Grocery shopping has become a fine art for me. My fiance cooks on either Monday or Tuesday night (he alternates days off), and I cook on Saturday night. We both cook enough to leave 2 or 3 nights worth of leftovers. Fortunately we both love leftovers. That covers the week pretty much, and once a week we have a “fend for yourself” night.
Anyways, I go through all my cupboards, fridge, and freezer, and make my menu plan based on meals I can make which will require me buying the least amount of ingredients. For instance, we are having chicken curry with rice this week because I already have frozen chicken breasts, rice, coconut milk, fish sauce, and curry paste. All I had to buy was a couple bell peppers, and voila! Dinner! The other meal we will be having this week is my veggie packed smoked salmon salad with creamy ranch dressing. I already have the salmon (bought it frozen at the butcher’s last week), feta, tomatoes, and salad dressing. I bought some fresh lettuce, croutons, red onion and cucumbers, and that will make dinner #2.
Then there’s my son’s list. He is 4.5 years old, and is allergic to dairy, eggs, soy (he can eat a little in moderation), bananas, and nuts of all kinds. We carry an epi-pen due to his peanut and dairy allergies. Anyways, he has special brand name foods we have to buy cause they have to be allergin free. If you thought buying organic healthy food in general was challenging, try throwing in a few random allergies. Now we’re talking challenging! So I write his list.
Right now I shop at three stores. One is a local butchers called Pipers Meat Cleaver, and they carry local hormone/antibiotic-free meat and poultry. The next is a local health food store called Charlie Browns, and they carry local in-season organic produce, and all those health-nut foods that the grocery store doesn’t care yet, such as xylitol and organic red onions. And then finally is Save-on-Foods. They have an amazing selection of natural foods, and their prices are better than the health food store on most things. I also love that they have a discount card, cause I’m saving up my points, and when I have 35,000 (I’m up to 30,000 at the moment) I will be cashing them in for a $100 hotel voucher to use on our wedding night hotel.
Today’s shopping trip was just to save-on though. When I got there, I got out my collection of re-usable shopping bags, and began shopping! I checked the flyer for any good savings (today I got 5000 bonus save-on points and 30% off a book I’ve been wanting, so it’s worth checking!) and got out my grocery list.
Something new occurred to me today as I was shopping… They had canned light tuna packed in water on sale for $0.29/can, so I picked up 4 cans. Normally I wouldn’t give it another thought, but my heightened consciousness lately of the impact my choices are having on the environment made me stop for a minute. How do you know where the fish is coming from or how it’s harvested? How do you find out if it’s farmed or wild? What is the environmental impact of locals harvesting wild fish? This can of tuna says it’s a product of Thailand and is dolphin safe. What exactly does that mean? Which then also got me thinking about the amount of fuel consumption required to process and ship the fish to me all the way from Thailand. I did some preliminary reading around on the web, and if the articles on fish farms and overfishing are true, this isn’t going to be an easy issue to resolve. I definitely need to do some further research on this and figure out if there are any fish that are harvested in an environmentally friendly manner.
So, pretty much everything I bought today was whole, natural and organic. An exception to the organic rule is pasta. I have yet to find a whole wheat organic pasta that doesn’t taste like chewy cardboard. I prefer the flavor of Catelli Healthy Harvest whole wheat pasta.
Another non-organic food I bought was red onion. Why is it that the grocery stores don’t carry organic red onions? They have everything else it seems… why not red onion? Strange…
I can’t believe how expensive groceries are getting. A year ago I used to average around $80 a week for me, my son (even with all his special dietary needs), and dinners for my fiance. Now I average $120-150. That’s a ridiculous rate of inflation! Okay… gripe over.
One thing I did today that I don’t normally do, is I impulse shopped a bit. Okay, a lot. On my list of impulse buys today: AA batteries (my son’s play drill needs new batteries), 2 boxes of wax strips for my chin hairs (on sale), a large storage bin for my Christmas decoration storage, a whole wheat organic spinach frozen pizza, whole wheat pasta, organic tomato sauce and a can of organic diced tomatoes (just in case I get the urge for spaghetti?! LOL), a novel I’ve been wanting to buy (there was a 30% couple in the flyer), 2 more cans of tuna than I planned on buying (it was on sale), a package of reusable lunch containers (I really do need those, but they weren’t on my list), and a package of listerine teeth whitening strips (holy hannah they were expensive! I’m getting married in 6 weeks and want to have pearly whites for the photos – I’m just praying all those unpronounceable ingredients aren’t toxic to my health!).
On my way home I did my part for the environment and stopped at the recycling centre to drop off all my glass bottles and a bag of stuff that my son doesn’t want anymore. There’s really something satisfying about recycling. I felt almost as good as I do when I give someone a ride home in the rain.
