Teach your children -- and maybe yourself -- how to shop for groceries.

I'm the person in my family who shops for grocieries, and I'm constantly amazed when I look into the cart behind mine in the check-out line and see nothing on sale: no two-for-one items, nothing with that extra label that says "Reduced for Quick Sale." I can't believe people just come into the grocery store and pay full price for things they could have gotten last week or next week or even this week at greatly discounted prices.

Fifteen dollars for those steaks? I bought the same package last week at half that price!

I think many of us don't teach our kids how to shop, and that may be because we, ourselves, don't know how to shop. My own grown children go into a grocery store and pick out what they want to eat and pay for it. End of deal.

But if I'd taught them -- and I blame myself -- how to shop for food, they could be saving many dollars on every trip.

And I'm not talking about coupons, which I never use.

I'm talking about looking over those colorful grocery store inserts in our newspapers every week and then walking the aisles, watching for bargains.

Just this week, a big store -- in your part of the country, it could be Safeway or King Soopers or whatever (probably not Whole Foods) -- advertised asparagus for 99 cents a pound. Hello? In
my part of the country -- out West -- asparagus is usually $3.99 a pound. I scanned the rest of the insert and saw that "country style ribs" were $1.49 a pound. These are the delicious, meaty ribs that you can cook for a few hours in a crockpot and that, with a little BBQ sauce, please everyone (except the odd vegetarian) in your family. Just a week before, they were $3.49 a pound. Did I stock up? Well, duh. (Tip: Buy a stand-alone freezer and put it in your garage.)

Every major grocery store runs specials every week. It's a law of (commercial) nature. They just do it. It's competition, the law of the market, the American way. BUT you have to be willing to read the newspaper inserts and/or walk the aisles. If you can't stand to be in a grocery store, then I'm not talking to you. Or if you only buy when you have to, as when your friends are coming over and you don't want to be bothered, go ahead and do what you have to do. That's emergency shopping. Not what most of us do. (I always remember Joan Rivers saying, "Does anyone pay retail?" She was talking about clothes, but the principle applies to groceries: You don't have to pay "retail".)

But if you are the one responsible for buying the groceries that feed your family, you really owe it to yourself to get smart about how to find the best prices. Like everything else these days, the costs of food are going up. Milk, potatoes, butter -- you name it. But every store, at one time or another, has deals that you can't pass up. I bought ten pounds of potatoes last week for $1.99.
Would my kids, shopping on their own, have paid more? Of course they would, if last week was when they wanted the potatoes: they were $3.19 for ten pounds then. (Of course that's assuming they know how to cook potatoes, which they probably don't but need to learn.)

I've often seen or heard about experiments when government/city officials try to feed a family of however many on a fixed amount for a week, and how they struggle to do it. But when I read detailed accounts, I see that they're paying the full amount for ground beef and other staples when all they had to do was check the newspaper inserts and/or walk the aisles of a few more stores and they would have found bargains galore! Every week something is on sale in some store of other! But you do have to put in the time. Is it worth it to you? It is to me.

And if you find it on sale -- something your family eats/drinks regularly -- buy a bunch of it. Store it wherever you can find the space. It's not going to go to waste.

Also, stay away from frozen entrees like Stouffer's unless they're two-for-one or half-price, as they often are. And if they are, buy several and stuff them into your freezer. You'll use them.

Recently I visited a grocery store, and upon leaving, the clerk at the register gave me my receipt, which was for $38.54, and she told me, "You saved $32.67." I'd saved almost half my entire cost! You can, too, with a little planning and some time on your part.

And you know what? If you get into it, grocery shopping is like bargain-hunting of any kind. If you love to to find name-band clothes marked-down at major stores, you could get into this kind of grocery-shopping. Hey, I recently found frozen shrimp rings-- perfect for parties -- at, you guessed it, two for one. It was just after Super Bowl Weekend.

Which raises this point: shop for values right after some kind of holiday. If you want to buy a turkey --which, cooked right, can serve your family for a week: leftovers and soups, etc. -- the
day or week after Thanksgiving or Christmas is your cue. Want a usually very expensive cut of corned beef? Check your local grocery store after March 17, St. Patrick's Day: they'll have lots of them that they bought and can't return and will be cutting the price to almost nothing. I buy several every year and put them in the freezer (even if I have to shove aside the Stouffer's).

I intend to be there this year, as I love a slow-cooked corned-beef brisket, simmered in the crockpot for a few hours and then put into the oven for an hour at 350 to brown it on top. And don't forget the cabbage, which will be selling for about 25 cents a pound and that you only want to add during the last hour of crockpot cooking. With leftovers, you can feed your whole family for very little that week. That cabbage you don't use, by the way, can be cooked in any number of ways, many very tasty.

We should teach our kids how to shop for groceries, but we may need to remind ourselves how to do it, too. Does it take time? Of course. But so does clipping coupons.

And, if you surrender to it, it's a great culinary adventure. Bon appetit!