The economy sucks. But frankly, everyone is to blame. I am to blame. I was in Buffalo for four years, a bachelorette living a charmed existence and frittering away my paychecks. I was stupid, blind, and didn’t care. And now I have a chunk of debt, no job, and an uncertain future.

What partly got me here was a sense of entitlement. I was worth it, damn it! I got my first big job with benefits! I was single, I could do whatever I pleased! I could live every adventure I wanted to!

Worth. Entitlement. I have big problems with those words now. What I’ve learned about worth is you are only as worthy as what you put into something. You aren’t worthy of more.

My worth to society is rather nil. I don’t make any money, I am not contributing. But somehow, this has left a lot of space for me to think and find my inner “worth”. Qualities not touched by status, money, or power. I’m no longer that charmed bachelorette. I’ve been brought down several pegs, and it isn’t a bad place to be. A humbling place, but also a place to build from.

Anyway, I need to sputter about grocery stores. I feel the way about grocery stores how some women feel about the mall. Grocery shopping is my luxury now, considering I can’t afford much else. Its a marvelous treasure trove of goodies known and unknown. I could spend hours there, discovering new items to cook with. A grocery store is an anthropological dig, really. It reflects the tastes of its community. My favorite game in the checkout line is to analyze people from what they buy. There is the health food nut who gives in to childhood Oreos. Or the guy buying Fritos and beer, adding Emergen-C as an afterthought.

I live in a town with two foremost grocery stores. There is another one, but it will go out of business soon. There is a gulf of difference in the style of these two stores. The first one is ALDI, a discount grocery store with a bare-bones approach.

Most grocery items are stored in opened cardboard boxes. No bakery, no meat counter, no deli. You buy your own grocery bags. You bag your own groceries. You return your cart for a quarter you originally fed into a cart connector. A very economical set-up which shaves off overhead costs. A lot of people in town shop here, the poor with their food stamps, and the sensible not-so-poor looking to save.

The day after I moved down to Baltimore, I located the nearest ALDI and wanted to go. The boyfriend was a bit cranky, but finally agreed to take me. When he walked in and looked around at the prices, his eyes started bugging out. We had a field day, tossing things into the cart willy-nilly because we were getting away with something extraordinary. I think he still shops there. Its just too good to pass up.

Ok, so you gourmets will sniff. ALDI carries a lot of basic things. No prosciutto. No artisanal cheeses. SO WHAT. It did start carrying more of the fancies in response to the increasing wants of the have-more shopping in a have-less way. I almost cried when I stumbled across goat cheese. GOAT CHEESE?!?!?! And guess what, a small log is $1.99. Wegmans carries the exact same thing for over $4.00. The quality is the same. How freakin’ ridiculous.

Wegmans is the other store. I love Wegmans. It has everything. Granted, it isn’t a Whole Foods or a co-op, but it satisfies almost anyone, carnivore to vegan, who shops there. They have organic, they have gluten-free, they have a bulk foods section, an ethnic foods section, ad nauseam. Its Disneyland. Pricey too.

The Wegmans customer is many a local folk, but I think it really survives on the next town over, a university town. The university’s tuition is over $25,000 a year, so Wegmans is helped quite a bit from the rich student influx. Make more money? Sure, organic. Sure, gourmet. Yes to Wegmans. Make less money and have many mouths to feed? The cheapest you can find. Yes to ALDI. Status is reflected in the food you eat.

My mom and dad are savvy savers who do 75% of their grocery shopping at ALDI, usually buying things at Wegmans they can’t find at ALDI. And sometimes there are odd bits of brand loyalty. My mother swears by Bush’s garbanzo beans, only found at Wegmans.

So I did an experiment. I was going to make something hoity-toity out of what I had and what I bought only at ALDI. And compare prices to Wegmans. I discovered an excellent piecrust recipe in a Mennonite cookbook this past weekend, so I’ve gone tartlet crazy. Y’know, fancy finger snacklets. Now where did that Grey Poupon go?!?!?!

I went to ALDI, hoping to score the goat cheese. Nope. Apparently everyone else thinks its a deal too. I bought a tub of gorgonzola, 5 oz. for $1.99. And a tub of asiago, 5 oz. for $1.99. I also bought bacon for $2.49 and some canned sweet potatoes, thinking I would use these. I ended up using leftover bacon and real sweet potatoes (scrounged for at home) instead.

I proceeded to Wegmans and wrote down cost per pound. When the figuring was done, ALDI asiago cheese came out to 40 cents an ounce, while Wegmans was almost 47 cents an ounce. The difference in gorgonzola was larger, ALDI again 40 cents an ounce while Wegmans was about 65 cents an ounce. I compared my other grocery items, and ALDI beat out Wegmans on ALL of them, even the canned sweet potatoes.

I made my tartlets yesterday, assembling my toppings. They were combinations of sweet and savory. I roasted garlic and shallots, mashed sweet potato with butter, fried bacon crisp, and chopped an apple and some dates.

The two cheeses were involved. The key with these tartlets was trying out flavor combinations ahead of time. My favorites were the date & gorgonzola and the bacon, asiago, & roasted garlic.

I spent $3.98 for all this. Is it worth it? Definitely.