Someday A Goat

Cheap anniversary, tasty dinner

We went to New Orleans to celebrate our third anniversary at Jazz Fest, but our actual anniversary in May fell about a week after we returned and we wanted to celebrate inexpensively. The dinner we made was extremely tasty and also extremely cheap for the quality of the ingredients.

One of our favorite stores in Atlanta is a little deli and provisions shop, Star Provisions. It is attached to one of the finest restaurants in the Southeast, and as they put it, it's like having access to the pantry and walk-in cooler of the restaurant. Cheeses, meats, breads, spices, cookware -- the variety of items is almost intoxicating. They also have a local farm stand during the growing season.

 

The funny thing is that it is often the most frugal option for us. We can buy bulk spices in bulk and save significantly over even a cheap grocery store. I'm sure we could find bulk prices at other stores that beat these, but when it's so much cheaper than pre-packaged goods from the grocery store, and the quality is so high, why go cheaper? A few cents is not worth it in this case. Some of our recent bulk purchases (and I don't mean large quantities by bulk, we only buy what we can reasonably use) include bay leaves, peppercorns and lentils.

 

The total cost of our meal was approximately $17.78, excluding alcohol. Normally we would have had wine with dinner for an occasion like this, but we classed it up this time with Coors Light cans. The $0.60 we spend per can was much more manageable than all but the cheapest wines. And in our house, cheap without quality is a last-ditch option.

Menu

Pork tenderloin sandwiches with farm-fresh tomatoes and sauteed onions on baguettes, and salad. Prosciutto for an appetizer, and strawberries with balsamic vinaigrette for dessert.

We had lovely prosciutto to start, with plain buttered baguette slices. A little fleur de sel (fancy sea salt) and fresh ground pepper enhanced the meat quite well. Going simple with your dishes is one of the easiest ways to save money and still enjoy expensive ingredients. The most expensive parts of the meal were the prosciutto and the strawberries, and both were so good that they were worth every penny.

While my husband prepared dinner, I portioned out the bay leaves and lentils that he had bought at the store that day.

Unfortunately, when I went to portion out the lentils, I managed to spill them EVERYWHERE. You know you have a good marriage when lentils are scattering all over the kitchen in the middle of dinner preparation and all you can both do is laugh.

With the oven preheated to 350F, the foil pouch with leftover pork tenderloin was put in the oven to warm up. My husband sauteed the onions in a cast-iron pan, with salt and pepper and a little butter, on medium low. After the meat was nice and warm, he toasted the bread in the oven, after brushing just the top half with butter before toasting.

The sandwiches were simple -- pork, topped with farm-fresh tomatoes (uncooked) and sauteed onions. They were heavenly.

Even though we ate a good number of strawberries before dessert (some of the best either of us has had), we enjoyed a nice plate of strawberries drizzled with balsamic for dessert. Perfect end to a lovely meal. One of the best parts of the evening? He wouldn't let me balance the checkbook. There are some occasions where chores like that just have to wait.

A friend of mine has an anniversary tradition that fits with a frugal lifestyle. Each year, they each spend about $20 to $25 on a gift for the other, but only within the traditional themes, such as paper for first anniversary, wood for fifth, bronze for eighth. I think this is a great idea, adaptable for any budget.

Total food cost: $17.78

$4.08    proscuitto -- ate about half (total $8.16 for 0.375 lb)

$3.00    4 mini baguettes

$4.00    local farm strawberries

$3.00    local farm green leaf lettuce

$0.35    local farm tomatoes (approx 6) $3.00 total -- used not even half of one

$0.30    half an onion leftover - at our common price this spring of $0.99/lb, I'd be surprised if half of a small onion cost more than $0.30

$2.50    The pork tenderloin was bought in early April half-off at Kroger and frozen for just this sort of occasion. We thoroughly enjoyed it the night before in the oven, and the leftover are what we used for the sandwiches. The tenderloin cost a total of $5.11 ($1.99/lb), so we'll say that $2.50 was the meat cost for this dinner of sandwiches.

$0.55    Teriyaki marinade -- the garlic probably only added pennies, let's say $0.05. We paid $0.17 per ounce for the teriyaki, and probably used 2-3 ounces, so $0.50 is a nice round guess. Other spices were used in the marinade, but it would add minimal cost.

