The cost of groceries

You said it. I try to eat healthy and I used to buy the whole grain pasta, but then I was the only one cooking it. I would have had to cook his pasta in one p*t and mine in another. The same with spaghetti sauce. I used to buy the canned or jarred stuff and decided to make my own since it would not contain sugar or that corn syrup preservative. Then yesterday we were having some of my bow tie pasta, and my husband says "well I prefer the bought spaghetti sauce," so now I have to buy a jar for him and make my own from scratch. And since i make a lot of pasta casseroles that is rather hard to do. I do not have that lot of pans and there are only four elements to the stove not eight.

I believe you. Not that it will make me feel better, it will make me feel worse since if my country Canada which used to be called the bread basket has a bad year with cold springs, late planting, etc. the other countries that also have to supply the grain products and what if their government decides to obey the Kyoto Accord and decides to go into Ethanol production? I knew this would happen when the environmentalists started to bad mouth those who relied on gas and oil from fossil fuels, and said "presto, lets use plant sources and save the earth," and conveniently forgot (or did they) that if you use corn, wheat, or food grain fields to make fuel, that corn, wheat, maize, oats, rye, field, etc. are taking out of food production. Therefore the corn to feed the animals increases in price, the wheat we use to make bread or for the bakers to make bread that we can buy increases in price. After that, the supply is limited and goes less. But the junk food stays the same, because well with all the preservatives in them, they can keep almost forever.

I was thinking of starting a small garden - I do have a strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry patch and an apple tree - but we were out of the house during the planting season. Now it is near July and too late to start anything. And most of the money is going for house renovations because of my husband's stroke. We will make out somehow, but until the government believes that taking grain fields and in your case, sugar fields out of food production is wrong, nothing will be done because until they feel the pain, they will not do anything.

This is why I use all my little space in my garden to grow fruits and beggies. I have potatoes growing in tyres too. all the fruit trees on the farm are raided as th people are just hungry and I am not using the land at present. God help us. I tiotallya gree with you re ethanol. Waste of time and they are talking of using sugar cane out here for ethanol instead of growing what the population can eat to survive.

I buy as much grass finished beef, naturally raised chickens and so on, that I can afford. I've gradually cut down on the amount of meat that I eat, so that the costs aren't so high. If you have to take supplements because the meat you're eating isn't filling your nutritional requirements, you have to add in the cost of the supplements to the meat. That may not make it so cheap - you may be better off eating smaller portions of better quality meat. As far as vegetables and fruit goes, not all pesticides and herbicides can be washed off, as they get into the fruit. For instance, fruit blossoms are sprayed with pesticides to keep bugs out, then the fruit forms from the bottom of the blossom. The pesticide is still there. It's hard to know what to do. Our food system is in need of a major overhaul, and I don't mean Washington style!

I wish I could afford grass fed beef, but cannot. I also have to watch the other food that contains high glucose corn syrup. In fact, I make my own spaghetti sauce and even the all bran cereal contains it as a preservative so I have to go and buy the kind that is made here in Canada that is not a name brand. I have a strict budget for food and cannot go over it. So I am sort of stuck.

We are supposed to eat meat from grass fed animals not from animals that are fed in the feed lot where you do not know what you are getting. But the former is more expensive and to make up for the lack of certain mineral that is not present in those lot fed animals that is present in the cattle that are out in the field, I have to buy a bottle of pills and that lack of medicine contributed to my borderline diabetes. With vegetables and salads, I can wash off the chemicals under the tap, but what do you do with the meat

We spent $100 a week and that did not include any of the non-food items except for one bottle of bleach because we were lucky to have enough cash points from Canada Tire. And I hate enough eggs left over from last time. But I did not pick up the spinach nor the avocado I wanted to because I wanted to keep the bill below $100.

It is hard being on a budget. We do without a lot of what we would like to have. Have a happy day.

That is a shame. It is not just the luxuries that you have to go without, but also things that you need. We went through the same problem when we had a mortgage on our house. Not only could we take a cruise (a luxury) but we could not insulate our house until it was paid off and we were heating all of Winnipeg, Mb in the winter, not to mention that we could not buy the most nutritious of foods. Those healthy people in the magazines? All professionals with lots of money. No working or working middle class people? Why they could afford to eat healthy.

