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While you enjoy your Thanksgiving fare today, keep this in mind:
Now, with the price of grains and other commodities plunging, it may seem logical that grocery prices will follow. But while some grocery items like milk and fresh produce are dropping, the prices of most packaged items and meat are holding firm or even increasing. Experts warn that consumers should not expect lower prices anytime soon on most items at the grocery story or in restaurants.
Government and industry economists project that the overall cost of food will continue to climb in 2009, led by increases for meat and poultry. A big reason, they say, is that food companies still have not caught up with the prolonged run-up in commodity prices, which remain above historical averages despite coming down from their highs early this year.
The Agriculture Department is forecasting that food prices will increase 3.5 to 4.5 percent in 2009, compared with an estimated 5 to 6 percent increase by the end of this year.
Some economists project even steeper increases next year. For instance, Bill Lapp, principal at Advanced Economic Solutions in Omaha, said he expected food prices to jump 7 to 9 percent next year.
“For the last 21 months, food manufacturers, restaurants and livestock producers have been absorbing significant costs that in my view are likely to be passed on to consumers in 2009 and beyond,” said Mr. Lapp, a former chief economist at ConAgra Foods.
My advice? Ask Santa for a basic cookbook. Eat more whole foods — fruits, veggies, whole grains and beans you cook yourself. Not so much with the packaged stuff — prices are going to keep going up there for a while. Although if you catch a great sale on something healthy, stock up.
Think of this as your better budget, healthier for me in the long run plan. In the meantime, here are last Saturday’s recipe links. Just in case. And the Butterball hotline: 1-800-288-8372.
Happiest of Thansgivings, to one and all…
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Happy Thanskgiving Christy to you and your Family! Does Peanut get a drumstick?
The Happiest of Thanksgiving to you and yours Christy !
your voice and your company again make the list of things for which I am thankful
Happy Thanksgiving to all Firedogs !
Just had black beans for the slow pot last night with rice, an inexpensive cut of beef, and salad. Nothing was canned or tripled packaged.
A Happy Thnaksgiving to you too cbl2! I hope it a great day for all of the people who visit the blog today!
From the LA Times:
I am hoping both the need for this and the ability to provide improves very soon.
right back at you and yours.
we will be having traditional meal at friends house – lucked out in that we only have to bring mash potatoes and mr cbl’s killer sweet potatoes – no stress, no mess
Priest on WJ sez there’s a billion people on earth who don’t get enough calories.
Matt — we ended up with an absolutely huge turkey(our farmer-grower ended up with turkeys that were …way big..which is interesting since they are grass fed – it’s not as if she was pushing them with grain). If we had The Peanut here and she wanted a drumstick, I’m afraid we’d have to put her in a weight lifting program first. Dayam, that bird is big – we have to remove one of the racks and lower everything just to get it into the oven.
Christy!
Tasteful post for today. Contrasts.
Last Sunday, I dressed the altar with a cornucopia and massive amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables. Below the altar were huge stacks of canned and boxed foods for the Burbank Temporary Aid Center. After the service, I added the fresh stuff to that pile.
I am so grateful and blessed today.
He’s talking about the lobby against food aid buying local food to distribute in poor countries. He said it was shipping companies & unions. Huh? Not Conagra & all the big food companies?
A good, basic cookbook for every kitchen is The Joy Of Cooking. Defines the common cooking terms and offers simple recipes for most everything then you can embellish to your taste.
Reminds me of when Intel tried to stop the free laptop program for kids in third world countries.
We should just let the free market decide these things. That’s what Jesus would do.
Happy Thanxgiver, Christy and Firepups.
I don’t eat meat so I’ll content myself with all the other goodies my friend Linda will cook up. She’s vegan but husband Bill will smoke a turkey for him and my best friend Joe. Joe will make soup with the bones over the weekend. I remember the first time Bill smoked a turkey. We sat down to eat about 10 o’clock that day. Drunnnnnnkkkkk by then, you betcha. We’d already been through most of the other food.
Basic doesn’t mean tasteless either. Some good herbs, citrus and spices add a flavorful punch to any meal.
Didn’t know that about Intel, but am not surprised.
Obama sez he’ll cut the U.S. govt subsidies to rich farmers. Why does he say things he’ll reverse later?
Our little group at work(there are 18 of us)has adopted a family this year through Catholic Charities. The need there is so great – I signed up for the kids’ coats – I remembered how I always see country kids standing outside in the sub-freezing temperatures with sweatshirts or something just as useless. And yes, I know that just getting kids to put on coats and boots to go out and pick up a school bus can be tantamount to performing cold fusion on your kitchen table, but at least they’ll have warm coats. We’re also going to get them a grocery card – a BIG one.