Please note that this doesn't include electricity costs, nor does it account for the bit of butter, parmesan and balsamic used in cooking and garnishing. If you had to buy an entire bottle of balsamic vinaigrette (we mix our own) or a chunk of parmesan cheese, cost of replicating the meal might be much higher.

Collards and pork hocks

This post is from Thankful's husband A, who loves to cook.

Despite basically spending all but the first two years of my life in Atlanta, I never really ate collard greens, a classic southern staple.

With age I have come to appreciate many dishes that would have sent me running for the hills had I seen them anywhere near my family’s kitchen. I really got fired up about collards after a New Year’s Day party a few years back. The hostess, my friend’s mother, had prepared some fantastic greens and I decided it was time to try my hand at them myself. As luck would have it, my first effort was a remarkable success, giving me a somewhat deceptive culinary ego boost.

Future attempts did not go as well, one of the problems I encountered while trying to develop a recipe was the lack of details in most of the recipes I found online. Each pretty much said boil some hocks or pork neck bones and toss in your greens. Voila! Yeah, not so much.

The vast majority of greens I have been served were prepared horribly. I can count on one hand the restaurants at which I have enjoyed greens. They’ve been bitter, gritty, scummy, cooked beyond all reason and any combination of the above.  Where to start? After all, I’m not trying to make them edible, I’m trying to make them great.

The constant in any recipe is pork. Being quite the fan of pork bbq, I decided smoked hocks were my choice. Who doesn’t like a little smoky flavor? Rather than just tossing a hock in boiling water and letting it fall to pieces, I opt for a slow simmer to make a thick, full-bodied stock. This will take several hours, so it’s worth doing a large batch. After cooking, then cooling in an ice bath, I separate the stock  into pint- or quart-sized containers and freeze them for future use. This allows me to whip up a batch rather quickly on a hectic weekday. You could also use chicken stock if you wanted, but would you really want to?

 

I typically use 2-3 hocks, a few stalks of celery, a medium onion (quartered), a few cloves of garlic, half a tablespoon of black peppercorns and a bay leaf or two, then cover the hocks a few inches over the top with cold water. Put them on the stove on high and keep an eye on the pot, you DO NOT want this to come to a boil. Once you see bubbles about the size of a pencil eraser, turn the stove down to medium low and maintain that level of heat. After about 15 minutes, use a strainer or a spoon to skim the scummy grey layer on top, but don’t stir the pot. Let the stock simmer for as long as 3 hours, skimming every 30 to 45 minutes.

At this point you have some options. You could just add spices and throw in your greens, but I don’t recommend it. The stock you have just made should be loaded with flavor and gelatin, and the greens would be overwhelmed. I suggest straining the stock and returning a pint to a quart to the pot, possibly along with one of the hocks for good measure. Let the rest of the stock cool, then portion it out and freeze.

Ice Bath: To cool stock, don’t just place in the fridge while still warm, which will drastically change the temperature conditions inside. Instead, place bowl of stock in a slightly larger bowl, with a layer of ice between, until cooled down.

A’s Collard Greens

• Salt – Start with a quarter cup for a large stock pot
• 1-2 onions, whatever kind you like
• 1 HEAD of garlic – that’s right, a whole head
• 1-2 tbs paprika
• 1-2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tbs whole black peppercorns
• 1-2 tsp cayenne
• 1-2 tsp mustard powder
• 2-3 bay leaves
• ½ to a whole lemon OR approximately ¼ c apple cider vinegar – you can also use a combination of the two. I find one of these two to be important to countering the bitterness in a lot of greens.

That’s pretty much it – you can add any spices you choose, chives are a good addition as is oregano and basil. I will use fresh cayenne peppers, jalapeños or even habaneros when I can get them. Add all the seasoning to the pot, add water and bring to a boil for 20-30 minutes.

While the pot boils, prep the greens. Pre-cut and washed greens have become a common sight in my local grocery and will save some time and effort. To go the fresh route, get ready to do some washing. Greens are often quite sandy, so a good soak in a sink full of salty water will help take that off and take care of any bugs that might be in residence. Drain and give the greens another good rinse, you don’t want to miss any dirt and sand.

Next, remove the large veins that run down the center of the leaves, they don’t cook evenly and aren’t particularly tasty. Hold the leaf at the base of the vein and pull the leaf down. It should tear away from the vein fairly easily. Then tear the leaves into smaller pieces.

