Food, glorious food!

Dear Fellow Journalers,

Who doesn’t like to eat or give gifts of food?? See the samples of breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner below and enjoy your feasting!


Pot Roast sandwich:


How to wrap up food as a gift:




Grocery Journal

Dear Fellow Journalers,

The following article comes directly from its source. Now that we’ve explored the topic of grocery buying, here’s how to create your own.

…and just in time for the holiday season!


Save $100 A Month With A Grocery Journal

By Barbara Carr Phillips

Many people think personal journaling means writing a book of deep thoughts, but the most useful journals are simple notebooks that contain mundane lists, like grocery lists or to-do lists. I teach journaling workshops, and people are surprised when I tell them they can save over $100 a month by keeping a grocery journal.

A grocery journal will ensure that you’ll never lose extra savings because you forgot your coupons. Also, you won’t ever find yourself standing in the grocery aisle wondering, “did I purchase ketchup last week or not?” Last week’s list will be in your journal for you to review. You will save time and gas by avoiding extra trips to the grocery because you forgot items you needed. Plus, you will have everything you need for each meal, every single day of the week.

To get started, choose a small, spiral-bound notebook to use as your grocery journal. You want a notebook small enough to fit in your purse or pocket easily. Spiral bound is best because it lies flat when you are writing. Also, you can flip to the page you need easily and it will stay open. Be sure to keep a pen clipped to your journal at all times. Also, clip a large paperclip in your book to hold coupons.

Here is how to organize and use your grocery journal:

On the front pages of your journal, create price pages. Price pages are simply a list of items you buy from the grocery store every month with the price of each item listed after them.

To make a price page, draw four columns on a notebook page. The first column is the widest, and the remaining three are just wide enough to write in the price of an item. The first column heading will be “Item,” and the remaining three column headings will be the names of the three grocery stores you shop at most often.

In the first column, list all of the items you typically buy. In the remaining three columns, list the price of those items at your three favorite stores. This way, you will know at a glance when a “sale” is really a “sale,” or if you can buy the item at another store at better price.

Save a dozen blank pages after the price pages to use for menus. When your grocery store circulars are distributed each week, sit down with your journal and create the week’s menu around the meat that is on sale. This will make cooking very easy.

For example, if chicken is on sale, serve baked chicken on Monday. Toss the leftovers in a casserole dish with a can of cream soup on Tuesday. Marinade a few a few pieces of chicken on Wednesday, then grill and slice them to serve over salad greens. Use the leftover grilled chicken to throw over pasta smothered with your favorite sauce on Thursday. The menus will become easier to create over time. After you create four or five weekly menus, you can simply alternate them.

Use all pages remaining after the menu pages for grocery lists. Date each list. Determine the best deals for breakfast, lunch and dinner by checking the sale items in your grocer’s weekly circular against your price book and your coupons. When you find coupons for items, paperclip them to your grocery list page.

Stick to your notebook grocery list when you are shopping. Don’t be tempted to buy other specials at your grocery store. Grocers know how to influence consumers to buy on impulse. That’s why fresh-baked goods are often displayed in the front of the store.

Remember, you don’t have to create your journal in one day. Simply leave six to ten blank pages in the front of your journal for your price pages, and start creating your weekly menus on the next dozen pages.

Take your notebook with you every time you do your shopping for one month and price pages will create themselves. If you have grade school children who shop with you, they might stay busy helping you look for prices instead of begging you for the newest, sugar frosted breakfast cereal. You can also save your grocery receipts and fill in your price pages while you are watching television.

Saving time and money is a cinch with a grocery journal!

© Barbara Carr Phillips
Barbara Carr Phillips is a personal journaling instructor and freelance writer. Visit her website at for contact information.



Remembering supermarkets

Dear Fellow Journalers,

G  remembers supermarkets. Enjoy!




