Et Tu, Save A Lot?

It's no secret that Val shops at Save A Lot. Does she save a lot? Not as much as she used to. Prices have nearly doubled over the past 8-10 years. Same as with Walmart. Still, I prefer to buy my meat at Save A Lot, because Walmart meat must be injected with water to make it heavier. That's how the hamburger skillet drippings look, anyway. Bubbly water. Not slick grease. Who knows what's really in there? The taste is not at all like Save A Lot hamburger.

Another favorite at Save A Lot used to be the chips and salsa. That's Senora Verde Salsa.

And Senora Verde Restaurant Style White Corn Chips.

In fact, those chips were so tasty that a wrestle royale almost started at the teacher lunch table over a bag I brought in that was 4 months past the sell-by date. They were just THAT good!

Lately, I have noticed a change in my Save A Lot favorites. The salsa is now watered down. Senora Verde is not giving me the full complement of diced tomatoes and onions and peppers. She is adding water like a high school sophomore left home alone for the weekend with his parents' bar stocked with one half-full bottle of vodka. When you open the lid, you could pour out one third of the contents through a strainer, and nothing would be caught.

Sure, I know you can stir that stuff up to blend it. But I never had to before. A fact which became disturbingly evident when I grabbed a jar of Senora Verde off the back of my hoarder pantry, rather than save it for the apopadopalyspe. I was SHOCKED to see that thick chunky salsa packed right up to the rim. And that stuff was still within the sell-by date!

I had noticed a month or two ago that Senora Verde updated her tortilla chip package. Now it's got a see-through panel on the front. I assumed the chips were the same. The first couple of times I bought them, they were. Not so with the package I opened today.

I dipped my chip in some super nacho makings. Because I eat my super nachos at a leisurely pace, I don't like them getting soggy. So I put the toppings in a bowl, and dip as needed. Today, my chip broke. "Oh," I though. "Bad chip." The next one did the same. And the third. I took a good look at my bowl of chips. Where they used to be an equilateral triangle shape,

Senora Verde's white corn restaurant style chips are now an isosceles triangle shape:

What's up with that, Senora Verde? How are you supposed to dip one of these structurally unsound chips into salsa, cheese, sour cream, and black olives? If you dip the pointy end, it breaks off under the weight of that chunky delicious mixture. And if you hold the pointy end, it breaks off in your hand so the business end of that chip and all its toppings stays buried.

Not only is the new re-worked chip structurally unsound...it has lost its tastiness! It's thinner! Like a 98-pound weakling at Muscle Beach. And I swear the flavor of the ground corn now has a hint of sawdust. Filler. Perhaps particle board sawdust.

Surely I'm not the only person to notice these changes. If only I had known they were coming, I could have stocked up on the last cases on the shelf. Like the big Hostess Twinkie panic of 2012.

Twinkies are back, better than ever. So I hear. I'm not a Twinkie fan myself. I'm more of a Little Debbie kind of gal. But it gives me hope. I would gladly go without my Senora Verde treats for a while if they would return in their old version.

Help me out. We did it with New Coke, didn't we?