$160 in FOF -- But A & P has met their freshness standards!

It seems frightening to me that A & P is reporting they've met their freshness standards and are ending the Fresh or Free program effective September 4, 2008.

Let's see what was not fresh yesterday:
It was a $38 spiral-sliced honey ham that was not fresh which I replaced with this bone-in ham shoulder. I'm seeing lots of soups this fall :) And ham and fried cabbage. The puddings were a replacement for refrigerated strawberry shortcake cups. For crying out loud, the egg beaters expired in July! More axe deodorant. My son will never stink!

Juice, fruit salads and a chicken salad, english muffins, So good tetra (the out of date ones were from 2007!! They apparently just reshelve the darned things. They keep re-appearing.) Caramel dairy things. I like the chocolate but the chocolate was all out of date. The steaks were a replacement for a $20 box of chicken wings from the deli. (ewwwwww.) I was going to buy the steaks anyway as they're a pretty good deal and nice quality. Oh, that's right, I did buy some more!


The milk was a replacement for a 4L bag of Goat's milk which expired August 1. The yogurt tub was a replacement for a small Astro 4-pack of plain yogurts. I'd rather have the small ones but all of them were out of date. I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream all the time. In my cooking the small ones work perfectly so I can pop them in the freezer and pull them out as needed. More juice, Silk soy milk, Bertolli olive oil. Woohoo. I wish I'd subbed an extra virgin olive oil but there were fresh replacements of the same kind. Orange juice. There were three varieties of this juice out of date. We're not much for juice in this house, but with the heat I don't mind the kids getting a bit of vitamins with their hydration. Also, Roy works 12-hour shifts out in the elements. He needs all the hydration and nutrition he can get.

Speaking of Roy he had a nice little lunch today with the FOFed fruit salad, FOFed juice, and some of that lovely road-side jam we purchased this weekend during out fruit stand tour. I'll tell you later how to know if a fruit stand is worth stopping at or not.

So, A & P, now that you've met your freshness standard, how do you explain the $160 FOF above? Not to mention all the expires we left in the store! I see a hiring wave of stock persons and intensive stock rotation training for them. Hopefully along the way they figure out how to remove expired items from the shelves and have them NOT turn back up on the shelves!

A & P won't have any more of my business after September 4. Not only are their prices exorbitant, but their staff are surly and inhospitable most of the time. Even when I haven't FOFed, the staff are less than pleasant at best. That makes a difference for me.