Monday, December 14, 2009

My greatest weakness.

I admit it, I love grocery shopping. I love leaving a place where the cupboards aren't well stocked and coming back with good food to stock them. I love the rich feeling of knowing that I have variety for my meals once more. I love looking at all the different foods in the grocery store and figuring out what meals might be tasty with this ingredient, or that one.

I love coming back and knowing I've gotten a good deal on something. Take today. a 15 lb bag of russet potatoes was less than $5, which is pretty much the everyday price at the store I shop at. Those potatoes will be added to the chicken broth I got (almost a litre for less than $3, and I could have gotten it for less than $2 if I wanted 50% more sodium in it) along with pieces of leftover chicken and some carrots that were still in the fridge to make a nice soup. I would have gotten turnip, which was on sale for $0.59 a pound, but they didn't have any left.

The potatoes will also go quite nicely with the ham I got to make ham and potato soup with. The ham was $1.99 a pound, and I got about $5 worth. Not much, but plenty to add flavour and substance to the soup.

More potatoes will go nicely with the squash I bought ($0.69 per pound) and the frozen turkey for Yule dinner. Whatever's left will probably go in with the turkey stock I plan to make from the leftover bones and skin once Yule is over.

Clementines have finally made it in stock, which Rachel loves. I got a small crate of those for $5. Not sure how much that crate weighs, to be honest, but $5 isn't a bad deal when you consider the vitamin C we'll be getting from them. And since I found a delicious-sounding recipe for candied citrus peel the other day, I'll use the peels to make a treat for us both, too.

I bought a small sack of organic flour for bread, for $5. The same price could have gotten me more flour, if I'd gone with the ultra-processed stuff that contains I-don't-know-what. it won't go very far, I admit, but it'll last us until the new year starts, and hopefully by then we'll have a little more money and I can buy some more, from the local bulk store. The only reason I didn't go there today for my flour is because I have a limited number of bus trips I can use at the moment. January should change that, though.

And the best part is, even after getting all this (and more), I still came in under budget. $48 under budget, which is impressive when you consider that I left the house with only $160.

I may not be a master of frugal living yet, but I'm working on it.

1 comment:

  1. Grocery shopping is the only kind of shopping I like. I use a list, but I love looking at new stuff too. I like to check out grocery stores when I travel too. They give so much insight into a foreign culture.

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