purchasing agents to acquire in bulk, then discount to shoppers.  I did not find a theme to what got offered in that aisle on any of my three excursions.   At the back, a refrigerated section with cheese and meats.  Two frozen areas, one a reach-in bin, the other a freezer with a door.  Positioned appropriately as the last stop before the checkout registers, which are nearly all scan your own.

What about the Kosher consumers like myself?  Kosher is not on their radar but other than meat, a reasonably varied and nutritious diet can be assembled.  Fresh produce needs no certification.  The selection is more than ample for a healthy diet.  Baked goods have Kosher marks on many labels.  Some are regional Hechshers that might not have universal acceptance.  Not all the loaf breads specifically indicate pareve.  Packaged bagels are not what you get up early on a Sunday morning to get fresh from the oven.  And not all undercut the prices charged by the other chain markets that line the highway.

Snacks are more mixed.  Potato chips, all house brand, all carry an international certification and come in varieties.  Many other snacks with an OU or similar at the competing markets have no certification at all.    Nor do many of the spices.  Olives are hit-and-miss, pickles mostly hit.  Cheese came as a pleasant surprise.  They are often hard to qualify as kosher.  A few in the refrigerated case did.  Yogurt came as another pleasant surprise.  Much with an OU, about a third less in price from other places.  Cereal largely Kosher.  To my disappointment, the canned fish, sardines, tuna, and the like, with universal kosher indication from the other markets, often lacked this tag on the cans at Aldi.

I think it would be difficult for Aldi to displace Shop-Rite as the destination supermarket for those of us with kosher households, at least if we live in places with an abundance of markets.  There are some of us who live in more isolated areas or have restrained budgets that will find the prices attractive and the array of kosher-certified products adequate.  Though Kosher is definitely not a business priority for the company.

Fewer Hechshers

Seasonal Holiday Shopping.  After decades of doing this, a pattern has emerged.  Wife gets eight gifts, each of three children four.  To make shopping smoother, particularly for my wife, I've created categories.  Each person gets an edible.  It must be in a box that can be wrapped and mailed, though I have wrapped circular jars.  And it must be Kosher.  While the kids may have departed from this, any food that I give must be acceptable to me.

Gift treats come in a lot of forms.  Candy, jellies, sauces, coffee, tea, pastries with long shelf life.  National brands, those from the mega corporations, invariably carry a Kosher certification with a symbol that I recognize.  Smaller producers are less consistent, but kosher options are readily available, though less so this year and perhaps last.

My usual source has been Marshall's which buys overruns and a nearby farmer's market.  Marshall's across from an even larger Costco has an enormous seasonal selection.  I have found many products where I used to expect that Kosher mark no longer have one.  Truly seasonal items like those potpourri of sweets in big container rarely do.  Neither do the regional hot sauces or some of the specialty candies that appear only for the Christmas season.  But what I have found this shopping interval has been the absence of certification from many items I had purchased in prior years.  If it is manufactured in Turkey, the Kosher ID has disappeared in the last year or two.  Belgian chocolates or other sweets sourced in Europe no longer carry an imprint on their box.  Italian edibles, once a sure thing, have become inconsistent.  The Far Eastern seasonal items no longer seem to carry certification. However, for year-round dietary staples, the Rabbi from the Orthodox Union still travels far and wide to inspect facilities.  Down Under maintains their certifications, often regional to New Zealand and Australia.  While there aren't specific African products, they would not be able to sell their chocolate, vanilla, or related commodities to the international conglomerates without attention to Kosher.

So why the paucity?  Over the years, from international sources, I've noticed that products that have Arabic ingredient lists often do not have the certification that the same product from the same manufacturer would have with English ingredient lists.  I often encounter those products in Dollar Stores.  But more recent decisions by the manufacturers to forgo a Rabbi's approval seems more questionable.  I understand smaller producers not wanting to pay inspection fees that international conglomerates would judge nominal, particularly when the Kosher market for those products is small.  The disappearance of what was from the European sweets strikes me as perhaps more a political statement.  

As I shopped, Marshall's had Baklava, Halvah, and Turkish Delight.  Jews happen to like these, as they are sweet and usually dairy-free.  I had never seen Halvah that was not Kosher before.  All products of Turkey or Greece, some of which I've purchased as gifts in previous years.  Same with the Belgian chocolates.  Shells or shapes usually makes a suitable gift for somebody on my list.  Always been kosher until this year.  

