Another one with the opposite problem. The company has since changed their labeling and it’s much more obvious.
The store near me is really bad about fronting the milk. I do use that to my advantage, and buy milk which is 25% or 50% off. Really ticks me off when I get home and discover that I paid full price for milk which should have been discounted.
I’m very careful about tuna. I only buy it if I write it down on a list and specify if it should be packed in oil or water. I’ve made too many mistakes there.
Ever so often I’ll buy a chocolate bar with creamy filling. I don’t like the texture, but if they are frozen they are edible-ish. Don’t like wasting money.
My husband does most of the shopping, too. He’s pretty good, but will often miss the label that says no fat or 50% less of something. In his defense, I’ll say it’s gotten so crazy with all the different varieties of some products. I also think the additional information is sometimes hidden, and you really have to be examining the label. This topic is so spot on though because we were just talking about it last night. My daughter’s boyfriend was having dinner with us and I don’t even know how it came up, but I mentioned that she will often send pictures of stuff to her dad so he has a specific idea of what he’s looking to get.
We’ve had issues with what we thought were green chilies, but turned out to be Hot green chilies, or in one case, jalapenos.
In both cases I’m thinking of, we discovered the problem by eating white chicken chili that was spicier than intended. And then went out and checked the recycling for what the cans actually said.
Around here, “chilies” would almost certainly be hot. Sweet peppers would be called peppers.
(Hot peppers would probably also be called peppers, though; so the potential for confusion remains. To me, “chili peppers” are a specific type of hot pepper, little elongated red ripening ones, usually sold at red ripe stage, and fairly hot; though I know the term is more general in some contexts and a lot more general in some places.)
I think our local grocery store has six or eight different varieties of Hidden Valley Ranch dip/dressing mix. And our recipe called for two different ones, and I told Dad not to stress too much about which one he got.
Unfortunately, he ended up with two packages of the Jalapeno Ranch flavor.
(And I didn’t figure it out until I’d already opened them both).
The good news– I was making Chicken Bacon Ranch Quesadillas. So one of the packages of mix went into the chicken which was nicely flavored. The other went into a sauce, which had chopped pickled jalapenos in it, because I had assumed the ranch dressing would make everything a little bland. The sauce ended up being way too spicy for people in this house.
(Also, the quesadillas were a mistake, because I ended up slightly burning more than one of them. The leftover chicken went into tacos, which were much tastier).
I’d found that “solid white tuna” tended to have less liquid than “chunk white tuna”. Now, I mostly spend the extra money to get to get “solid white albacore” because the cans seem to have much less liquid.
90% of the time, when my dad shops, he makes reasonable choices, if not always the ones I would have made. But one time this winter, I asked for tilapia to make fish tacos, and he brought home frozen tilapia with pesto sauce.
I think he just plain didn’t look in the right portion of the frozen department, because he claimed they didn’t have plain tilapia.
I made the mango salsa, and cooked the fish . . . and just couldn’t put them together in a taco shell, so I microwaved some potatos and called it good.
The next day, I dug some frozen shrimp out of the freezer, and cooked them to make shrimp tacos, with the leftover mango slaw.
I much prefer the taste of the solid white albacore variety, and buy it due to that more than to considerations about liquid.
By the way, tuna sold in pouches usually has little-to-no liquid, in my experience. I gather that the reason the pouches are popular is that many young people don’t know how to operate a can opener, which is another whole thread. But the ‘no liquid’ part is something of an advantage.
I used to buy solid white and chunk white for financial reasons. At some point after I retired I realized that I could afford to spend money on better quality food, so I decided to spend my remaining years eating well.
I’ve stumbled onto real butter that was on clearance, and bought several packages. They’re usually whipped butter in 8oz tubs, for 99 cents when short-dated, and they freeze well.
I get the cans packed in water because I have cats. Since they’re going to be howling around me when I open the can, I squeeze out the “tuna juice” as a cat snack so they’ll leave me alone for a minute.
One of my cats used to be a major pain whenever I opened a can of tuna until I put the can on the floor. Another used to jump up into the sink while I was draining the can and lick the sink, then clean out the can when I put it into the sink.
Rascal, my sole remaining cat, has not expressed any interest when I open tuna (or any other) cans. Since his cat food comes in tab-opening cans, I guess the sound of my crank can-opener doesn’t signal “food” to him.
I used to do that same thing when I had cats. The sound of the can-opener, electric or hand, always brought them running. (Of course they were disappointed when it turned out to be tomato sauce or such.)
Whenever I go home to Kentucky to see my family, I always make sure to stock up on plenty of Diet Big Red, which sadly isn’t available where I currently live. On my most recent trip, I got back to my apartment and discovered, to my considerable horror, that one of the six-packs that I had grabbed in the grocery store was, in fact, regular ol’ Big Red. I gnashed my teeth and howled in despair at the heavens. Since returning it wasn’t exactly an option, I brought it to the office so that, if nothing else, the people I work with could enjoy this magnificent beverage.
I used to do that same thing when I had cats. The sound of the can-opener, electric or hand, always brought them running. (Of course they were disappointed when it turned out to be tomato sauce or such.)