I can say from personal experience this applies to vegan butter too. Get Miyoko's, or Violife if you absolutely have to, but for all that's good don't get shitty butter.

What grocery items are always worth the extra

butter ... my bed, my shoes, and my tires

Hello, fellow Costco shopper.

Kerrygold

Not grocery but my opinion is anything that interacts with the world around you. Glasses, shoes, gloves, headphones should all be top quality for comfort and their respective task

I agree with every part of this.

A while back I was standing in the butter section, waiting for a couple to move so I could grab my pricey-but-worth-it butter, and overheard them talking about how butter is a scam and it all tastes the same no matter what. I had to hold back a chuckle. They of course grabbed the cheapest option and went about their lives in complete ignorance of the glory of high quality butter.

I still wonder if I should have said something to encourage them to try a better butter, but they talked about it with such blind confidence that I didn’t feel right about it at the time.

Hank buying food from a co-op instead of megalo mart https://youtu.be/OBLqzGrq8T0

Tomatoes are also quite easy to grow in the summer and are very prolific.

Also in season are strawberries. The ones I've got are small and don't look good, but the taste is superb.

Both can be grown potted, and the strawberries are quite hardy.

I grew up eating garden tomatoes. Went to college, for the first time bought a grocery store tomato. Cut into it, tasted it... turned to my friend, what the fuck is this shit?

Absolutely. I was the same way then my mom make a margherita pizza mostly from scratch with tomatoes she grew herself and it was life changing

Yeah, this, but all the things, especially veggies.

The same plant can basically feel like an entirely different species.

Most of the time it just grew up properly (not maximising growth rate to lower the costs).

I'm two ways about this.

In recent years I've become quite a coffee lover. I've experimented with a lot of brewing methods, and got into small batch beans from independent roasters, with interesting qualities like being aged in whisky barrels (that one tastes and smells sooo good)

At the same time though I grew up in a family where the only coffee my parents ever drank was instant - a teaspoon of granules with some hot water and milk and maybe sugar. When I go over there to visit that's what I'll get, and I'm not going to turn my nose up at it. In some ways it's got that taste of nostalgia lol.

Coffee seems to be one of those things supermarkets regularly price cycle.

If i buy 4x 1kg bags when it's 30% off, i rarely have to buy any at full price.

This doesn't work for artisan's coffee you buy direct from the roaster obviously.

They said $1-5 not $10-20, half decent coffee is "fuck you" expensive.

Yes, very much this (and the big price differences, and how cheap oils are also sold as expressive ones). Smol producers of extra virgin (= cold pressed with low yields) olive oils usually offer good price/performance, at least until they become a brand & sell out.

Other oils also have a ton of specifics ("oil" is a very broad term), like how fast flax oil degrades in quality & the 'use by' date are useless.

(Tho it's still important to understand how heat affects divergent & differently prepared oils - and especially for what you absolutely do need refined oil, regardless of plant.)

Good ev olive oil is something else. Once you try you can never go back to.

I lived most my life using and tasting the highest quality cause my dad works in the agricolutural field, writing contracts for farmers and etc. and, while not so good paid, the job comes with the upside of the presents from said farmers. Liters and liters of the highest quality oil italy can produce. I think we never (since he had this job) boight a can of oil, and its a pretty big save too considering that kind of oil easily goes for 20€/L.

When i was out for university, my tight budget meant i had to resort to just "Olive oil". Not EV. Not 100% local. I though "how bad can it be, its still pressed olives!" Bad, very bad.

i was hoping someone would say this as well! heaps of evidence out there about tonnes of adulterated olive oils. usually with cheap hyper-processed seed oils

Second this. I even put it in coffee instead of just sugar. It's so good!

I always make cold brew so I can't say how it is with "regular" hot coffee lol

While I agree, the price difference between "maple syrup" (maple flavoured corn syrup) and maple syrup is way more than $5. A bottle of genuine maple syrup is $20+.

There's nothing wrong with new england maple syrup, but yes, real maple syrup not "pancake syrup" with maple flavoring.

It's all run by a cartel!

Whole Foods, oddly enough, is the place I find the cheapest good pasta. Their store brand is less than most places and really good.

Ever since I tried bronze pasta I cannot look at regular pasta the same way. I cannot buy that yellow stuff anymore.

I've seen a few people saying that it's cheaper to buy stuff that's in season over the years but I've never seen prices drop on in season stuff before. Idk if it's just a thing where I am but the supermarkets seem to just pocket the difference and leave the prices the same year round.

Have to disagree on the last point. I greatly prefer Aldi Cheese Curls and Market Basket Cheese Crunches. Except the jalapeño cheddar flavor. Those slap.

Have you had the smartfood popcorn with Cheeto flavoring?

Toilet paper too! As someone who needs to use it for peeing, it likes to stick if you get the cheap stuff. Not fun!

trash bags, was very difficult to find, that isnt thin, they shrinkflation/cheapflation most of thier brands. Target had excellent trashbags, before they switched to dealworthy, which is more expensive if you notice the bags are now superthin and they sell the "up and up" ones at a markup. i went to Grocery outlet and got the same quality as the old trash bags with none of the bs of the shrinkflaiton on it.

Yeah, if we end up with cheap trash bags by mistake I find the rim always rips apart when I go to take out the trash and I end up using a second trash bag anyway.

It's pretty easy to make those with some high fat milk, rennet, and cheese salt

150% on real parm.

I’d also argue for getting whole chickens (and spring for the nicer ones too). Roast it, pull off the breasts and eat those, eat the drumsticks if you enjoy them, or use the entire rest of the carcass for making really good stock.

Plus they're so inflated it's hard to cook them properly

The huge ones are just gross.

I think "woody" is the technical term.

I got a tortilla press and masa harina. I will not buy premade corn torillas again. Masa isn't that expensive, add salt, water, mix, press, and cook on a dry pan (or super lightly oiled, i put a very light layer on mine since it's cast iron)

So much tastier than store bought and better texture.

The best eggs are eggs from a farm that are unwashed and you keep on the counter. They taste a zillion times better and last for a long time. I get 3 dozen for 15 dollars at the local farm. It's honestly better than the store.

Real butter for things where you can taste it. Store brand for things where the other flavors are more overpowering and don't really notice the butter.

Yeah, the secret to getting good bacon is buying it at the butcher deli counter. You can request your preferred thickness, it's much leaner, and it's more flavorful. Unless you've got a local artisan cured meat hookup available, it's the way to go.

If I'm going to skin or peel the vegetable, I go with the cheap stuff. If I'm eating the skin then I go organic. I never buy the prewashed lettuce and salads when they are on sale because those have already started to go bad usually. And when it comes to things like berries, strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers I go with whatever looks like it will taste the best. Cheap blueberries for instance, absolutely do not hold up against the good stuff; life is too short for tart blueberries.

Spices are a great investment! Small independent Asian stores often have amazing ones which last way longer that supermarket ones. I don't have any shops like that near me so I buy on amazon and have found great ones there

The store brand might be okay for maybe baking with

False. The store brands don't blend well, and you end up with little balls of raw cream cheese in your cheesecake.

Kirkland's is the only store brand I've tried that's OK, but Costco store brand stuff is all miles ahead of the other stores.

Philly used to be reliable for not having gums added. Sadly they started using them, too, a year or two ago. Now I buy a local brand with nothing more than milk, cream, and salt for twice the price.