Little Panettone

questing for joy in a difficult world

In this new life, my husband and I take daily walks when the sidewalks are safe, and not covered in ice. I am a meanderer, I can wander without purpose, but he is not, he prefers to have a goal. Since his lay off in November, we have been going on what we refer to as “quests.” These quests are lovely. They are a chance to get some exercise, enjoy the outdoors and learn more about our neighbourhood and surrounding areas. As someone with a full-time job for most of his working life, Charles had rarely experienced weekdays outside of an office. Being able to go on these quests makes us happy.

In this new life, we have to live frugally. We have been able to cut our food budget down to about half of what we used to spend.

One of the ways in which we have been able to cut our budget is by finding cheaper products in the neighbourhood. We have spent eons at Kowloon, a local Asian grocery store. We have also visited all of the little stores on Somerset West, which are full of variety, spices and reasonably priced fresh produce.

One of our challenges is to balance our depleted economic situation with health issues, my diabetes and digestive issues, my husband’s lactose intolerance. While we used to manage these challenges through a meal kit service, we can save at least eighty dollars a week by not using the service. It helped us greatly through the early days after my diabetes diagnosis and it was a great time saver. We learned how spices and sauces vastly improve the flavour and variety of a meal. Now we quest for the spices and have a good pantry full of little labelled jars, many reused from earlier purchases. It’s been a fun time in the last month or so, learning how to shop economically and finding out about the local offerings.

Last week, we decided to look at the Italian grocery stores in Little Italy, which is a short walk from our neighbourhood. One market had deli meat for under two dollars for one hundred grams. We use deli meat for lunch daily on weekdays, along with tortillas and fresh vegetables, so this saves us quite a bit of money.

These little Italian grocery stores are full of joy, conversation, fresh produce, many varieties of olive oil. It’s good to see them thriving. In one of the stores, a woman asked Charles to get a box for her. It was hanging from a shelf high up. He is tall and gets these requests often. The box contained a tiny panettone.

Panettone comes from the Italian word, “panetto” meaning “small bread” with the suffix “one,” changing it to a large bread. Panettone is a sweat bread/fruit cake with many variations. It was one of our Christmas treats before my diabetes diagnosis in 2022.

The tiny panettone at the Italian market was only four dollars and cut in half, it is something we could share as a treat. We didn’t pick it up this time, but just knowing that is a possibility brought a little joy into our day.

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post-script: readers, we had the panettone.