Before adding greens to the pot, you will want to taste the cooking liquid. It should be a level or two spicier and saltier than you want the greens to end up. Basically, it should taste like a grossly over-seasoned soup. If not, you will need to adjust the spices accordingly. I like it to be a little less salty than sea water and spicy enough to get your tongue tingling.  

You are now ready to boil some greens. Throw them in the pot a few handfuls at a time and when they have wilted down, add a little more. Let them boil on medium to med-high for 30 to 45 minutes. Drain greens with a slotted spoon, serve and enjoy!

Check out other blogger's take on Fearless Fridays and find more info about the series at Home Ec 101.

Price book analysis: pickles

We basically buy two brands of pickles: Claussen and Wickles Pickles. Claussen mainly for snacking, and Wickles Pickles are heavenly on a burger with cheddar. I never enjoyed pickles growing up, but I didn't realize that they could be so fresh and crisp. We made two purchases of a third brand, both ill-advised and not tasty. Other great brands may be out there, we just happen to stick with what we know. Eventually, we'll try to make our own pickles with home-grown cucumber.

Of 16 pickle purchases since August 2006, only one has been at a store besides Publix, so I don't have a good store-to-store comparison. I probably missed some transactions made with cash, especially since good pickles are a splurge for us. I've started noticing Claussen coupons lately, so we'll probably use them for a small treat.

Our ability to afford more splurges is evident in our increase in purchases lately. We went from spending under $10 in 2007, to just over $30 in 2008. Total recorded purchases came to $46.15 for 16 transactions, ranging from $1.25 to $3.89, with an average price of $2.88.

Not all pickle jars are the same size, so per-ounce comparisons are most useful on a tight budget.

My average per-ounce cost for pickles overall is $0.1525, the range runs from $0.05 to $0.24 per ounce.

Good pickles are worth it, and not all inexpensive pickles are bland -- it just depends on the application.

Claussen

Seven purchases were various Claussen varieties -- dill halves, spears, sandwich slices. The average price was $2.16 per jar, and $0.0778 average price per ounce.

For Claussen dill spears, $2.00 per 24-ounce jar is a good sale price.

Stocking up isn't always practical with something that requires refrigeration, but anything below $0.07 or $0.08 per ounce is worth it if you have the room and will use before expiration.

Pricing the pickles

Between the two, only Claussen has regular sales prices that I've found, and I've only used a coupon once ever for pickles, just recently for Claussen. That said, price is not the most important criteria for us in this category. Wickles Pickles, which is from a smaller producer out of Alabama, makes spicy and potent pickles that are worth every penny. I like supporting a regional producer, and I really like tasty pickles.

Wickles Pickles

In a nice bit of symmetry, we also purchased Wickles Pickles seven times, the sweet chips variety. All were priced at $3.89, except for one purchase in May 2008 at Publix where they were $0.40 off. This breaks down to about $0.243 per ounce on average. I'm thinking about price checking some other stores to see if I can get a better price. We might splurge more often, especially since it's shelf stable with no refrigeration required.

Stopping the bad car habits

I’ve been bad about car maintenance. My car was due for an oil change last fall, and with the furnace debacle, a Thanksgiving trip back home to see my family and Christmas, I just didn’t get it done. It’s been on my to-do list week after week, and I just ignored it. I finally called last week, and came to find out my last oil change was long enough ago that I don’t want to admit how long it’s been, and that I was due for my 40,000 mile service.

 We dropped off the car last night, and I had been antsy all morning, wondering what problems might crop up. At 38,000 miles, this is the point where the car is no longer new and needs a close eye to keep expensive bills at bay. Since I didn’t work for about a year of the time that I’ve had the car, the mileage is pretty low for more than four years of ownership. I hope to stay in this car for at least four more years, but at the very least until the credit card debt is paid off and we have enough cash for a significant down payment. Both of us drove our previous cars until they basically were no longer driveable, so depending on how well I take care of the car, I may even get more than a decade out of it.

When I bought the car in March 2005, I went ahead and bought the car care service plan. I know these things can often result in paying a lot more for service than necessary, but my mom offered to pay for it, and it’s been a blessing ever since. As bad as I am about car maintenance, I can’t even imagine how bad I would be without the majority of my service appointments being prepaid over the past four years.

