The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Grocery Store Bargains...

On Friday night we found ourselves in town after shopping for a pellet stove - we did this that evening to avoid having to use our weekend time looking at stoves. I had some coupons and bargains to pick up at Fred Meyer so we stopped there last. Bad thing - we were really hungry, especially Tramp 1. He had all kinds of ideas for dinner! We wandered through the meat department in circles several times before settling on some fresh prawns that were on sale. They were wild caught and we wanted to compare the two varieties they offered. Then Tramp 1 said he had to have bread with them - he wanted a rustic loaf - until he saw the price! As we wandered further in the store, we both decided that we did not really want shrimp - we could save them for another time - we really wanted big, juicy burgers. So we headed back to the meat department.... We picked out some burger and went in search of buns. There, I had to show Tramp 1 the calories/fat in the big buns he wanted. He put them right back and headed off to get a loaf of french bread to use as a bun. I went in search of the tater tots he said he had to have - I am such an easy mark!! By the time he caught up with me, I had found a rack of marked down bakery items in the frozen food isle and it was a treasure trove of delight. For just 99 cents you could get a bag of mixed rolls - probably some 15 in each bag. There were hoagie buns, hard rolls and yes, ciabatta rolls. We love the ciabatta rolls and two of the bags were filled with mostly them. We grabbed two bags and Tramp 1 went to return the french bread to the bakery. While I waited for him, the bakery gal came back to the rack and this time she had two big boxes filled with mixed pastries. Earlier Tramp 1 had been just about drooling over the dessert and pastry cases.... I felt so sorry for him.... I slid my cart over to the rack again and wow, a whole box of pastries was only $2.99. As soon as I picked one out, another smart shopper swooped in on the other box, grabbed a couple of pies and several bags of bread. I commented on the great bargains and she said they put them out every night at the same time. The bakery worker came by again and confirmed for us that the rolls get set out around 6:00 PM and the pastries are put out around 7:00 PM every single night. We we impressed and thought that we would definitely return again some hungry evening. But now, several days later, we are consumed with guilt - and heartburn! - from the pastry event. The box had a great mix in it - old fashioned doughnuts, glazed doughnuts, bismarks, jelly doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, turnovers, muffins, cookies, and numerous other items that we could not identify but have been able to eat! We both agree that we will never do this again! And we also found that many of them look better than they actually taste.... Guess we are spoiled as I do most of our cooking from scratch and home baked things are just so much better. And now I find myself searching with Google for some sort of a recipe that uses old doughnuts!

Lesson learned here - I should have had a meal plan in place or something in the crockpot. I usually do - but I had gone to town earlier to meet a basset hound that needs a home and that took way more time than planned. And no, I did not come home with him, just checked him out for someone else. He was a cute fellow and so energetic. Our old Angus would have been out of his league with this fellow! Sometimes old dogs just need their routine - maybe old dogs and us getting older humans, too!