Confessions of a (Food) Shopaholic

I am not a man but I probably have
 that blissful look on my face while shopping.

There, I admit, I am a food shop-a-holic.  Even though I just live in a little town with not much variety for shopping, I feel my day is not complete unless I do some grocery shopping, no matter how little.   It is so easy to shop and fun.  It gets me out of the house for a little while, I am able to be in different surroundings, I bring home food and I enjoy it.

What's wrong with that?

Well, one thing is we really can't afford it.  Some days I spend more than others and since switching to gluten free, I find I spent a lot more this week than I should of.  It just seems like we never have anything to eat, mainly because there are a lot of days I just don't want to cook!  I am trying to get away from packaged foods in general but right now I'm using them as a bridge (crutch?) to a new way of eating and hoping to wean us off soon.  Unfortunately, these foods are more than what we usually spend and it's adding up.

Second is I realize that I am getting more and more away from local eating.  Our family will never be 100% for a number of reasons, availability and cost are the two big ones.  But while the cereal the kids like is made in Canada and so are other things, I know I need to make more of an effort to make things from scratch and try to get more local ingredients.

Another is I should be finding other things to do to occupy my time to get out.  That is hard.  I'm a very shy, introverted person.  I find it hard to make friends and when I have friends, I don't like doing things.  There, I said it.  I am also getting too old to feel terrible about it.   Yeah, I said it, lol!   I am not going to be a fakey person for the sake of having friends, IYKWIM.

Well the reason I'm thinking about these things again is I submitted my application for our CSA on Saturday.  A deposit and a whole years worth of post dated cheques.  Mark wasn't very thrilled but he consented.  Right now because of my shopping habits, we tend to waste more food than I care to admit.  Some is from cooking disasters, other waste is from not planning.  Some of it is a case of it looks good in the store but we either forget about it when we get it home or we don't feel like eating it.  So yeah, he's scared of the waste.  Waste of food and waste of money.  I only signed up for a half share, which is $68 a month which I think will be plenty for us.

See, my thinking is if we get a CSA I can cut down on a lot of my shopping.  I won't have to run to the store to get overpriced produce, some that isn't local, I won't have to buy it from the farmer's market and since we are signed up for a full year, we will have produce available in the winter too.  We won't have to go on produce hunting farmers market trips, which often end up in wasted food (as what happened last year).  I expect to have to supplement it some, like fruit, but I think it will cover most of our needs.

If we get a side of beef and a side of pork or two and figure out a way to afford pastured chicken, we would almost never have to shop in a grocery store!  I would do some bulk shopping for my baking needs at the health food store or bulk barn and watch the sales for our dairy. Oh and I found someone with cheap free range eggs (Dad told me about him; it's where he gets his eggs and they're a dollar cheaper a dozen than I was paying!)

That brings me to my biggest problem; I don't plan well enough.  I have been suggesting to Mark for a long time we need a grocery budget.  I don't even know how much I spend right now.  A lot.  It is for groceries and entertainment, my entertainment.  I need boundaries or I will rebel and spend.

So I am hoping it all comes together that we can get real food, spend less money than we're spending now and instead of shopping for my entertainment, I can plan, cook and clean with the delicious reward of knowing I am feeding my family well.  Sounds good, let's see if I can stay on task with that!!

Monday Market Report October 12th

I am terrible. I have not been keeping track of what we have been spending. Part of the reason is the huge guilt I have over all the boxes of cookies we bought this weekend. GUILT GUILT! Pure junk. I feel terrible. The worst part is, I have probably eaten more than anyone. Yes, I have a problem.

Other than the junk, this is a basic rundown of what we've spent:
$350 side of beef! Whoo hoo!
about $20-25 at Bulk Barn for grains, spices, raisins, almonds and other bulk goodies.

$13 on milk (4x 2L, or two gallons in US$; it was on sale!)

$25 for 10lbs of butter, super sale! It's $4.29 regular price.

approx. $10 on produce (greens, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, ect..)
$20 today at Superstore (liver, cauliflower, more broccoli, gouda cheese, montery jack cheese, frozen smiles, locally made plum sauce, ham slices, corned beef slices, chick peas, ect..)

$10 on misc. stuff. and about $25 on junky cookies, crackers and ice cream :(

It is really hard to stay on the real food track when the kids are so picky. It's a vicious cycle. I need to stop buying it. Looking at ingredients will stop me most of the time, but Mark likes junk too. I told him if he wants it, he can buy it when he works since he works at a grocery store and it is there. It can be dangerous for me to go into a grocery store.