 With the service plan, the 40K maintenance will cost more than I had set aside, but still only around $200. What will cost a pretty penny, however, is the other services that need to be done. I talked to the service manager around 11 am this morning, and my back brake pads and rotors need to be replaced, my brake fluid flushed and new wiper blades.

 I could thank them for figuring out what needed to be done, pay for the maintenance, then take my car to a cheap brake place, buy wipers at autozone and skip the brake fluid flush. But honestly, I’ve had a great experience with this service department, they have fixed very expensive items at no charge AFTER my warranty expired, and I have a foreign make of car with a specialized engine and I feel more comfortable with the dealership service. Plus the logistics of locating another shop and transporting my car there, dealing with getting to and from work in the meantime and wondering if I’m getting good service, it is simply worth the money to me. Knowing my luck, my brakes would fail on the way there.

Maybe when I’m perfect and plan and research maintenance and schedule things ahead of time, I’ll be able to do things the “right” way. I have to find a way to be more responsible about something with so much effect on my bottom line (as an asset and in its importance in my ability to earn money).

But for now, I’ll just cringe at the large chunk of change that I’m putting into my car. I’d rather pay a little more now and have the peace of mind that I won’t have to deal with brake failure while traveling at 75 mph on the highway and approaching a traffic jam.

Little farmer's market ducky

We went to a local farmer's market this weekend, and found a wonderfully shaped red potato. Beak added courtesy of a leftover lemon rind, a toothpick and a wonderful husband.

Lingering attachment to putting a check in the mail

One of my coworkers is continually amazed by the fact that I still use checks for a good portion of my bills. Over the past few months, I've been migrating more toward online payments, but I've come to realize that like many things related to money, emotions and habits sometimes trump logic.

I've been running up against some of those emotions and habits, and trying to balance my personality against being illogical.

Just can't shake that feeling

Although I'm pretty young, personal computers were not a common sight in homes and schools until I was in about 5th or 6th grade. When my grade went to the mock city field trip in elementary school, where we had a mayor and businesses and had to learn how to work together to run the mock city, I worked at the faux bank. Everything was still based on ledgers and paper records, and a checkbook balanced by hand. I now use a computer for many things, but some of those early habits are imprinted on my mind.

If I haven't put an envelope in the mail, I have the disconcerting feeling that a bill is unpaid. This habit has served me well for many years, in which I rarely missed a payment due date. Now that I pay bills with money already set aside from a previous paycheck, that feeling has been particularly hard to shake,

Early days of online banking

I've been using online banking for more than a decade, and my Quicken file goes back to 1999. When online bill pay first came about, all it entailed was the bank printing and mailing a check for you. It hadn't evolved quite enough to be completely reliable -- checks would take days to arrive and heaven help you if something got lost in the mail. I trusted myself more than the bank, so I mailed my own checks.

Once electronic transfers became more common, I started using bill pay more often. When my husband and I moved in together, the joint account we opened happened to be at a bank with a terrible online bill pay interface (we both already had individual accounts at that bank, so it seemed easiest). So I slid back into writing checks more often. If I used online bill pay, it was most often through the web site of the company we owed. 

Mailing payments has just gotten too expensive

With stamp prices rising almost every year, my check writing has come under scrutiny. While I will always write a check to the IRS and our garbage company isn't set up for online payments, I will be moving toward online payment as much as possible. Strangely, for one of my credit cards, I can only make payments from the associated bank account. So if I want to pay for that card from any other account, I have to first transfer money into the associated bank account and then to the card. Which is way too many transactions to enter in Quicken, so I will probably stick to checks for that.

Speaking of checks, I was cleaning out a bag and found a box of checks. I have another box of checks with almost all the same check numbers. That means I was an idiot and bought a box of checks I didn't need to because of disorganization. We all have our faults, and I now have added incentive to make the checks last as long as possible.

Obamas plant first White House garden since Eleanor Roosevelt

We've been spending some time this week working on our garden/landscape plan for this summer, and already have started seeds for a few veggie varieties. I'm further behind than I would like to be, but an article in The New York Times gave me a nice little nudge of motivation.

The Obamas have started the first vegetable garden at the White House since the days of Eleanor Roosevelt and her victory garden. All sorts of wonderful in the article, including Michelle Obama talking about dividing garden weeding duties among their family members.

My office has toilet-flushing gremlins

Every so often, a toilet in the 3-stall restroom on my office's floor gets possessed by flushing gremlins. The toilet will flush constantly, for hours on end, until someone comes and fixes it. I've never seen toilets do this, yet these gremlins attack our little bathroom every few months.