Perhaps I am too cynical.  Mass manufacturing processes change as factories become automated.  Maybe the production requires oils or greases or preservatives of animal sources.  But the regional nature of what used to announce itself as Kosher but no longer does, makes me wonder if this is one more global anti-Semitic expression.  Don't sell to observant Jews who are nearly all Zionists.  Or don't antagonize a much larger Anti-Zionist market throughout Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.

Perhaps somebody knows for sure if Kosher has been politically weaponized.

My Food Is Your Food

Well, maybe not.  One of our regional heroes is an obscure Franciscan monk in the modern lineage of St. Francis of Assisi.  The current Pope adopted his name, though like all Popes he lives in splendor.  Our regional Brother does not.  He wears a hooded brown gown.  He lives simply.  But for more than forty years he has created, headed, and expanded an agency that centralizes our reach to the city's poor.  His agency provides a small amount of child care and default housing, but its central mission has been to offer meals.  For 2022, they served more than 100,000 meals.  I had the pleasure of meeting this friar many years ago when a departing medical executive opted to have his farewell reception at the agency's dining hall.  My children's Bnai Mitzvah generated sumptuous leftovers, which I transported there the following Monday.  For the Brother to accomplish this, he needs generous partners.  No group has adopted mandatory sharing of our prosperity than our Jewish community.  As community groups are solicited to take their turns providing meals, my synagogue has three sessions scheduled in the late fall every year for decades.

While this initiative should generate overflowing support from dozens of members, it doesn't seem to.  Instead, it reinforces our congregational culture, consisting of a series of fiefdoms or cliques run by and content with its few dedicated participants.  If we have good, we need not seek more than good, that view illustrates.  We can get the food cooked and served with the people we have.  They announce from the sanctuary and newsletters a few sabbaths in advance that they could use some baked goods.  I make a contribution, Kosher and in my oven, for two of the sessions, but have never been invited to join the other ladies in the home kitchen of the chairman.  

Maybe the Brother would not want me there any more than the event chair or perhaps even our Rabbi and Rebbetzin would.  There are cultural divides, perhaps even theological ones.  When I host an event at my home, kitchen experience displayed to the max most times, my kitchen output is always plentiful and elegant.  Take as much as you want.  Since we have two Challahs for Shabbos, the guest takes one home. Understandably, the friar feels this approach detrimental.  His dining center is a place of default, not celebration.  The goal for him is part rescue of an immediate situation but also a look to a future where his current consumers can become prosperous donors, able to create, enjoy, and share their own abundance.  My food is your food, eat what you like that prevails in my dining room, does not always serve people dependent on others in the best way.  The friar limits portions.  He looks at his project as a means of temporary subsistence.  While friendships and camaraderie among regular patrons likely develop, he stops short of full satiety, fearing dependence at the expense of personal growth.

While my synagogue and I each place a high value on Kosher, that same stringency is not required for the non-Jewish residents of our city who depend on the dining center for their daily, or even periodic, lunch.  And we are told that congregational members contributing food to feed these people do not need to maintain Kosher in any way.  Much of the food is prepared in the chairwoman's kitchen.  I never inquired about its kashrut.  The food is acceptable to the recipients who need it.  Yet when I contribute, the food meets the standards of my Kosher kitchen.  Should I be willing to serve a hungry person food that I would not eat myself?  Probably not as food.  Were I to give a financial contribution, there would be no restrictions on what the recipient might opt to purchase.  As a practical matter, the mission of the assigned sessions is to provide nutrition on the terms of the recipient.  It would probably not be good congregational policy to restrict baked goods donations to those made in Kosher ovens, or even with Kosher ingredients.  My food is your food, with strings attached.  Your food is not necessarily my food.  Sometimes I am the caterer, maybe a server.  Not the diner.

Our tradition has a tale of some Smart Alec asking the sage Hillel why Hashem permitted poverty when an omnipotent God could have provided adequately for everyone.  Hillel responded that God did that so people could rise to the occasion by sharing part of their larger portion.  So that is what we do as a synagogue and I do as a peripheral volunteer for that project.  Judaism seems to prefer middles.  I bake something Kosher, varying the output.  It is always created at my peak ability.  Always something that would be a little pricey for people at economic fringes to purchase from a bakery.  Always something that I've had before, both from my kitchen and high end commercially, that I especially regarded as a treat. So I share some food, restrained by the Brother's judgment on keeping his project one of nutritional default.  But in absentia and with anonymity, I also share a piece of me.  Imagination of what to offer.  Experience as a limited foodie.  The Brother cannot restrict that.

