Chef Chris Aquilino , director of culinary at Elior North America , likes to jazz up his meals with jarred items, including pesto, olives, jalapeños, artichokes, sardines, and anchovies. They also stay fresh for a long time. According to Aquilino, herb purées, such as basil and cilantro, can even stay fresh for weeks at a time.
So don't be afraid to open up that tube. Aquilino also suggests stocking up on tomato paste. There are numerous ways to cook with tomato paste including topping fish and making barbeque sauce.
While you can easily find canned tomato paste at most supermarkets, Aquilino prefers the kind available in a tube. Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising. Use profiles to select personalised advertising.
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Good frugal tips for everyone - NEVER carry balances and try to rack up credit card reward points, miles, or cashback bonuses in the case of Discover Card.
I get hundreds of dollars back from Discover every year. There were a few items, particularly in the produce and dairy section that were not a very good deal so I passed on those. I don't blame them for throwing in a small percentage of full-priced convenience foods like Milk and eggs.
I'm frugal, but I also like one-stop shopping my time is valuable too. Not too bad, but not great either. I wanted tomatoes but they were not a good deal at all and they looked like the pale red tasteless kind shipped in from some greenhouse farm factory.
Sometimes I like to boil red potatoes and just eat them with a little butter and salt it's a German thing. I use Bacon very sparingly for seasoning other foods. For example, adding a piece or two to an entire crockpot of pinto beans to add flavor. Or frying up a piece of bacon next to my eggs can't beat bacon grease for flavor there or to dice up for a spinach salad topping.
In my experience frozen bacon stays viable for a very long time compared to other frozen meats. The 4 lbs. of bacon I bought for seasoning will last me 6 months or longer.
Carnivorous Bargain Hunters Rejoice There were also big packages of clearance meat randomly piled up in one cooler. I didn't explore those deals very closely though since I'm not a huge meat eater.
I am a cheap-skate afterall! But there is probably more of a goldmine of bargains for the more carnivorous bargain hunter willing to dig through these bulk meat coolers.
Overall, I could easily be a vegetarian and eat very little meat especially the much over-rated expensive cuts of red meat.
So even bargain bins of beef don't impress me much. Less meat in your diet is probably THE 1 way to save money on food and slash your monthly grocery bill - with the additional benefits of possibly improving health and lessening your environmental impact if you are one of the minority who cares about sustainable living.
Western cultures eat way too much meat anyway. Regularly consuming too much animal fats is a leading contributor to many modern diseases such as heart disease and colon cancer, especially here in the Southern United States. There are lots of other good cheap sources of protein such as the beans in my list of Bargain Foods bargains lower down this page.
I think every frugal person who gardens, cooks, and loves deep discount grocery stores like Bargain Foods in Pelzer SC should have a freezer because it allows you to load up on these types of food sales - from breads to meats to vegetables to fruits to cheeses.
A freezer inventory helps reduce shopping trips time, fuel, frustration and allows you to get the most bang for your buck by allowing you to stretch those deals out longer.
If you grow a garden, a freezer is a great way to cut your grocery bill because you can stockpile surplus harvests of cheap wholesome veggies and fruits and use them when you need them, especially during the cold season when prices rise on produce. You can also cook in bulk ahead of time and have frozen meals ready for the microwave when you don't feel like cooking.
That's what I do. I hardly ever get just one meal out of a pot. And if you are an avid fisherman like me, or hunt or forage for wild foods you already likely know that a stand-alone freezer is a must-have.
A great household investment if you ask me. Back to Bargain Foods Store Bulk Boxes of Beef, Chicken, Pork, Fish, Shrimp, Rabbit, Frog Legs, Organ Meats, ect. There is also lots of big boxes of cheap bulk meat on the last aisle, and a good selection of other cuts on the second to last aisle.
Update: according to one employee, " we have an on-site experienced meat cutter and we offer the freshest meat of all popular sorts and at very competitive prices ". You will find all sorts of deals on beef, chicken, pork, shrimp, scallops, Flounder, Perch, Salmon, Talapia fish, etc.
I did notice some meats came from China - a country I have grown to be greatly distrustful of in regards to product quality and safety - not just on food items.
I'll save those stories for another day. No telling how much chemicals or mercury may be in some of those things. Could be less than here in the U. Who really knows? But foods from China I particularly distrust due to their history of recalls, all the recent serious contamination incidents, and their lax or non-existent environmental oversight.
Plus meat from China has likely been frozen for a very long time and I've often noticed can taste, um, not very good.
But if you are like many people and could care less, then go whole hog on the bulk meat. I'd just recommend you split a box with someone else and taste it first before committing to a large purchase. You can always get more on the next trip. I bought a large bag of very cheaply priced Sea Trout from one of Bargain Foods' nearby competitors.
