Primer

With excerpts January 3, 2024 & January 10, 2024

Hi - Time to circle back and reset the landscape. We have new subscribers wondering what the heck I am talking about? Welcome to my brand. This is MitchzKitchen.ca

Boy, does that sound pretentious, and we're really not? Well, Maddie thinks she is the bestest dog in the whole wide world, but, that is actually true, so no harm, no foul. The idea for this newsletter came from a weekly company email where I shared my favourite finds from the Zehr's flyers and Optimum offers. That was six years ago just as COVID was ramping up. What it has evolved into is my curmudgeonly commentary on the Canadian condition in general and the retired life of an inveterate fiddler and contrarian. I am trying to live an honourable and I hope, a renaissance existence. A life of revival. There is a spot in a Heinlein novel that has stayed with me for decades:. He posits that a man should be able to:
1. change a diaper
2. plan an invasion
3. butcher a hog
4. steer a ship
5. design a building
6. write a sonnet
7. balance accounts
8. build a wall
9. set a bone
10. comfort the dying
11. take orders
12. give orders
13. co-operate
14. act alone
15. solve equations
16. analyze a new problem
17. pitch manure
18. program a computer
19. cook a tasty meal
20. fight efficiently & die gallantly
He famously concluded that: "Specialization is for insects". Ever since and to the extent that I could afford the time and resources, I have been picking up hobbies. For the most part, I believe they are things that make me more rounded. More worldly. Bob Proctor said "people these days are tiptoeing through life, trying to make it ... to death. You are not going to get very much of that here! This will remain boisterous and ribald. Profane and irreverent. The real unvarnished truth ... according to me. That is not to suggest that I don't get stuff wrong. Just ask my friends or SWMBO (she who must be obeyed). They point out my flaws and misconceptions with metronomic regularity. You are not paying for my opinion ... but a hundred of you seem to like reading it.

What I am going to ask you start paying for on a purely voluntary basis is my grocery shopping content. I am leaning towards $48 for six months. That's two bucks per week. I am spending a bit of real money now. Domain registrations, email (coming soon), DNS resolution, storage, web hosting and hardware. For a guy who never kept a budget for 30 years, I know to the dollar how much we spend on fourteen line item budget that was professionally create (by me). That's what I used to do for a living on a slightly larger scale. It has become a new hobby?

We were spending 10K on groceries leading up to retirement, 12K since 2022. That includes dog food and beer. Non-perishables are mostly free under my process. So, are Canadian grocery bills really that much more expensive than they were a few short years ago? Yup. Have these costs blown up beyond all recognition as the press and whatever politician is not in power would have you believe? Nope. Not even close. That is not to say that takeout food, gas and beef costs haven't skyrocketed. They have. I keep pricing on common items a;ll the way back to before COVID. What I am seeing is the the sale price today, is what we might have been calling the regular price, a few years ago. So the stats say 20% in about six yerars. That feels about right. Of course, the bleating from millennials is unrelenting. They are the ones who have turned who have turned, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Uber Eats, Skip The Dishes and Door Dash into billion dollar companies? Could they lease do me a favour and refrain from bitching about paying two bucks for a tomato, then ordering in a $27 burrito for home delivery? Could you do that for me?

So, information is power and we can make some pretty bold statements. I am seeing all the basics food items we buy, go on sale on a about a six week cycle. Our master list shows the same major cuts of meat (ground beef, stewing beef, pork chops & couple of different chicken cuts) come up over and over again. I have lists back to 2021 and can see the price slowly moving. Same for dairy (milk, eggs, cheese). Same for my favourite frozen foods & baked good etc. If you simply time your purchases to those windows and spend over over the continuity threshold, the points start to roll in. Don't pay the $3,99 for a 3 pound bag of carrots? Wait a week. They will come back on sale for $2.50. That's 35% off for waiting a week to boil a frigging carrot? It's not that hard? I continue to recommend you all get the President's choice Insiders Mastercard. For $120, you get free PC Express, free delivery, four times the points from Zehr's and five times the points from Shoppers. It pays for itself in about two months. Lastly, when you have that million, spend it on Redemption Events. Shoppers will give you the most bang for your points, but Zehr's will throw in an extra $50 from time to time. Save your receipts. That's it. You will do a million points next year!

PICK THE LOW FRUIT (meat, fruits and vegetables from my list)
HIT THE BIG CONTINUITY NUMBERS (meat, F&V, the overall)
REDEEM DURING EVENTS (usually non-perishables from Shoppers)
SAVE YOUR RECEIPTS (and for God's sakes, get the PC Insiders MasterCard).

If you have done those three things and do not have 600,000 points in six monhs, I will happily refund your money or make a 50,000 point donation to a local food bank in your name. If you have them, then you can make a 50,000 point donation to a local food bank, if you wish?

LISTS

It's been going on since the first frontier general store opened across the road from another general store. Loss Leaders. Putting an item at or below cost to entice customers into your store, knowing that they will need other things and they will get you on the flip side. The Romans were doing it. They learned it from the Greeks. The first step in getting around that strategy is to have a lists. Plural. It's easy. I call mine NOW, SOON and SOMEDAY. Next week, I will dig in. It would appear to be a quiet week on both the flyer and the offers standpoint? There is a 10% continuity spend at Zehr's at the $300 level but the flyer is so mediocre that I would have throuble getting there? Shoppers has my favourite quick hit on any $60 spend for a guaranteed 20K back in points. So if you had to spend $360 next week ... you might want to start with those two. I can't get you to $300 from the flyers but perhaps you have a larger fridge list this week? It is after all, Father's Day coming up. Which is why the flyers suck. Here is your list:

The Payoff

So, since I got out of the hospital, we've had three working days with the three amigos. The grade on the property line near my sidewalk is now a foot lower and new sod has been laid. A hosta bed was build up against the north face (full shade) of the house and a new raised bed veggie garden (12 x 16) is complete and planted where my Rain Garden used to be.

I told you about the concrete pour last week end and the pond is up and running. Labour help was around $2500, major construction materials were $1500. Plants and landscaping materials were $1200. About half of that total was offset by drawing my Optimum points total from nearly two million to zero. I am literally slowing traffic on our street with my new front gardens and no one has even seen the pond yet!

Just wait until the roses goes over the arbor and the Bougainvillea takes off! I try and do three hours every morning which gets me well over 10,000 steps daily. If I go too hard or fail to eat, SWMBO gets out the Louisville Slugger and threatens tears, so I try not to do that. LM would say "Life Is Good". You all know my mantra: "I live in a paradise!"

My lungs are back to something like 95%. I saw my rockstar Rheumatologist yesterday and he is going to try some Quadrotriticale and see if he can wean me off the Prednisone without my immune system attacking my lungs again. It's a long process and I will update you all again around Labour Day. My thanks again for your well wishes and modern medicine. And SWMBO.

Mitch & Maddie