Erroneous Algorithms

They keep coming.  Pictures of mansions I cannot afford, mostly owned by celebrities who I recognize.  Pictures of excessive sandwich plates from deli's I would not eat at.

It's not that I object to mansions.  Not at all.  On my travels, I often seek out the grandest of the grand.  Hearst Castle on my first trip to California.  Winterthur and Nemours near my home.  A few days in Newport.  The Biltmore when I go to visit The Great Smokies next month.  FDR Home and the Vanderbilt Mansion on a short stay in Hyde Park.  At one time I aspired to having a McMansion of my own, even visiting a few for sale at Sunday Open Houses.  Nearly all the grand estates I visited depended on inherited wealth, monuments to the self.  Forms of  look at me and visit when I am dead but not invited when I am alive sort of wealth.  While I can never attain a large fortune, and in late life I really don't want one, I do the same things in my very ample suburban development house that they do in theirs, though on a smaller scale.  I have a kitchen, though I produce from it what I want to eat without delegating anything to staff.  The public mansions I visit have no wastebaskets on display.  They have no paper scattered.  They have little open storage, other than elaborate bookcases.  My house has all these things.  I entertain, though less frequently, less elegantly, and on a smaller scale than the Grandees who built their estates more to impress than to enjoy.

FB feeds me something much different, and something not terribly appealing.  The sprawl in Florida or California by tech moguls or TV celebrities or athletes shout look at how much I have for myself.  Unlike San Simeon or the Newport Mansions, it is much less a shout of let me share with my guests what I created.  Undoubtedly, the Beautiful People have intense travel schedules that keep them from their pools or tennis courts.  They are displays, and an ostentation that FB thinks will have me coming back for more.  I try to Hide them or Snooze them but to no avail.  Their algorithm, I think erroneously, doesn't take the hint to try something else.

It misconstrued my fondness for Jewish deli's.  Every day I get photos of overstuffed corned beef on rye originating in multiple cities.  Virtually never kosher.  Perhaps I undermine myself in their algorithm placement by looking up the named restaurants to search their menus.  Always with a Reuben option, not kosher.  Katz, the granddaddy of them all, from its founding never made any pretense to being adherent to dietary laws. They promoted ethnic, and to be fair, avoid products inherently non-kosher irrespective of preparation.  

But not only are the pictures of the sandwiches lacking the standard I would set for myself, but they are excessive.  It would be unthinkable for me to pretend that a mound of pastrami, yes I am a sucker for kosher pastrami, would have the slices of rye bread as an afterthought.  Instead, when deli is available to me, I make my variations.  Sometimes mustard on the bread.  Often coleslaw atop the meat.  Never been a fan of Russian dressing but that was one of the most ordered options at the kosher Psychedelicatesin of my university years through the 1970s.  Those were sandwiches for a Sunday night treat, even a Sunday night destination or study hiatus.  And always amid people I knew.  The destination was never the pile of sliced cold cuts.  It was the ability to choose from a Kosher menu without restriction for a satisfaction that would not reappear for another week.

Facebook misjudged my likes.  I don't like ostentation.  It is not enjoyment.  I don't like envy, whether I wish I could have a house or a sandwich like that.  My pleasure is in making the most of what I have.  My house with its lawn, deck, kitchen, comfortable bed, climate control, and suitable guest areas.  For as often as I use a pool, or probably the celebrities are able to use theirs given their travel obligations, I can bundle the dip with my hotel stays.  I have enough food, maybe excessive food.  As much as I relish kosher pastrami, the barrier has been my willingness to choose that as my luxury, and to a lesser extent its availability.  I once lived in a place that had kosher delis. It's not like I've never experienced one.  I would not go there on a whim or very often.  FB photos of ostentatious heaps of corned beef don't change that.  

I don't know why their algorithms think that it might.

