19/09/24 The Real Shopping Cart

Image description: dark blue plate with Brussel sprouts, mashed carrots and chicken, covered in brown sauce.

Highlighted meal of the week

As always, Charles and I enjoyed nutritious, delicious and economical meals this week. It was hard to pick a favourite. Some day, I will write to you about the bacon calabrese omelet Charles makes on the weekends for lunch, or the sweet smoky barbecue turkey meatball dish we make regularly, but this week, I have to rhapsodize about the smoky mustard chicken with roasted Brussel sprouts and mashed carrots. The total cost of the meal for two was $5.48 and the single serving was $2.74. My blood sugar levels were 5.4, which is excellent. We made the sauce using whole grain Dijon mustard, homemade chipotle sauce, chicken and Dashi miso paste.

Image description: a red can of La Constena chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce/186 ml.

We make our own chipotle sauce for a few reasons: to make it lactose free for Charles, to control the heat levels, and because our is simply tastier than store-bought sauce, and cheaper too. Here are the ingredients:

1 can of chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce (available at most grocery stores in our neighbourhood);

3/4 cup of mayonnaise;

3 tablespoons of chopped cilantro;

1 teaspoon of Cayenne pepper;

1 teaspoon of garlic powder;

1/2 teaspoon of cumin.

We roasted the Brussel sprouts in butter and garlic salt. We mashed the carrots with butter. We grilled the chicken on our small George Foreman apartment-size grill, which we have named Georgina. This grill is a wonder. We use it for chicken breasts and thighs, pork chops and tenderloin, any of the ground meats as patties, but not for seafood, which cooks better in a pan for us.

This Week’s Cart

Stores considered this week were Metro.ca, Walmart, Massine’s, Isabella Loblaws, Kowloon and Farm Boy, which are within walking distance, Real Canadian Superstore, Metro Rideau and Food Basics, which are accessible to us by public transit.

Note that the cart is inflated because of the need for the purchase of stock items, including our semi annual purchase of extra virgin olive oil. Olive oil prices has really taken off in the last year.

If we could get the cheapest price at all the stores, the total amount would be $181.18.

By combining delivery from Walmart, and a few strolls to local stores, Charles has obtained a price of $191.66 for this week’s shopping list, only six percent higher than the cheapest price if we could shop all the stores.

This week several stores had all the products we were looking for, but not exactly. Many had LoBok but only one had green LoBok, which is slightly sweeter and less radishy tasting than the usual white LoBok. Each store on its own will cost a shopper anywhere from twenty-three to forty percent more or $72.45 more. Any store that provided less than thirty-eight of the thirty-nine items we were looking for was disqualified.

I wish you nutritious, delicious and affordable meals, lingering conversations with loved ones, joy and whimsy.

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