The Real Shopping Cart 17/10/24

featuring turkey!

Image description: a roast turkey on a cutting board. knife and salt blurred in background.

Highlighted Meal of the Week

Thanksgiving here means turkey. We love turkey, but unless it is xmas or t-giving, it’s usually not available. We found the best price for a whole turkey at the Loblaws on Rideau. It was $24.85 for 5.8 kgs. This is 11 servings of turkey for us. We always try to get a small turkey, but that costs more. Obviously there are a lot of ways to use up turkey.

I’m going to take a small detour (rabbit hole alert) and tell you about the first time, Charles roasted a turkey for me. In early December 2009, I was just out of the hospital. I could eat very little without it making me sick. I was in a fragile state. Charles thought turkey might be something I could eat, and so after years of our only having turkey breast rolls aka seasoned boneless stuffed turkey breast because it was easy and not messy (1.5 kgs for turkey meat and stuffing is now around $32.), he decided to roast this turkey. I remember how wonderful the experience was. The scent of a turkey roasting in the oven on a weekend afternoon just feels so homey and comforting. And I really needed homey and comforting. It was delicious and I could eat it. To this day, when roast a turkey, this is what comes to my mind. I feel safe and cared for and loved. I am so lucky to be here.

With my diabetes diagnosis in 2022, there was a new challenge: to make a low carb turkey meal for t-giving and xmas. Charles has refined his stuffing recipe. This is the exquisite current version: fried tofu puff, sesame oil, onion powder, soy sauce, an apple, Italian sausage, thyme and walnuts, lemon zest and juice. We don’t stuff the bird because I have to be extremely careful about any kind of food-borne issue and we are very risk-averse. He cooks the stuffing on the stove so that it doesn’t come into contact with raw meat. He served it with mashed cauliflower on the side. After the first hot turkey dinner, we had it for two additional days in salads and froze the rest in individual servings for later use. The total cost of the roast turkey dinner meal for two was $9.87 and the single serving was $4.94. My blood sugar level was 6.2, extremely good for a holiday meal and way more delicious than high carb turkey dinners ever were in our past.

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, and the Real Canadian Superstore, Metro Rideau and Food Basics, which are accessible to us by public transit.

If we could get the cheapest price at all the stores, the total amount would be $153.53.

By combining delivery from Walmart, and a few strolls to local stores, Charles has obtained a price of $159.84 for this week’s shopping list, only four percent higher than the cheapest price if we could shop all the stores.

This week due to digital coupons aligning with our needs, Massines, a Your Independent Store managed to score exceptionally well. This proves the importance of using all the tools each brand provides to obtain the cheapest prices.

Each store on its own will cost a shopper anywhere from five to forty-one percent more or an extra $63.51. Any store that provided less than twenty-five of the thirty 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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Image description: I am holding two lemons on each side and have lemon stickers on each cheek. I am wearing a grey t-shirt. Photo by me.

I hope my Canadian friends had a happy t-giving.