Whole Foods ready-made mac and cheese. Highway robbery!

I called Don on Sunday afternoon after I left my volunteer post at the Designers Showcase house. He said that he and Elli went to Whole Foods. Uh oh. This is not good news. Don is your dream grocery shopper. He is a sucker for every promotional item, he rarely pays attention to what anything costs, he sees something he likes and he throws it in the basket.

I am the COMPLETE opposite. I watch prices on everything. I comparison shop. I've always done this - but I do it even more now that we are on a tight budget.

Don rarely goes food shopping anymore -- I take care of it. I do all the cooking anyway. Plus he will cost us too much money!  So I was dreading seeing the receipt when I got home. He bought filet mignon, fresh tuna and mac and cheese for Elli. The cost of the fresh fish and beef nearly gave me a coronary. But nothing could prepare me for what he paid for Elli's mac and cheese. $10.34 for a small container. WHAT!!?!! Are you kidding me? Even Don knew that was a lot of $$ for noodles and cheese. But once it's in the box what do you do? There are a line of people waiting. You're kind of stuck.

So I have to ask. Hey, Whole Foods, what's up with the mac and cheese rip off?  Come on, it's pasta, cheese and milk. We rarely shop at your store anymore because we can't afford it. This is ridiculous.

$8.99/lb gets you this - a small container of mac and cheese.

So Whole Foods, are you out there? What are your profits on this? I'd like a breakdown of paper, food and labor please. Because I feel like you're making a killing on me. And I won't pay these prices anymore. You have a big, shiny new store opening down the street from us that I would LOVE to shop in. But not at these prices. No way.

I have two fantastic mac and cheese recipes. One from Martha and one from Ina that I'm going to make and calculate my foods costs from. Click here for a link to those recipes from a previous post. And here's a link to the Whole Foods recipe. It's pretty basic and probably costs $6 to make a whole batch.

This is not over. Game on WF.