The price of groceries

Grocery shopping lately has left me wanting to abandon my shopping cart to curl up in the fetal position!

I can’t understand why more people aren’t talking about this.

I’ve mentioned many times that we find the price of groceries here in Nova Scotia at least 50% more expensive than in Ontario. Over the last 3 weeks of grocery shopping, I’ve found a DRASTIC increase in prices – so much so that I’m changing what foods we buy.

We have two full time salaries coming into our home. How are people surviving here in rural Nova Scotia, especially since so many of them bring far less money into their house ?

Over the last 2+ months, to save money, and for the good of our health, we cut out buying all junk food and snacks. That saves quite a bit of money, because processed food is garbage, and it is expensive.

Today I didn’t buy Romaine lettuce, because it was too expensive. So I bought head lettuce, that was almost as much money. I bought a rough-looking cauliflower for $3.50.

I usually buy lunch meat for our sandwiches. I often buy a bunch of different pre-packed meats so we have lots of variety. The packs I buy that are $4-$5 each, were over $7 today.

My least favourite thing to do in the kitchen is grate cheese, so I like to buy the pre-packed shredded mozzarella cheese for when we make pizza. Now those, even the cheapest no-name, smallest bag of shredded cheese, is over $7. Just enough for one pizza. No thanks.

The big President’s Choice meat lasagna we like to keep in the freezer for when we don’t want cook used to often be on sale for $5, regular $10. Now they are suddenly $12.99.

Now I’m buying Jeff bologna for his sandwiches, and the cheapest wieners for our weekend hot dog lunches. Small hams that used to be $5 are now $12. Today I cheaped out and bought a couple ham steaks that were on sale.

I keep diving into my great-aunt Miep’s cookbook “Do more with less”. We’ve added quinoa to our diet (love it!!) Quinoa, pronounced like ‘kinwa’, is used similarly to rice, but it isn’t really a grain. In fact it is a fruit. It looks like little seed pods that blow up when they are cooked. It is high in protein, and unlike rice, it has a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods. (okay, got that last part from Wikipedia)

I’m trying to find ways we can do more with less. I need to learn how to make good soups. I make bread once in awhile – maybe I should always make it.

We have to start buying a lot more food locally, from our farmers, and at the farmer’s market. We need to super-charge our garden. We need to Jeff needs to hunt (only not the cute bunnies).

Now that Jeff’s shed project is just about done, he’s busy planning his next project – a chicken coop – so we can raise our own meat birds.

Food banks must be as busy lately as the grocery stores used to be.