On an environmental scale, it makes me sad, especially since my region has had ongoing water problems for years. As a matter of pure money, I can't imagine that it benefits our property management's bottom line at all. I wonder if their inability to provide functional plumbing has any affect on our lease rates?

Along the same lines, our office HVAC system is screwy. Since I spent a good amount of time editing a commercial real estate trade magazine, I know that providing consistent temperatures and a comfortable environment is notoriously hard in multi-office buildings, especially in buildings below the Class A level. Thermostats often control space in another office, and particularly if the building is older and has been fitted out repeatedly for different configurations of offices, the HVAC system loses all semblance of logic. Barring redoing the entire duct work, there's really not a solution. That's not even really a solution from a property owner's perspective, because even if all that money is spent redoing duct work, your tenant could up and leave at the end of a lease.

But what is ridiculous is that not only is the HVAC system turned off on the weekends, which is pretty common for the size and type of building, they turn it off at night. I can't possibly imagine how that is an efficient and money-saving strategy because not only are most employees who work in the building miserable on a daily basis, it has to take more energy to bring temperatures back up to bearable in the dead of winter. Sounds like they need to start reading some PF blogs :-)

It got me to thinking -- what are some of the small things we do on a regular basis that might be saving us money? Could any of them be shooting us in the foot?

• If it's yellow, let it mellow. Last year, in the midst of serious drought restrictions and the possibility of water rates going up, we went pretty hardcore with this old hippy saying. I now have to remind myself when we have guests that there's a time and place for everything. I could see this going haywire, however, if you end up with too much TP in the toilet when you finally do flush and end up having to call a plumber in for an expensive repair. I try to be conscious of the amount of toilet paper used, and will readily flush if it looks like there's too much in there.

• We line-dry probably about 25% of our clothes, and have for years. It really makes items like jeans last much longer, and I find that I like the stiffness that clothes get when they've been line-dried. I've also lost a few shirts to one of our cats, who likes to climb the drying rack. If it were a favorite or expensive blouse, I could wipe out my annual savings by having to replace clothes. The sooner I get the clothes folded, the less likely this is to happen.

• We do a good amount of bulk cooking, and it only saves us money if we actually take the time to portion out the food and vacuum-seal it. This doesn't always happen, unfortunately. It's like leftovers, sometimes it's stupidly hard to do the easiest things. I try to plan a little bit better with the timing, we most often let food go to waste when we finish cooking late at night and just don't have the energy.

• Install a programmable thermostat is wise advice often given to those looking to save money. No problems there! We have one already. That isn't programmed. We've lived in the house for 1.5 years, and still haven't programmed the thermostat. Why? No one knows. I'll spend hours updating my price book, but don't program the thermostat. And I know exactly where the manual is. In some ways, I'm just as bad as my office property managers and their toilets.

Credit card rates going lower is getting tempting

Our credit card interest rates have drastically fallen in the past year as prime rate has gone down, and on one card we have a lower rate than on our mortgage. Obviously, our rates are variable, rates could skyrocket and credit cards can basically be called due at any time, but still it tempts me to stray from responsibility.

The adult in me knows that paying these cards off should be our first priority, but when I see how little interest we're paying on what feels like huge balances to me, I'm tempted. Tempted to put that little extra money into the travel savings instead of an extra payment to a card. Tempted to spend a little more than we should. Tempted to take a portion of my husband's bonus that hasn't been allocated and get supplies to start veggies from seed instead of putting it toward the cards. Tempted to just ignore the balances since after all, we pay way over the minimum.

Ghosts in my head

I started this post last weekend while I was reconciling accounts. The finance charge on our lowest interest card was just over $20, and I thought why am I working this hard and running things so close to the wire when it's just an extra $20 a month on one card, and not a whole lot more for the other? I started thinking about bolstering our emergency fund. I started dreaming of spending.

As I typed up the beginning of the post, the people that might read it popped into my head. People who just lost jobs and have no emergency fund. People who had those same thoughts as I have, and then one day realize that their minimum payments are simply not doable. People about to be foreclosed on. People I don't want to be. I couldn't finish and publish the post or maybe even admit to myself that these thoughts weren't quashed immediately.