Monday Market Report October 4th

I think this is my favorite market report ever! I had so much fun shopping this week :). I didn't report what I got at Bulk Barn because I decided that from October on, I would be accountable for all the groceries that I buy, not just what I buy at the farmers market. I am trying to build up our storage with healthy food and hopefully posting it all will give me motivation to stay on track.

Good news! This week we are getting our quarter of grass fed and finished beef! It was the last one and I almost didn't get it. I feel it was a great blessing that it was freed up for us, with God knowing how important it was to me and our health to buy it. It is going to the butcher on Thursday so it should be interesting to see how much it is and how I handle placing the cut order (I never know how to do it!).

This is what our kitchen looked like when we got home late Friday night. It was a full day of shopping and buying lots of yummy vegetables (and other things). (don't mind the mess; things just kind of got thrown around and I've been slack in the housekeeping department lately :) ).

I was so happy to go to Meadowbrook meat market. They were having a sale of buy two get one free shoulder bacon and frozen sausages. We got 6 packs of the shoulder bacon and 6 sausages. 3 packs of sausages were breakfast sausages and the others were donair, maple and honey garlic. We also bought a slab of salt pork (Mark loves this fried up but it's also good on bacon and rappie pie), a couple packages of back bacon plus a little pack of goats milk Parmesan cheese. Now I really don't care much for goat milk products so I'm taking a leap here trying the cheese. I think it will be interesting. I don't want to break down the cost of each item but all this plus a $2.50 bag of ice to keep it cold was $49. We've had some of the bacon and a pack of breakfast sausages and it is really good!

I love Forsythe's Farm Market but didn't get much. At this point we already had most of our produce (even though carrots were $3 cheaper a bushel here but we didn't know). 2 spaghetti squash $2.50 and two zucchini for $1.50. Total: $4. They had 2 liter jugs of real maple syrup for $27-something so I may get that our next time through. They only take cash and I didn't have that much on hand.

Here are our Foote Family Farm findings, a gallon of unpastureized honey and a gallon of fresh pressed cider (we had to have some before we got home, lol! It's the one in the red cap ;) ). $26; $5 for the cider and $21 for 12 lbs of honey.

The next two pictures are from Gouchers Farm Market. I wanted to go back and get more! So much wonderful food at great prices. The acorn and butternut squash were 49 cents a pound and I wish I had bought more! 50lbs buttercup squash $15, 4 acorn squash $2.11, 2 organic garlic $2.17 ($10 a pound), 1 butternut squash $1.79, 2 sweet dumpling squash $1.50, 2 pie pumpkins $2 for both, big bag of dulse $1o, 5 cucumbers $1, 3 bunches of green onions at 69 cents each, mushrooms $1.99, romaine lettuce 89 cents, red onions 50 cents a pound (my favorite and usuall $2 a pound! 2.25lbs so $2.25 for onions), bunch of bananas for $1.10 and we each got an ice cream that were $1 each, cheapest around for real local ice cream (Mark and I had Oxford blueberries and cream, so divine on such a hot day!)

This was from a neat farm. The farmer was old, probably in his 80's. He looked like what you expect an old time farmer to look like. I wanted to buy everything he had as his prices were very reasonable and he was pretty nice. The bushel of carrots were $7.75, 25lbs of turnip $7. 50, 2 lbs of green peppers at $2.50, 5 gourds for 20 cents each ($1), tomatoes were 70 cents a pound (3lbs so $2.10) and no spray strawberries were $2.50 a box. The strawberries aren't there because it wasn't until we got home I remembered I sat them down to carry stuff out and didn't go back to get them. Grrrr. I was so looking forward to nice fresh strawberries! Total spent: $24

We usually get a lot more at Avery's but they didn't have much and we didn't want to shop around the other ones. 3 bunches of celery at 77 cents each and two grapefruit at 59 cents each.

These aren't really a farm goodie but they are the best chips! I especially love the burlap bag they came in. These chips are made in New Brunswick (technically in our 100 mile zone even though it is across the Bay of Fundy) and can be hard to find around here (Bridgewater's Appleberry's is the closest place I know that stocks them). They make awesome sweet potato chips! Small hand batches of kettle chips are the best (even though they are made with canola). These were $3.99 at Winners (at Pete's Frootique they are nearly $5 and you don't get an awesome burlap sack with them!).

This is what I got at the Saturday farmers market. Almost 2 dozen pullet eggs for $3.75, 2lbs of grassfed beef for $5 and a pound of ground pork $2 (I think it's pastured but probably fed grains/feed too). I got the meat before I knew we were getting the beef, otherwise I wouldn't of bothered!