How many kids does it take to pick up a school bus? *g*
Wedding present from a cousin has been invaluable cookbook for a new cook….. The Fanny Farmer Cookbook….. this book goes into the very basics…. does not assume a basic cooking knowledge….. this has been a great resource to my kids who wanted to cook something and the step by step instructions are great….
Well, with some of the big boys my kids went to high school with….mmm…four would probably do it. :)
Just tuned in about 15 minutes ago, but it seems WJ theme this morning is poverty, at home & abroad. Good theme for Thanksgiving.
Hey Grandpa, What’s fer supper?
Salad, Pansit Bihon, Turkey & Trimmings, BBQ Pork Ribs, Casava Cake for desert.
Those are some big kids.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. The pumpkin pie’s almost ready to come out of one oven and the cranberries (with brandy) are bubbling in the other oven. I’m glad we kept the old appliances in this kitchen when we redid it. You just don’t see many of the old double ovens any more.
Since there’s just four of us, I’m cooking a fresh turkey breast that I have marinating in olive oil, garlic and rosemary.
Either that or it was a Tonka school bus.
Or, a very little school bus.
Well, Christy, luckily I’ve found some real bargains lately, like T-bone steaks for $3.97/lb, 93% fat-free hamburger for $1.97/lb. and lamb chops for $2.97/lb. Our local Fry’s store, a division of Kroger, is selling canned vegetables for 10/$1.00. Recently there was a sale on butter for 5/$10.00. I can pick up ice cream for $2.50 or under for what used to be a half gal. container. My freezer is so full at this point, I literally can’t fit anything more in. My conclusion: the public has been doing some severe belt tightening. Stores are getting very nervous.
Off to the great socialist kitchen to make cornbread and biscuits.
Happy Thanxgiver, all.
Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.
Nam myoho renge kyo
Namaste
Well, I have to admit, I’m thinking of one family in particular, who were dairy farmers – the boys lifted a big tractor off their father when he had an accident in the field. The father lost his arm and the kids ran the entire farm for 18 months until the family could figure out what they were going to do next(which was that they went into the calf-raising business since handling milking equipment takes two hands). Everyone in that family was definitely build on the ‘giant economy size’ model: the mom and dad were both over 6′ tall.
I sit on the board of small non-profit here at Hopi. There is a member who comes from Scottsdale, a retired aerospace vice president, who this year and the last couple of years has purchased brand new coats in Phoenix for kids here who really do need them. He brought up 110 new coats, purchased from Mervyn’s as it was going out of business. The manager set the coats aside for him and friend of his so he could get them at 70% off. We will start getting them out this next week.
Happy Thanksigivning one and all.
Sounds like the news from India is getting ominous. Allegations that all of the attackers are Pakistani. Oof.
-G
I keep waiting for some Pukes to call in and say we shouldn’t help poor people because it will only make them dependent, and besides, the just don’t want to work.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Time to get some work done. See you all a little later.
Happy Thanksgiving Christy, Jane, all the firepups and their families! Our household has a special reason to be thankful this year. Our nephew underwent a bone marrow transplant yesterday, it went well, and things are looking up.
Happiest Thanksgiving to Christy, Jane and all
Ann, this is from the LA Times article:
“Right to hire” state, that’s a new one. Are they different from “right to work” states? Are they in the South, too?
Yes, I’m waiting for that myself.
As for being thankful, I have too much to list. But I would be extra thankful if I could find the TV remote which I’ve been looking for for an hour.
Oh, I hope that everything turns out we;; for your nephew.
Food prices will not increase as much as predicted due to deflation in the general economy. The manufactures will attempt to pass on the higher cost but the reality of the market place will soon have them looking to retain market share, not quarterly profits.
As consumers tighten their spending, which is already dropped to historic lows, any price increases will be met with consumer avoidance. In economic language there is no price elasticity in the current economy.
I have a thing about making sure kids have warm stuff to wear. We have an old family story about when my grandfather was a kid in ‘the old country’. His mother and aunt had a little business making cheese and he had to go out with a cart and milk cans to go pick up the milk from local farmers. He once came home and had torn his clothes badly and was very afraid because his parents were very poor and as he was the eldest, there was no one older than he was to get any sort of hand-me-downs from. His aunt, who had no children of her own, bought him new pants and a jacket so that he would be warm – there were two older kids in the family who had died as small children – he never forgot that. He used to send her money every winter for fuel and food. I once asked my dad if he did it out of love, and he said, “Love? Obligation – he told me many times that having warm clothes saved his life, so he owed his life to this lady who he frankly did not like at all.” For gifts, I always make sure I hit the ‘warm clothes’ first…then books…then toys.