I was very disappointed. It tasted horrible. The cat wouldn't even eat it! So be careful about loading the boat on some deep discounts, especially on the frozen meat aisle.
But one bulk meat item I do recommend is the big 10 lb. For convenience, I portioned out the box into portions of four or five chicken breast pieces per ziplock freezer bag, and froze them.
Makes for frugal, quick, and easy meals. Bargain Foods has a large variety of beef patties, pork, and chicken breast in large boxes, with inventory often changing.
The Pelzer SC Bargain Food Store has all kinds of items for sale that I wasn't expecting to see in a grocery store. From farm supplies like bulk horse and chicken feed and fencing materials to an eclectic selection of discounted beauty, art, and hardware supplies including water heaters and toilets!
Wheelbarrows, water heaters, and Toilets next to groceries? Yup, not your average grocery store. lol But I still like it! Going to Bargains is always an exciting scavenger and treasure hunt. Beggers and Choosers Since I'm not quite a beggar, I can still afford to be a little bit of a chooser - such as I was when I chose the discounted Peter Pan peanut butter, over the larger and cheaper container shipped from Saudi Arabia Arabic writing on jar caught my eye.
But most of the time we really don't know where our food comes from anyway. Labels often don't tell the true tale about country of origin. Evidently, there's a lot of "organic" false advertising going on at higher priced chains, based on recent news stories.
I'm not a food snob by any stretch more of a Great Value kind of guy. But I still try to be mildly discerning where I can. I saw a wide variety of store branded products from various grocery chains, such as: Albertsons, Wal-mart, Meijers, Food Lion, and many others I had never even heard of.
Maybe some of the little known sources are now bankrupt operations liquidating their inventories. Or in many cases it appears to be outdated or nearly outdated clear outs and close-outs from small to regional to national chains in other states or countries.
There are also many "scratch and dent" sales on things like brand name canned soups, which I passed on. I make my own soups and freeze extra it's cheaper and a lot healthier than the high sodium canned stuff.
But I bought a lot of perfectly fine un-dented canned goods for cents a can. The large restaurant-size bulk canned goods are an even better deal in many cases. But again pay particular attention to dates because some items are well past the "best before" dates. I saw several things that were a year or more outdated.
But many items are not yet outdated. Either way, you can get brand name foods cheap! Also be aware that some items may have involved some type of less than catastrophic defect somewhere along the supply chain.
Most things appear perfectly fine, but I noticed a few things that were cheap for a reason related to the actual manufacturing process, maybe. So if you discover a great price, be careful before buying boxes and boxes of it.
I'm now glad I held back on loading up on a few deals. We saw one old-timer pushing out a buggy with a 4 foot high stack of about 7 boxes of the marked-down hickory smoked bacon. I sure hope for his sake all is well with it. At least with my piddly 4 lbs. of it I have little to lose but a few dollars if by chance something's wrong - which I highly doubt.
High fat, salt cured, smoked, and vacuum packed bacon? Not very hospitable conditions for bacterial growth. The above image is of the Bargain Foods Warehouse in Pelzer South Carolina directly adjacent to the actual store.
An employee confirmed to me that this is the building where they receive the food shipments and then bring it next door to stock the shelves of the store. They were carting over loose canned goods in buggies while we were there.
At first glance, I thought this side of Bargain Foods was a lawn and garden section with the pallets seen in the image maybe being garden soils and fertilizer. I was hoping food wasn't on any of the pallets in trailers or outside see the following update.
Update: I was recently contacted by "a proud bargains employee" who stated the following We NEVER store food in pallets out-of-doors! I guess my initial thought about the pallets being lawn and garden supplies was correct.
Good to know pallets of food are never stored outside. And I've since found some great bargains on gardening supplies, such as bedding plants, soil, and stepping stones. Look under the covered sidewalk outside. I'd LOVE to get some more insiders' details from any other Bargain Foods employees or frequent shoppers via the below sharing form.
Would love it if the owner himself could share more details about this location. Bittersweet Bargains? I almost bought an entire box of the below Hershey Chocolate bars I actually rarely ever eat candy - but I knew I could freeze the chocolate. But I decided to buy only a few Hershey bars after all, and it's a good thing I decided to hold back on a bulk buy.
After opening and tasting one, I now know something is off. The nuts in it taste a whee bit stale and there is light-colored spots on the bars, as if the cocoa powder had not been mixed in well in the factory. Who knows what the back stories are.
There is some above average mystery to some of these below average prices. Check the items out as closely as you can.
The below Reeses cups also look as if they got too warm at some point and stuck a little to the wrappers with a bit of mottling on top, as you'd expect if they got warm at some point. Maybe a refer truck hauling them lost refrigeration for a few minutes in Texas last summer.
