Stores used to have various markdown areas but not much anymore with the exception of discontinued items which they'll usually put in a cart or on a bossy and place somewhere in the store. Often near the departments the discontinued items were in. Refundable items go to r-claim if it's a guaranteed sale item but that won't include any fresh foods. Mostly it's H&B items. I used to buy a lot of things like sausage when they had it "use today or freeze" and the price was next to nothing. Occasionally I'll see some marked down meats but not much. I was looking at some bacon the one day and the prices varied so much. It was dependent on the expiration date. Then I noticed a lot of it was moldy. I told the butcher meat department worker and he got all defensive and started sputtering "it's the fluorescent lights that do that!". Uh, don't you think you should pull it off the shelf buddy? I quit buying meat at that store after that. Some of the older chicken goes to the deli for the deli chicken and I suspect a lot of the meat that gets old could well be put in the grinder for hamburger. Not sure about that but it would make sense. Funny you should mention produce. I was at Target yesterday and they were putting out peppers, well trying to. The guy was looking at them and probably 4 out of 5 got tossed into a garbage box. I suppose it goes to the trash. I didn't look close but from a distance they didn't look that bad but I think since grocery is new in these stores they want to keep quality up there. Lastly, there is a Cub Food in Forest Lake where every morning a guy comes in with a station wagon and picks up (apparently) all of the old bread and bakery products. I was told he's a local pig farmer and feeds it to the pigs.

When he goes shopping, DH always asks for "paper in plastic". The brown paper bag goes inside with the plastic outside so the handles can be used. Very sturdy, gets everything out to the car safely. We've never had to pay for these bags, and we do recycle them. The plastic ones line our wastebaskets. And the brown ones are good for when I scoop the cat box and for newspapers. I realize the stores do buy these bags, but I figure they give them to customers as "good will". I remember one Sunday, I had walked to a card store for a Sunday Newspaper and it was snowing. I ducked in a nearby grocery and took a free plastic bag to keep my paper dry. See, Good Will? By the way, I think it's awful when anyone is nasty to another person. We all should just be kind to each other.

did it in 2006, when i had no time to do anything for turkey-day. it was actually my dh's idea, since dinner responsibilities would fall on him. we ordered from Publix and the mashed potatoes and salty gravy were great, nothing else was good, including the turkey that came in a plastic bag you cooked it in :-0 even non-picky dh didn't like it lol ~ liz

Um... that's not quite the story. Since my name is on the subject line: There was a horse drawn wagon in my picture book. We had an automatic icemaker, and sometimes my folks froze blocks of ice in plastic containers, but when we were having a big party or going camping, my father would get a block of ice at the ice house, which wasn't far away, and he'd take me. He'd tell the story of the ice man whose horse knew the way to connect the blocks of ice with the horse drawn wagon in my storybook. When he was a kid they had an ice box. My mother only knew electric refrigerators, even out in the country. Sometimes, equestrians would ride down out of the hills, where there were some horse estates and trails, but that's as close as we got to horses where we lived. The milkman came in a panel truck and brought the milk inside and put it in the fridge. There was a breadman, I don't think daily, also in a panel truck, but one that opened up in the back with a display of breads and pastries, but my mother had a car and preferred to go to the bakery or supermarket. There are a few reasons primarily responsible for refrigerators not lasting so long nowadays. Electronics help meet energy savings goals, but are notoriously delicate. People want all kinds of gizmos, like crushed ice dispensers, which have never had a lot of longevity. The ice maker is the most likely place for failure. With all the plastic parts, which make shipping lighter, can be molded rather than wrought, and don't require metal ores (though petroleum is also a scarce resource), and overseas workforces who work for fewer dollars than North American workers, fridges are way cheaper in terms of buying power spent than they were ever so long ago, and far cheaper to replace than repair. People move a lot and move their appliances, which is hard on them. Landlords used to supply fridges.