Christy,
“Now, with the price of grains and other commodities plunging, it may seem logical that grocery prices will follow. But while some grocery items like milk and fresh produce are dropping, the prices of most packaged items and meat are holding firm or even increasing. Experts warn that consumers should not expect lower prices anytime soon on most items at the grocery story or in restaurants.”
I heard on one of the business blabfests that these were called ’sticky prices’.
-G
Thank you. He’s waited a long time for the right matching donor, and was finally notified last week, and he and his wife drove down from Montana. We have a good cancer center here.
Hopefully it will all work out & your nephew will recover.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
A great galumph of mashed potatoes is warming in the crockpot this morning. Sweet potatoes with enough brown sugar/butter glaze to satisfy the purists in my family.
Christy, this is my favorite David story. Not long after we met, he invited me back to his house after snow-shoeing to whomp up something to eat. Out came pasta, cheese, stuff to make sauce, and a tiny little foil-wrapped package of something or other. I opened it to reveal a wee little chunk of cooked chicken. Then I looked at David and said, “Do you think this will be enough?” And without a hint of judgment or arrogance, he said quietly, “I guess I’ve always thought that whatever I have is enough.”
Much of what I know about simplifying living I learned from that quiet, gentle man who lived simply long before it became incumbent on all of us to pare down and walk gently on the earth.
Happy Thanksgiving to All you Puppies!
I like your advice, Christy. I might add, we discovered that, besides growing our own, canning and freezing as much as we could, we also saved by buying our store-bought fresh veggies from local whole-foods/farmers market/organic food stores. Their produce might look more expensive, but the quality was so much more like home grown, we found there was more usable substance there and less waste, so it was a bargain.
This year’s Thanksgiving will be our last in our home of 35 plus years. We’ll miss it, but we’re excited about the upcoming move also.
And we’ll always treasure the Lake and all you guys ‘n gals.
Very sad that there are Pukes out there, but on the other hand, nice to hear all the people helping people stories here.
Indeed, what would Jesus say? (Some peoples are in deep trouble, and I don’t mean the poor.)
Did you leave it in the kitchen when you were baking yesterday?
I hate when that happens.
((eCAHN))
[[[[Barbara and David]]]. Smooch. David sounds so much like my Dad. Another doctor we knew was over at the house once and looked around our teeny kitchen and said to my father, “I’ve never understood why you were satisfied with so little” And my father answered, “Well, I’ve never understood why it took so much to satisfy YOU.”
Hi Demi. The Pukes are gonna have to fend for themselves without pity from me today. I find giving and sharing to be very enriching to both sides of the equation. Greed and spite are signs of a caustic illness buried within.
Who do you mean, the people who are about to become poor?
You stuck it in your pocket to free up your hands for a few minutes.
You took it into the laundry room, setting it down someplace you’d be sure to see it when you went back to the main part of the house.
It slid under the sofa.
You set it on a window sill.
(This is part of my routine when my cell phone “disappears.”)
Well, I meant the people who are greedy and selfish. But, then, maybe they ARE the ones about to be poor. Spiritually or otherwise.
Yep. That caustic illness started somewhere. Why does one choose to help and another chooses to just take and take?
It’s something to ponder. But, maybe we’ll save that for another day.
Today we celebrate and eat and drink!
Hugs to you Adiegirl.
the dingo ate it.
gee, speaking of which, i wonder how sarah’s turkey is coming…
anyone think she travelled coach from GA to AK? anyone think she really really cooked that turkey? or just waved a magic wand at her mom.
Saxbee can’t be that much fun over a holiday weekend, can he?
oh awright! i’m going. got dip and crunchies to prepare, a pie to bake, sunny view of snowy woods to enjoy while i putter along….
Hugs back at ya hon! Celebrate the good, and try to add a dash of good will ;-> with promise of more to come…
Jane’s upstairs with Arlo
Good morning everyone! Happy Thanksgiving too! This Thanksgiving feels a lot better now that we have a new President-elect. The other Thanksgivings under George W. Bush always resulted in a post where I would lambaste him. Not this year! I’m feeling some hope & change in my tummy. ;-)
Hope you all enjoy the day.
Happy Thanksgiving Pups. Busy cooking and taking a peak at what others are doing today. Beans and rice have been a staple of mine for years. Cheap and delicious. Today, however, is a splurge. Enjoy and Peace!