We've been turning our financial lives around since June 2008, and it seems silly to stop now that we're just starting to see results. This kind of thinking is exactly what got us into credit card debt in the first place. But we've hit a plateau of enthusiasm, and it's getting harder to keep telling friends, sorry, we just can't afford it. I feel like all we do is work and worry about money. 

Facing reality

Last night, as I watched a Suze Orman episode off the DVR, my stupidity almost smacked me in the face. My imaginary readers, they were right there on her show. Tens of thousands of credit card debt. Student loans out the wazoo. Totally unaffordable mortgages. Gaps between expenses and income that ran into thousands of dollars. Job loss. Just desperation all around.

We don't have student loans, and only one car loan. Our mortgage is a bit of a stretch, but it's fixed and just barely within our means. Our cars are pretty new. All in all, we have it good. Once we deal with learning to spend less than we earn and get rid of this credit card debt, the future is wide open. We just can't lose focus. Why is that so hard?

Price book analysis: fruit roll-ups

We buy an inordinate amount of fruit roll-ups for a household with just two adults. But they're so tasty. We always buy Betty Crocker fruit roll-ups in the variety pack box. We like the surprise of the variety pack. They last forever in the pantry, and when it's days away from payday and you want a snack, it's easy. You can find significant savings with a little attention to sales alone if you regularly buy this item; although the three categories below include coupon savings as well.

a decent sale price if you're at the store craving fruit roll-ups

                around $2.00 per box of 10
                (standard size; $0.40 per ounce, $0.20 per roll)

consider buying an extra box

                at or below $1.50 per box of 10
                ($0.30 per ounce, $0.15 per roll)

buy as much as you can if you love fruit roll-ups with an undying passion

                around $0.80 per box of 10
                ($0.16 per ounce, $0.08 per roll)

Like most of our favorite foods, we go through phases where we can't get enough, followed by a period of time we don't really miss it. With fruit roll-ups, the swing is very evident. We bought 280 fruit roll-ups (!) in Aug - Dec 2006, 60 in 2007, 160 in 2008 and 40 thus far in 2009. My first 2007 purchase for fruit roll-ups was on 2/15/07, so it's not like I stocked up at the end of 2006. We ate 280 fruit roll-ups over basically 6 months -- that's one each every day or so, which is probably too many fruit roll-ups. I think our inclination to reduce the amount of processed food we eat is also at play in the reduction. 

In a world without coupons and sales (aka regular prices)

I'm only looking at pricing for the 10-count individual boxes for this category, which is what I always buy. The below numbers were not my final cost.

• ranges from $1.99 (Sept 06 Target) to $2.69 (Nov 08 Kroger)

• Publix $2.59

• Kroger $2.69

My best deal by per fruit roll-up price

I've hit my best deal on multiple occasions, on 6 out of 21 purchases. Most of those were in 2008 and 2009, so that means I've been getting smarter about when I act on deal and coupon combos.

$2.59 regular price
-$1.29 store sale
-$0.50 ($0.50 coupon doubled on purchase of 2)
$0.80 final price $0.16 per ounce, $0.08 per roll

My worst purchase is Kroger in Oct 06, $2.69 -- $0.54 per ounce, $0.269 per roll.

Coupons

Used coupons 16 out of 21 purchases, usually a $0.50 doubled. Coupons appear regularly and often in Sunday papers. I do typically wait for a sale, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly when the coupons come out.

Differences between stores

Publix

average final price: $0.120 per fruit roll-up, $0.241 per ounce

Publix wins almost every time when it comes to this item. Even without coupons, you can often find this on sale for $1.30 a box.

Kroger

average final price: $0.186 per fruit roll-up, $0.372 per ounce

As usual, I get better results with sales at Publix, although the bulk of Kroger purchases were in 2006.

Target

only one purchase in 2006 for Target

Looking at the big picture over time

• Average price per fruit roll-up: $0.145
• Average price per square box: $1.40
• Average price per square ounce: $0.29

2006 (first purchase 8/1/06) 11 purchases 280 fruit roll-ups $43.23

2007 3 purchases 60 fruit roll-ups $10.78

2008 4 purchases 160 fruit roll-ups $12.40

2009 (as of 2/24/09) 2 purchases 40 fruit roll-ups $3.20

Random notes

• first purchase was 8/1/06
• prices do not include tax as it varies by county

Introduction to price book analysis series

Click on the price book category on the right to see all the available posts about my price book.