And finally, I got this at Sobeys. 2 blocks of cheese ($3.99 each) and a bag of spinach ($1.99). No one had spinach in the valley and I still crave greens. There weren't even any at the farmers market because it was pouring rain and the lady I usually get them from wasn't there. I will buy more cheese when they don't only have skim mozza. I also need to get milk and go to bulk barn again.

So an extremely productive shopping week! If I can remember how, I am going to put our grocery tally in the sidebar so I can keep track of our expenses. Remember that this isn't just for the week, but I am attempting to store up some food for winter. I have been doing a lot of reading on how to store food for winter use, even if it is different in this modern day than it was over a hundred years ago.

Don't Be Fooled

It can be very easy to be fooled when shopping at the grocery store. I went thinking I would get some items, particularly cheese since there are some foods I want to make in the upcoming week. They only had part skim mozza so I only bought one plus a pack of old cheese.

Then I got browsing.

I picked up a couple packages of marshmallows. I put them back. I remembered I need to avoid junk and get the kids off refined sugar products. Plus I have a few packs kicking around. I mostly wanted the 10 air miles.

Then I remembered I saw bottles of maple syrup for $3.99 earlier. I grabbed a couple of bottles. Something made me stop and closer examine the bottles. I realized it didn't say pure maple syrup on the front and on closer examination the only place maple appeared was in the product name. I looked at the ingredients. Ingredient: sugar, Water, Pure Maple Syrup, Invert Sugar, Natural Maple Flavour. So the 100% Natural Canadian Syrup was mostly comprised of water and sugar, eh? Big surprise, eh?

So make sure you are looking at the labels. $3.99 is too much to pay for sugar syrup. Forsythes, a farm market I love to visit, has 2L bottles for $27-something of pure maple syrup, a lot better than the $39.99 at the store (for the same bottle I paid $25 for earlier this year). I'll make sure I have enough cash next time I go!

Oh, another thing is I wanted donair meat. They had big packages for $3.99, enough for a couple good meals for me and Mark. I put it in my cart, then thought to look at the ingredients. I couldn't pronounce half of them. That went back on the shelf too. I will just have to learn how to make good donair meat. I think I found a good recipe The problem is non-Atlantic Canadians are giving the recipes I find bad reviews since they're comparing them to gyros. Unless you've had an authentic donair, you don't know what you're missing! I have the sauce down pat, I can make the pitas (or use some type of homemade flat bread) but the meat has always given me trouble.

One last thing. I was told that I will not be making the cake after all. I was kind of relieved.

Well, I have good news and a fabulous market report in the making but I won't share that now. I'm pretty excited though!!

Monday Market Report

I am still hoping to do the Monday Meal Plan but I thought it would be a step in the right direction to have a Monday Market report. If I do my marketing on Monday morning, then it will start my week off with a full larder. Then in the summer, I can do the Farmers Markets on Saturday and that will be less to buy when I do my Monday Marketing (or I will be less tempted to buy in the store when I've already bought locally at the market).

I made three stops this morning. First was Dayton Fruit and Vegetable. There I picked up the following:

Spinach: $2.00

10lbs bag potatoes: $1.99

10lbs bags onions: $2.97

cabbage: $0.67

sweet potatoes: $3.28 ($0.79/lbs)

garlic: $0.48

2 small english cukes: $1.50

Bananas: $1.30

Total: $14.17

Then I went to Sobeys. There I got:
1.5kg bag of blueberries (craving!): $8.49

1 container natural yogurt (need for the cultures): $2.49

8 cans coconut milk: $5.25!! (it was signed wrong so I got one free. It was regular $3.29, ringing in at $2.50 but it was signed 2/$1.50)

Total: $16.23

I went to Superstore next. I wasn't going to but I knew they had some things I wanted:

2L Mac Nut Frozen yogurt (I told the kids I'd get it for them to try): $4.00

2lbs mussels: $3.00

small carton sauerkraut: $1.59

900g bag brown rice: $2.39

pack "natural" cheese strings: $3.00 (with coupon)

3pack large english cukes: $3.00

omega eggs: $1.99 (half off)
free range, farm eggs: $2.39 (half off)

4L Cooks milk: $6.93

Total (including cents off for using cloth bags): $28. 14

So $58.54 isn't too bad. We have a lot on hand and a lot of this will last longer than one week. I got mostly whole foods so it was a good trip in my opinion. I am seeing some stew in my very near future as well as some blueberry smoothies. I have really been craving veggies lately and need to get some more greens growing.

I hope to later get a meal plan up. I have a lot to do from our trip including lots of laundry and dishes, plus even though we left with the apartment clean, it seemed to spawn filth overnight.