Remember the opening credits of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”? Mary, in the supermarket, throws some bacon into her cart with a resigned roll of her eyes. It was the ‘70s, after all, and inflation was the word of the day.
Well, that could have been me yesterday at Gristede’s, my local supermarket. Groceries in Manhattan have never been cheap, but geez, these days they just seem out of hand. I spent $40 on 11 items.
My Kellogg’s Raisin Bran is the main offender, at $6.29 for a 25-ounce box. (I eat raisin bran every morning, rain or shine, so I bought two. I definitely need to find an underworld supplier for my cereal habit.)
But everything else was crazy, too. My coffee, Yuban, one of the cheapest brands on the shelf, was $4.99. A can of Progresso soup was $2.79. Two pears were $2.05. The cheapest thing I bought was a bag of carrots, for $1.49.
People who don’t live in New York always think it’s crazy that we eat out so much. But you really can get a decent meal out and about for not much more than it costs to cook at home!
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