The only time we have cheap veggies, etc is around this time of year and yet the junk food is more available and cheaper. We have a speciality meat shop in the area, but have not gone to it yet. It does have grass fed beef, but the cheese and other milk products is more expensive so the cheapest place to buy is at our superstore. I was thinking of starting a garden, perhaps a box garden so that I can keep it close to the house, but I have to get someone to pick up the top soil and to make the boxes.

I do plan to do a little container garden. We were unable to do it last year because the house was getting renovated because my husband has als and we had to get the house wheelchair accessible. We were staying at a motel for three weeks and by the time we got back the planting season was over and our budget had been shot. We will get the money back from income tax, but we will have to put that back in savings.

Most veggies are happy to grow in smallish pots, and many thrive on being crowded. Potatoes can be grown in a large hesian sack and you just keep adding soil to the sack until it reaches the top, then you harvest the potatoes from the bottom. I never asked how to harvest without tipping it all out though. Grass fed beef is tasty. it is generally a leaner quality meat, but very good for cooking, especially just a plain steak. Grain fed beef is a lot fattier, which is why Australian grain fed beef is in high demand in Japan - they like the fattiness of the meat better than the leaner beef. It can be very hard to get all your grocery items on a budget, especially if the cheaper items aren't all in the one store. Go for the box garden idea! Cheap plastic tubs will do and they are just as good as a proper garden bed, are easier to work around and best of all, are more easily able to be moved around (with a little persuasion). Every household should have a go at having a garden, even those that don't have outside space, because gardens can be grown indoors near windows.

It seems that now the healthy food is what the rich people eat, and the middle and poor classes have to stick to the not as healthy. We have organic foods in our superstore, but they are twice as high priced as the regular sprayed kind. I would like to get more green beans, but because my husband does not like them, I have to pick the frozen. my husband wants head lettuce,and I want Romaine. I an a borderline diabetic, and have to eat healthy, but feel that it is an uphill struggle as some of the foods I cannot afford.

That is hard to do here. I live in a large very large city and it takes at least two hours to drive out. I am getting eggs from a friend who knows someone in the country but they have to take it to his work, and he has to bring the eggs to me. Most of the truck farmers, except for the ones that have contracts with the super markets , will truck the stuff in and set the truck up in a parking lot and sell there. There is no going out to the country in a car here. i live in the Canadian prairies and the towns are few and far between.

Try going to your local farmers for fresh fruits and veggies. I know I get a lot better deals on our fresh foods from them then I do in the stores. I also have insulin issues (I have a resistance disorder) and I too have to try to eat as healthy as I can. Try to cut out the carbs they told me as though it was an easy thing to do when the cheapest foods you can get are pasta and rice.

I bought whole wheat hot dog buns for my husband, but he would not eat them. He insisted on the white bread. Now the only way I can sneak whole wheat into his food is when I make banana loaf and also brownies, and dark desert breads that I can substitute whole wheat flour for the white. What he does not know will help him. I did buy some whole wheat buns when we were at the motel, and he did not mind, but it seems they do not have them in the large bulk packages, only the white ones.

I remember when I lived with a family and we lived on macaroni and cheese and of course, regular hamburger. We would buy canned peas, and make head lettuce salad, because they only had a small house, the ground was no good for a garden, but they did have a couple of plum trees. So we had canned plums for desert every day. Needless to say I got sick of plums. When the lady of the house had any money, her husband was unemployed, he was not that well, she would make casseroles and this was when most women stayed home. I hate to see how it is nowaday. Macaroni and Cheese is not that cheap anymore.

I usually get my husband a chocolate bar and try to find ones a little healthy, like they contain nuts. But this time, we had to go to the doctor's and we stopped into the local Extra Foods, that is suppose to be cheap and after I picked up some thighs on sale, he saw a large box of snack sized chocolates and wanted them. (yes they were peanut free,) the ones with the nuts, etc. were more expensive. and as for dark chocolate, the bars are $4 each. I was able to pick up some spinach and some ground chicken, but that is because that grocery bill was under $50 and we have our local produce, but we can only store them so long.

I am doing that, but it is hard especially when you are on a budget when it is my pension that is buying the food. For instance, this week I decided to get some locally made granola that was way more then the regular name brand or even the store brand granola that contained that corn syrup stuff. I have to really check the packages and the print is so small - a disadvantage of being slightly far sighted.

