A potato chip (American English chips, British English crisps) is a thin slice of potato deep fried or baked until crispy depending on the company it originated from. Potato chips serve as an appetizer, side dish, or snack. Commercial varieties are packaged for sale, usually in bags. The simplest chips of this kind are just cooked and salted, but manufacturers can add a wide variety of flavoring (mostly made using herbs, spices, cheese, artificial additives or MSG). Chips are an important part of the snack food market in English-speaking countries and many other Western nations.

Back in the day when I was a starch-eating-type-of-girl I loved potato chips. Whenever I went grocery shopping I would usually pick up a bag of salt and vinegar or sour cream and onion. Occasionally, as a treat, I would buy ketchup chips.

I would get the normal grocery-store-sized-bag. Which, as you know, is like buying in bulk for a single person. But it was cheaper than getting individual potato chip bags. So I was saving money – yeah, me.

The problem was once I opened up that bag of chips I was obligated to eat them and fast. Otherwise they would go stale and I would waste money. So instead of wasting my hard earned dollars I was eating 16 servings of potato chips in 4 days. That is a lot of potato chip calories. Especially considering I didn’t slow down eating anything else.

I rarely eat potato chips these days so naturally now is the time I finally find the solution to the stale potato chip dilemma. I was speaking with an old friend and she told me to do the following:

After opening your bag and have a serving of potato chips. Close up the bag and toss the bag into a Ziploc bag and put that bag into your freezer. When you want a handful of chips you grab them from the freezer and they defrost in a minute or so. And the amazing thing is the frozen chips taste even better than the unfrozen serving of potato chips.

I asked her how long chips would stay fresh in the freezer and she didn’t have a clue. So when in doubt I always say 6 weeks. I may be wrong but it keeps my freezer rotating.

I wandered over to the Snack Food Association website (you just knew there had to be one) and read their 2009 State of the Industry Report that they had posted. According to the report:

A changing definition of affordability has brought about significant changes in shopper rituals.

· One quarter of consumers have actually reduced snacking frequency.
· Again, stretching products surfaces, with one-third of consumers trying to make their snack purchases last longer.
· And, about one-half of shoppers are spending less on snacks and/or purchasing whatever is on sale rather than their preferred brands.

I am definitely a consumer that has reduced my snacking food to next to nothing. And I have become obsessed with food waste. I shop at Big Lots so I am buying whatever was on sale in another country. Love me some chocolate covered licorice from Australia.

So try it. Freeze your potato chips and see if they really do last longer and taste better than fresh out of the bag.

According to the retail firm Precima, 48 percent of people who said they were saving money on gas are now spending that same money on groceries.

At the P & G IGA Market in Killbuck the store’s customer base is declining even as people purchase more groceries.

Manager Larry Frenette blames the larger national chains for declining sales at local grocers.

“The big box stores have hurt the smaller retailer. That’s been going on for the last few years,” Frenette said.

But the reason customers are turning to the big box store is the belief they can get a better deal and save a few dollars, Frenette said.

Sales may be plunging in everything from cars to clothing, but people still need to eat. And that means grocery stores are a relative bright spot in this recession.

They’re helped by customers who have cut back on dining out and are doing more in the kitchen. Yet even supermarkets aren’t immune to the economy as bargain-minded consumers switch stores, opt for cheaper products and even change how they pay–with some shoppers turning to gift cards.

In general, sales at supermarkets are flat, said Jeff Green of Mill Valley-based Jeff Green Partners, a retail feasibility consultant.

“But in these retail times, flat is the new up,” he said. “Flat is great.”

Safeway Inc., which owns Vons, reported a 3.9% increase in sales during the third quarter of 2008, compared with the same period a year earlier. Many other grocery stores like Save Mart are privately owned and do not report their sales.

In contrast, other retailers reported grim tidings. For instance, third-quarter sales at Home Depot fell 6%, General Motors Corp.’s sales dropped 11% and Gottschalks fell 13%.