Another example of possible factory flaw was a pallet of un-labeled bottles of ketchup each bottle with ketchup of a slightly different shade of red. Tasted perfectly fine though. I suspect some factories may sell off the accumulated fraction of product from their assembly lines which may not quite meet specifications.
Maybe a pH titration was a tiny bit off, or different lots of tomatoes caused mixed colors in a grocery store's end cap display. Like I said Despite my gut feeling, I bought a fancy Pad Thai noodle soup that I ended up later throwing away because while preparing it I found the sealed pack of prepared noodles inside smelled rancid.
I should have listened to the family member who told me not to buy it. That's the sort of prepared food I'll know to avoid next time. It looked like it was not outdated on the package, though sometimes it can be hard to interpret those numbers. Next time I'll be even more judicious with what I buy, and avoid certain types of processed foods, as I normally do anyway.
At least the below dry pasta turned out to be an excellent buy with no quality problems. Pasta lasts a very long time anyway. Is it legal for grocery stores to sell outdated foods? If you go shopping at Bargain Foods in Pelzer you may find yourself asking that question.
After some research online I've verified that it is legal to sell most outdated foods in most cases, with exceptions being foods that can become potentially dangerous, such as dairy or packaged meats. I had been wondering about these type discount grocery stores selling outdated food for cheap ever since I saw an episode of TLC's "Extreme Cheapskates" in which a particularly frugal mother was shopping in a bargain food store similar to this one in Pelzer South Carolina.
Now this lady was beyond frugal. She was the one who insisted the family members use cloth rags in place of toilet tissue, with the used rags getting re-washed and re-used over and over. Besides the free road-side salad greens she and the kiddies picked, she was getting tremendous deals on slightly outdated but safe items from a bargain food warehouse.
After that episode I was wishing we had such a store here. I'm glad there is a store like Bargain Foods in this area where outdated and close out foods can be bought by us more economic folks.
But I am also not as paranoid or bacteria phobic as the average American seems to be when it comes to "beyond sell by date" food. I know many people who will not hesitate to throw away any perfectly good food item which has gone past its "sell by" date. It's one of the most disgustingly wasteful and stupid things millions of Americans do.
Wake up people! Stop throwing cash in your trash and food into landfills. I often eat "outdated" foods and have never had food poisoning from anything in my fridge or pantry. The human sense of smell is amazingly effective at detecting decomposition in food.
If it smells fine, I'll usually eat it. It's hard to believe that Americans throw away MORE THAN HALF OF ALL FOOD purchased!
Think about that. That equates to lots of cash in the trash and lots of needless environmental damage simply due to human apathy and waste. Bargain Foods in Pelzer SC is my kind of store because instead of all that outdated food being destroyed, it can instead be sold to thrifty and low-income families who may be willing to sacrifice some quality for a lower price.
But don't get me wrong, the MAJORITY of items sold at Bargain Foods Store are of full quality. Most of the salvage food business is built on brand close-outs. Or maybe the outer package has minor cosmetic flaws, such as a dented outer box of the otherwise expensive Kashi cereal I often find at Bargain Foods.
The Sealed bags inside are always perfectly fine. Despite Popular Belief, Bargain Foods in Pelzer SC is not just frequented by low income families on "food stamps".
I believe the SNAP benefits formerly Food Stamps program renews early every month. Employees have told me Bargains Food Store tends to be busiest after shoppers SNAP EBT cards are re-loaded.
So this is why Bargins may seem more crowded the first half of the month. But everyone shops at Bargains - rich, poor, and all levels in between.
Thrifty shoppers at Bargain Foods often include higher income families too. No doubt a lot of upper income people don't enjoy giving their whole paycheck to Whole Foods. For many higher net worth shoppers, frugal living in addition to hard work was a key pathway to becoming and staying debt free, and ultimately growing wealth.
So I'm never surprised at the broad economic diversity of bargain hunters frequenting Bargain Foods Store or any other deep discount outlet. Everyone loves to save money, especially with high food price inflation.
So shopping at this hidden gem in upstate SC is the perfect fit for anyone wanting to keep more of their hard earned money, no matter their tax bracket. These above bargains on food and household items are PAST deals that had limited supply, and thus probably no longer exist.
But they've likely since been replaced with new similar deals in the same grocery categories. Close-outs are usually one time special buys, so the available bargains are always changing, dependent on supply. The really great deals go fast.
Just because you found an amazing bargain today, definitely does not mean you will find it tomorrow. Glad I backed up the truck on this deal because I've not seen such a great deal on salmon at Bargain Foods since.
Important Fact to Consider: Yes you absolutely can return items for a full refund if you are not satisfied with something! Keep all your receipts. If you have any questions about returns, call the above store number and ask before making your trip.
What amazing salvage deals have you found at Bargain Foods in Pelzer SC? What do you think about this discount grocery store?
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