Kitchen Notes: Pantry Budgeting and Food Prices, part 1

I track a few stores for local prices (Costco, Fred Meyer, Trader Joe's, Walmart, and Chuck's Produce). Did you know that there are seasonal price variances for grocery items such as dairy, bacon, eggs, and rice? This gives me a general idea of when to stock up on canned goods and food for the freezer and pantry. I currently keep my pricing notes on the Google Notes app on my phone. I should also say that these prices reflect mostly Washington state, not Oregon and not Seattle where the cost of living is significantly higher than Vancouver, WA.

Have a hankering for fresh avocados? When avocados are in season, the best pricing comes from Costco for US-produced large avocados. For small-medium avocados, best pricing is from Walmart and those are imported from Mexico.

In an average year, cooking for one and seasonal canning/preserving. I'll typically use:

10# all purpose flour
5# sugar
1 gallon white vinegar
0.5# sea salt or kosher salt
1 qt tamari soy sauce (wheat free)
0.5 gallon unseasoned rice vinegar
4# unsalted butter (what can I say, I love butter)
2 liters olive oil

Bulk unbleached/unbromated flour is inexpensive. You can still get 10# of it from Fred Meyer for less than $5.

Currently in the US there is a surplus of dairy. There is so much overproduction of dairy products that a pound of brie cheese (Presidente brand) costs $5 and 2.5 lbs of Colby Jack/Havarti cheese will run you $7/pack at Costco. However, you might not see this savings with brands that are priced to compete at your local supermarket (e.g., private label supermarket brand vs Sargento, Daisy, Tillamook, etc.). If you aren't looking for double or triple cream brie, Costco pricing for brie cheese is the best among all tracked stores.

Also in mid-2017 pork products are noticeably on the rise in pricing, with 4 lbs of Kirkland bacon going for $20/pack or $5/lb. However, this rise has been going on since 2014 since the Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PEDv. The disease kills millions of piglets per year. You might have also seen an article about a decline in the frozen pork belly supply at the start of the year. There is significant demand for pork products and pork producers cannot keep up with supply.

There is a worldwide shortage of vanilla beans. This is following a glut of vanilla beans from 2004 which forced pricing down for farmers who then replaced their vanilla crops with more profitable ones such as sugar cane and coffee. The March 2017 cyclone storm that hit the Madagascar region wiped out 30% of vanilla crop production. To put Madagascar into the context of market size, the region grows 3,000 tons of vanilla; compared to Africa's Comoros region which produces 50 tons and Mexico which produces 100 tons. 

It'll be a long while before raw vanilla prices stabilize. This means if you are making a lot of baked goods or mixed beverages that call for vanilla, you may have to just buy vanilla beans in bulk and make your own vanilla extract. Price-wise, you can make a few liters of vanilla extract from lesser quality vanilla beans (grade B) for the same amount of money you'll dish out buying that 16 oz bottle of vanilla extract from Costco ($25, as of March 2017). You could use artificial flavorings, but at that point, you might as well skip the recipe altogether.

2017 retail price per vanilla bean: $6 (Cost Plus, Chuck's Produce, Fred Meyer, etc.). In a surplus year, per bean retail cost is $1.50-$2.00/bean. This is a labor-intensive, hand-produced crop after all.

Also rising in price is bulk sea salt. It used to be $0.30/lb (early 2016) at Fred Meyer and has now risen to $1.50/lb (Aug 2017). Fortunately, for most people, you don't really use that much of salt in a year, unless you're also curing meat and seafood products for jerky or smoked salmon. I have no explanation for the rise in salt prices, except that demand is high because winter storms have been more severe everywhere (municipalities purchasing more rock salt to combat ice/snow) and the US states that have manufacturing and distribution facilities are in regions hit hard by severe weather. Price increase is more likely due to increase in transportation costs than actual impact of weather or cultivation practices.

What affects pricing? Let's take a brief look at Texas. It's a state that produces the most cotton of the top 10 cotton-producing states in the US. In fact, Texas produces so much cotton that you can add up the total cotton production of the other 9 top cotton producing states and it doesn't even come close to what Texas produces. Just do any web search for "drought + Texas cotton" and you'll see which years the drought has heavily impacted cotton production. Look at the 10-year historic chart from NASDAQ for cotton prices. And then there was a market crash in cotton in 2011. What would have been a bumper cotton crop this year for Texas was nullified by the recent deluge of rain from hurricane Harvey. A cotton shortage means that pricing for similar products (synthetic and plant-based fiber--bamboo, modal, tencel, rayon [wood], and polyester [coal/oil/water]) that compete in the same market place--also rise because of demand for cotton substitutes.

Dairy

Cottage cheese isn't a healthy snack. While you can certainly find 'fat free' or 'low fat' versions of cottage cheese, perhaps consumers don't understand how this product is made. Take farmer's cheese which is produced when combining lemon juice or vinegar with heated whole milk (or low fat milk), strain out the curds, then mix those curds with heavy cream. Voila! Cottage cheese. So, anyhow. Here's more about seasonal dairy pricing.

Butter: $2.50/lb $3.50/lb

If you can get unsalted (or salted) butter for $2.00/lb stock up and freeze what you don't need. As long as the butter is rBGH-free, I haven't really seen a noticeable difference in taste and quality compared to organic butter other than my wallet is a lot lighter when I buy organic. 

Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), Oct/Dec/Jan/Jun 2016, $9.99 ($2.50/lb)
Kirkland Butter (4 lbs), May 2016, $10.49

Sour Cream:

Watch the labeling on this item. Some vendors list this by weight and others by volume. It is not the same. Most recipes call for the volume measurement of sour cream. 

The same could be said for fresh blueberries. You're more likely to get better pricing buying blueberries by the pound than by volume (typically sold in 'pint' packaging). A pound of fresh blueberries is roughly one quart by volume. You're better off picking local blueberries at a u-pick farm at $1.60/lb (this year's pricing at Majestic Farm Blueberries in La Center, WA) than buying at any grocery store or bulk retailer. Costco sells fresh, not local blueberries in 18 oz packages for up to $8/package.

Sells by the pound: Costco, Daisy
Sells by volume: Trader Joe's

Cheese:

Kirkland Mild Cheddar (2-lb block), $4 (late June 2016)
Tillamook Kolby/Jack Sliced Cheese (2.5 lb pack), $7.99 (Oct 2016)