Every few weeks, coupons arrive in Williams’ Elizabethtown, Ky., mailbox for items she usually loads into her cart. While Kroger is building loyalty – with 95 percent of a recent mailing tailored to specific households – Williams is saving money without searching through dozens of pages of coupons.

“I’m not that big a coupon-clipper,” she said. “It seems like a lot of coupons you see are (for) things that you never use.”

Although the recession has revived penny-pinching, Americans are still redeeming only 1 percent to 3 percent of paper coupons. In contrast, the nation’s largest traditional grocery chain says as many as half the coupons it sends regular customers do get used. Kroger’s part ownership of a data-mining firm allows it to put the reams of information its shopper cards collect to use in more ways than other retailers do. And one way is to give shoppers coupons mainly for products they regularly buy.

If consumers intend to cut spending, they will have to learn how to grocery shop, cook meals at home and pack brown-bag lunches, while eating out less.

“I think that more shoppers will be trading down on their grocery shopping, such as shopping at Wal-Mart or Target supercenters instead of supermarkets or wholesale clubs,” said Stephanie Nelson, founder of CouponMom.com. “And people will definitely be trading down to store brands to save wherever they shop.”

Coupons will be cool–from newspapers and online printable coupons. In December 2007, Nelson’s site had 200,000 members who printed 81,000 coupons. A year later, 1.2 million members printed 800,000 coupons.

Look for expanded use of electronic coupons, which involves going online to add “coupons” to your store loyalty card. You then use your loyalty card at the supermarket. The coupons are applied at checkout to items you bought.

So how do markets deal with rising food costs? They tinker with the price of the roughly 45,000 items people don’t buy regularly enough to have a fixed idea of their cost—tacking on 3 to 4 percent to specialty products like, say, gourmet pasta sauce or fresh-squeezed juices, without consumers noticing. “There’s an opportunity to make some margin back on those items,” says Jim Hertel, managing partner of Willard Bishop, a consultant for the industry.

But don’t expect the savings to be passed on to you when costs come down. Many manufacturers lock in prices well in advance, and they often hold off on bringing prices back down to make up for the resulting losses, says Howard. One way to be sure you’re getting the best deal when prices drop: Stick to basics. Products like coffee and meat are likely “to reflect their underlying costs more quickly than most other foods,” Howard says.
How can I spend less money on food?

One word: cook.

I can offer no specific advice (buy store-brand cereal, buy vegetables in season) that will take you as far as the general exhortation to cook your own food.

When you eat in a restaurant or buy prepared meals, you are paying for both labor and materials. When you cook, you pay only for materials. The price of your meal is determined not by what the market will bear but by what the ingredients cost. When you cook, you can vary your menu based on what looks best and costs least.

Now, you may not know how to cook, or you may not enjoy cooking. But cooking is not rocket science, and to feed yourself and your family, you don’t need to master more than a dozen recipes and/or techniques. And you can learn to cook from a book.

The 5 percent decline in Arizona prices reported Thursday was substantially more than the 1 percent nationwide drop reported by the American Farm Bureau.

But at $54.75, the cost the 16 food items in Arizona still remains significantly above the national price of $48.19. Murphree said that Arizona prices rose faster than the national average and have taken longer to come down.

Downtown Phoenix resident Mike Butler has noticed the falling prices. He was in Safeway Thursday picking up milk, on sale for $1.58 per gallon.

“They seem to be having a lot more sales lately,” said Butler, who added that he is eating out less as a result of the declining economy.

Besides passing along the lower commodity prices, grocers are feeling increased pressure from consumers and competitors to reduce prices across the board.

“Our customers have become much more price-conscious,” said Kristie Nied, a spokeswoman for Chandler-based supermarket chain Bashas’ Inc. She said that coupon use has increased significantly over the past few months as consumers search for “deals.”

After climbing for a year, Kentucky’s retail food price index fell in the last quarter of 2008, according to Kentucky Farm Bureau’s January marketbasket report.