From a very early age supermarkets have been a big part of my life, and continue to be so to the present day. I remember neighborhood “markets”. (“Super” came later) And yes, we walked to the market, carrying groceries home in two-wheeled, wire carts. (But we did this later, after the markets did away with the long-standing practice of home delivery.) Our neighborhood had 2 such markets, but both were really exactly the same. Both were located in small store fronts, that lined the main streets of our neighborhood. Each had 2 walls of shelves of canned and / or boxed goods, and the top shelves requires the storekeeper to use “grabbers” on the end of a long pole to reach the top shelves. Each also had an “island” in the center, that had mainly bread, but also other “special” items. But in both, the “heart” of the matter was in back. There, the proprietor of each store held sway as the butcher. A large freezer held large racks of meat, because all meat purchases were hand cut for you at the time of purchase. And each butcher prided himself as the master of meat cutters. (It was also how the women decided which market to shop.) And there was no employee turnover, as each market was run by a family, who hired close friends of the family. And they worked there FOREVER.

Then, the revolution started. The A&P “supermarket” came to the neighborhood. While far from todays supermarket, it had like 6 aisles instead of the usual 2, had dedicated cashiers to check you out, and had 2 butchers instead of just one. Some women liked this, with their greater variety, fresher products, and faster service. As the move from town to suburbs began in the mid to late 50’s, supermarkets became truly SUPER. People demanded more variety of products, and not having to return to town to get them. Over a dozen aisles were common, as were the names and specialty of each store.

Unfortunately, it meant the death of the small family run grocery store. Some supermarket chains took up residence in neighborhoods, and killed them off. Hellava’ shame, but so goes life and progress. I guess this turned out to be lucky for me. As a sixteen year old boy who had to earn his tuition for private high school and college, I got a job working in, you guessed it, a supermarket. (I even got a job working supermarkets in the town where I went to college.) It was here I learned the “secrets” of the supermarket business, and steadily worked my way through and up the ladder. (I was even offered a full-time mangers job after college, but I had other plans.)

Today, I still do some of the grocery shopping. I retired 5 years before my wife, and was the sole shopper until she retired. As I enter the supermarket today, and watch the employees scurry about, my mind flashes back to the days when the supermarket was the source of my income, and in many ways, a source of accomplishment and happiness. I can never thank the supermarket industry enough for the part it played in helping me get an education, both actual education, and in business. And oh yeah, today I’d like to thank that same industry for the delicious foods it puts on my table. Even today, supermarkets continue to be a source of satisfaction to me.







The History of Supermarkets

Dear Fellow Journalers,

My original idea was to write about the history of supermarkets but the internet had two great articles already and I thought I would share them;




Grocery Journal

Dear Fellow Journalers,

Over the past several months we’ve been exploring different types of journals and when I came across this one, I realized that the concept went way beyond a “grocery list”. Several years ago, while channel surfing, my husband and I watched a fascinating program about city planning. Now, I know what you’re thinking – what has city planning got to do with food shopping? Well, the take-away from the program was to introduce the viewer to the why’s and how’s of how the modern city came to be. Why were main streets so important? In colonial times, the main street comprised the town green, important government buildings, churches etc. Main Street came to be known as the elite area to build stores.

After Main Street came the Avenues and the bakery shop, butcher shop, florist, hardware store sprang up along those areas. In the early days of “grocery shopping,” the buyer, usually the wife/mother shopped in several stores once a week. The concept of one store selling all of the above had not been conceived yet.

I can remember as a young child going to the butcher shop and gazing through a glass case at the different types of meat and watching him grind up our hamburger meat. It was a necessary trip for my mom but also a social one as several neighborhood women were often there as well. Milk was delivered in glass bottles from the milk man and fresh produce was sold down the street from our home.

Many shoppers today “zip” into their favorite store for the quick and easy meal or the “oh my gosh, we’re getting a snow storm item” without a thought to:

Why the items are placed where they are?

Why are there displays?

How come “xyz” store now sells organic?

Why do stores sell “not sold in stores” items?

Why am I always tempted to buy chocolate chip cookies at B.J’s?

There’s a strategy to all this and in a way it’s akin to city planning. Next week we’ll delve into the history of supermarkets.

Happy shopping,



December 2019
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