Bill Roper's Journal

We were running late today. Julie wanted to go see "Elemental" at the 1:30 show over at Randhurst, so we adjusted plans, dropped her at the theater, and went to lunch. Then, since we were near Trader Joe's, I ran in there to pick up a variety of items that are best purchased there. While browsing, I found that they had introduced their own clone of Tim Tam cookies, which are Australian imports that Julie has become quite fond of, so I bought her a box. They have been pronounced good.

Not much got done around the house today -- mostly loading up the dishwasher and firing it off, which was highly necessary. And I made a Mariano's run later to fill in the items that we needed from there.

K wanted some more of the Krakus ham, so I hit the deli department to discover that this week's "sale price" was last week's regular price. Before the pandemic, we were able to buy ham on sale for $3.99 / pound. Now the sale price is $6.99. A loaf of wheat bread has been something like $1.75 and now it's $3.00.

There must be *some* foods that haven't gone up in price in a crazy way, but it certainly doesn't seem to be any of the things that we commonly buy. Or maybe I'm just being blind to those items...

Something odd is going on with the beef prices at Sam's Club.

In December, I could buy chuck roast for something like $3.50 / pound. That was up a little bit over the last few years, but nothing awful.

Around the end of December, the price of chuck roast went up to around $4.50 / pound.

When I went there last week, the price of chuck roast was $5.50 / pound.

Interestingly, the price of sirloin steak remains stable at just under $5.00 / pound; the price of beef brisket is hanging in at around $4.30 / pound.

I understand that the implied answer to this question about prices is "So, you'll be eating more sirloin and brisket than chuck roast now."

But still -- what the heck is going on?