The 40 food items chosen for the marketbasket cost shoppers an average $111.63, surveyors found, down from a record $114.72 in October.

The latest survey finding was more than $7 above the index for the end of 2007, when the marketbasket average was $104.43, the Kentucky Farm Bureau said in a news release.

According to an American Farm Bureau survey, U.S. grocery prices in the fourth quarter of 2008 were 1 percent lower than the fourth quarter of 2007. For the full year, marketbasket prices were 7 percent higher than 2007, the Kentucky Farm Bureau said in the release.

Although food prices increased in 2008, food costs less in the United States than in other countries, Kentucky Farm Bureau said in the release.

But as more people buy Web-enabled cell phones, and as technology for browsing the Web on the go improves, coupons via cell phone may be the next big thing.

Department stores such as Sears and fast food chains such as Hardee’s already send coupons via cell phone, and now Kroger has become the first major grocery chain to hop on board.

Its new program, begun in December, lets shoppers virtually clip coupons for products such as General Mills cereal and Palmolive using their cell phones. The virtual coupons are linked to their Kroger Plus loyalty cards, and the discount is automatically deducted when the shopper buys the qualifying item and scans a Kroger card at checkout.

The numbers are in for 2008 and they look good for the seed industry. They look even better for folks who want to grow vegetables from seed and save money in 2009.

By some estimates, garden seed, especially vegetable seed sales, were up by anywhere from 40 percent to well over 100 percent compared with recent years. In fact, some industry watchdog organizations suggest that seed companies in North America and much of Europe experienced their best year ever in 2008. We’re talking record seed sales … AND they project another record for 2009.

So, what is the fuss all about?

Easy, people are looking for a safer food supply, while adapting to a tighter economic outlook. If you have never grown a vegetable garden, or started your own garden plants, there’s still plenty of time to save money in 2009 by growing your vegetables from seed. If you are like me, you will be amazed, and thrilled, by all the different varieties of vegetable species from which to choose. If you are looking for that little early-maturing tomato called Bison from your youth, you can find seed and save money by growing your own in 2009.

If you want to lose those extra pounds and save money this year, put cooking at home at the top of your New Year’s resolutions list.

Some may say, “I don’t know how.” Others may say, “I don’t have time” or find the convenience of grabbing a hot, restaurant-made meal difficult to let go.

But starting small and cooking once or twice a week will be worth the effort for your wallet and waistline.

A recent article on msn.com cites frequently eating meals at restaurants as one of the biggest causes of obesity in the United States. Preparing more meals at home lets us control portion size and the amount of fat and calories we put into dishes, not to mention the absence of a tempting basket of bread sticks or chips and salsa.

Home cooking also helps keep cash in our pockets. Sometimes it is cheaper to run out and grab a quick bite for yourself, but if you have a family, friends or roommates to feed, it is definitely cheaper to stay in and cook, says cookbook author and cooking instructor Diane Phillips.

Seed seller W. Atlee Burpee & Co. conducted a cost analysis to point out how much money consumers save by growing some of their own vegetables in landscape beds, community gardens or large containers.

“A hundred dollars in seeds will produce $2,500 in groceries,” says George Ball, Burpee chairman. “That’s $2,400 a family can save in five months.”

This month the company introduces the Money Garden packet, which contains six seed packets of easy-to-grow vegetable varieties. The special $10 offer, available only online, is capable of producing $650 worth of groceries, says the company.

Family Dollar and Supervalu both reported quarterly results today and they seem to highlight the shift in where people are shopping.

Family Dollar saw an 8 percent increase in sales, driven in part by food. The company also raised its forecast for full-year earnings.

Meanwhile grocery store operator Supervalu had flat sales and cut its earnings forecast for the full year.

As the economy remains mired in a recession, people have been shopping places where they can save money. Wal-Mart has been the big winner, but Family Dollar says they are getting a share of that business, too.

“As more families face financial challenges in this environment, they are relying on Family Dollar for more of their everyday needs,” Chairman and CEO Howard Levine said in a statement.