Cuisines

Among my Osher Lifelong Learning Institute courses for this semester is one on the history or food, which is not what it is really about.  A more accurate description would be a list of recognizable cuisines from different geographic districts of Western Europe.  Thinking like an American, a Kosher one at that, makes the understanding of this more difficult.  I have no regional cuisine, as much as making an elegant dinner, as I did for Rosh Hashana, challenges me.  My 23 and Me profile has me unequivalently identified as Ashkenazic origin, as were my grandmother's culinary roots, but I have been imprinted by cookbooks and diverse availability of food.  Since my dietary restrictions keep me from sampling a lot of restaurants, anything of meat origin has to be made at home.  I make Hamburgers, meat loaf, clops from ground beef, chicken in every which way, steaks that would pass in Texas, and stew as cholent or hamin.  Desserts are usually baked.  I've made linzertorte with no idea of its Austrian origins, apple walnut pie and oatmeat chocolate chip cookies of Philadelphia lineage, and torta del rey from an Italian Kosher cookbook.  Baklava is a lot of work, but I've done it.  Apple strudel may be overdue.  Fish is what they have at Shop-rite which becomes gravlax, seared tuna or coulibiac.  They each have a regional origin, but importation of ingredients and availability of recipes has undermined any authenticity.

I suspect the regional European cuisines have similar challenges to authenticity.  In this era of Autobahn and Aldi's, to say nothing of German populations shifts of two world wars, I think my skepticism of what distinguishes Munich from Cologne is justified.  Borders have been historically fluid.  Is Swiss chees made in Switzerland really better than Swiss cheese made commercially in Wisconsin?  In America where about half the Kosher restaurants are Chinese, the proprietors and chefs are not.  I would expect that a German or French restaurant of the upper echelon in America would be founded and run by somebody who trained in those regions rather than a native.  And the people preparing the food are as likely to be undocumented people keeping a low profile as trained chefs trying to have their own place one day.

I guess there are some regional ingredients that survive.  Crabs from the Chesapeake, gooey butter cake which I've not seen on a menu outside St. Louis despite its ease of preparation, abalone that I have only seen on menus in California.  But mostly we have commercial agriculture and ranching, refrigerated shipping and rail cars, reality TV of megaharvests of whatever in the Bering Sea.  Purity of cusine is just hard to sustain.

Money Saving Coupons

One supermarket, Shop-Rite, made a key wise decision a number of years ago to set aside specialty kosher areas for bakery, meat and deli which essentially gave them exclusivity for us kosher consumers, with a little competition from Trader Joe's whose more limited inventory makes it attractive to empty nesters like myself who do not always benefit from a mega market.  Every Thursday the weekly circular arrives in the mail.  Coupons are noted.  Now that I am retired I can go any time, avoiding the Sunday crowds and likely to find significant clearances on an item or two of kosher meat, for which I should probably set a moratorium as my freezer needs some clever re-positioning to get the door closed tightly.

This week they had a particularly attractive array of coupons for things my doctor thinks I should avoid.  Bulk salmon just right for gravlax, though the price of a bunch of dill was exorbitant.  Can always use cream cheese for 99 cents.  Needed hanukkah candles as our big menorah that used shabbos candles snapped at its base.  Pepperidge Farm cookies, chocolate chips.  They require another $10 purchase, no problem with the kosher but dairy Manischewitz Hanukkah gingerbread house which was not so easy to find.  And we always need another package of paper towels and toilet paper.   Bargain on Morningstar Farms trayfe facsimiles and Manischewitz dry soup mix.  Now that I am home to make supper most days and like to make breakfast, brownies and latkes, eggs at a reduced price cannot be overlooked.  Before you know it, my cart was full, though the paper products took most of it, and my Visa chip debited about $130 from my account, and that's without buying any meat at all.  https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/potato-latkes-recipe2-1963445

With the pantry, refrigerator, freezer and other flat kitchen surfaces now saturated, a game plan to eat all this stuff poses the next challenge.  Gravlax takes about 4 days to make and about 10 to eat.  The cream cheese will come in handy.  I've been baking a bit, which is why I needed some more eggs, and could bake some more.  Could make challah for shabbos, that uses up some eggs.  Don't know yet what to do with Morningstar Farms phony Pulled Pork, in part because I never made pulled pork and I don't know if the ersatz meat can be 1:1 substituted for the real thing.  And there is a Festival deadline for assembling that Hanukkah gingerbread house.