We do not eat that much canned food, except for port and beans and canned tomatoes, and we use the latter when we make spaghetti sauce. When it is out of season, we buy frozen vegetables, but in the summer we eat a lot of salads. The trouble is when the season is over. I wanted to have a garden but my husband did not want one. But now that he is not that well and cannot get out, I will probably start a container garden.

I live in Canada and we have a shorter growing season so except from June to the end of October or the middle of November, most of our food is imported. We do not have the luxury of a double growing season that is common in the subtropical and tropical areas of the world. Right now the local food is cheap and that is reflected in our grocery bill, but once November comes around and until the summer, the fresh vegetables and salad stuff goes up. Not only that, we have to contend with having to heat our homes, the colder weather, etc. What my point is that if we did live in a warmer climate, we would not have to worry about buying fleece lined coats, snow boots, and making sure we do not freeze every January. I think that each country has it's specific needs and the price of food, etc. should reflect that. So when in the States, they in California think that it is all right to raise the cost of food, because they do not have to worry about heating and apply that to Wyoming or North Dakota where it gets down to 40 below, that is not right. Like I suppose in the phillipines, you have to worry about humidity and those with money are considering air conditioning, nets to protect you against mosquitoes, those have to be taken into consideration in the food evaluatiion, but unfortunately people think one size fits all.

I wish there was a farmer;s market near where I live, but there is not. We have to ride quite a ways out of the city to get to a farmer's market. What happens here is a truck comes into a Mall parking lot, or the local superstore goes to the farmer and gets them to sell their produce there so it is not just the same thing. Around this type of year, we get lots of blueberries, so what I do is to buy about two to four pounds and freeze them and have a few every day. I tried to grow a blueberry bush and it worked for a while, except the neighbor through his garbage over the fence and that killed one of them and we need two blue berry bushes to be productive.

i am on the borderline - but I find that the processed food that I cannot eat that much, except one a week, that it is cheap, but the regular fruits and veggies cost. And in our store, they do not put them in one or two person portions, unless you count brocolli, carrots,celery, onions, and potatoes. And with herbs, unless I grow my own, I have to buy a bunch of whatever or get dried herbs. My husband gets a good pension, but until recently much of it went on his prescriptions.

I just buy a few at a time so my husband will not notice. Right now we are still paying for renovations, so it is going to be hard for a couple of months.

I remember the last recession, and people were told to down size, sell their expensive house and move to a lesser one. Move from a house to an apartment, rent instead of buy, and this was following a good time in the 1980s. The trouble when you decide to down size or give up things for the sake of decent food, it is not enough for some. We have never up sized, and we saved money by putting extra on our mortgage so we now own our house outright and would have done it sooner if it were not for various family emergencies. As for giving up things, suppose I give up my cell phone and we give up the cable tv, soon there will be a suggestion to give up the internet, and then the computer (we already had to give up our car because of my husband's health) and maybe buy second hand - you see, it never stops. And I think it is all because of envy. You are talking about people who saved up for these things, who own everything, who bought the cable box and the tv instead of renting it. Now if things get better and suddenly the healthy food is cheaper because well the cost of chemicals to preserve the junk food is increasing in price because the government found they caused birth defects and what else, we would have to go and repurchase what was told to get rid of. So rather then say get rid of all your nice things, why not complain about the environmentalist putting grain fields into ethanol, make larger cars that are fuel efficient not just those little dinky cars - because it is cheaper for a family of six to drive in one car, then to have father and mother and two children in one car, and brother and sister in another car.

Right now it we can get the locally grown food, but once winter sets in, then we will have to import food from California and Chile. And of course how long does fresh produce last even in those Debbie bags? And with my husband throwing a fit if we go over $80 a week makes it hard. Now we have a large renovation bill to pay and so i have been paying part of the groceries myself , but I need my money as well. I was unable to start a garden - I was planning to get some boxes and fill them with dirt and put salad veggies in them - because we were at the motel while the house was renovated, but I was thinking of next year.

I always envied our American neighbors just a little south of us. When we lived in Saskatoon, we had to have a hot house to grow things, and here in Winnipeg, MB we cannot depend on the weather, this year we went from cold to hot, other years it was so mild, other years we had snow in June. And on top of it, my husband does not want a garden and there are no garden markets near where we live.