The Real Shopping Cart 5/9/24

Image description:: sliced green peppers, grated carrot, bok choy and baby spinach

We began this series in August. You can read the background here.

Highlighted Meal of the Week: Coleslaw Made Without Cabbage

Charles hates cabbage. I love it, but it has its issues. 1. In its raw form, it is hard on my wonky digestive system. 2. It either comes as a whole head of cabbage or it comes preshredded, and the latter is expensive. Since Charles hates it and I can’t really eat it, but we still want some variation for salad, we have come up with this delicious replacement for coleslaw. Its ingredients are baby spinach, carrot and Shanghai bok choy.

Note that this isn’t a meal but an ingredient and takes up half our plates. The plate method is something people with diabetes use to control our portions, specifically the amount of carbohydrates we eat. We had the coleslaw in a turkey crunch salad that was delicious.

Image description: a plate divided into three portions: a large portion on the left in green with a drawing of broccoli or cauliflower and the words “nonstarchy vegetables”. On the top right a quarter of the plate in purple with drawingss of bread and apple and the words “carb foods;” bottom right, quarter of plate in red with words “protein foods” and a drawing of a fish. smaller circle with a drawing of a glass of liquid. below the circle the words, “water or 0-calorie drink”

The use of Shanghai bok choy instead of cabbage keeps our costs low. Bok choy is delicious raw as well as cooked. In its raw form it has a peppery flavour. We get it at Kowloon, our favourite local Asian grocery store.

The total cost of the coleslaw for two was $1.40 and the single serving was $0.70.

This Week’s Cart

Charles removed two stores from consideration: Adonis and Voila. Adonis was dropped because it uses Instacart for delivery which adds so much overhead that it would never be affordable. Voila represents the combination of groceries available at the stores Sobeys owns: Farm Boy, Sobeys, and FreshCo. The pricing is consistently higher and like Adonis will never be affordable.

Stores considered this week were Metro.ca, Walmart, Amazon for delivery, 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 and two stores in Gatineau: Maxi and Super C. These two Gatineau stores were included to compare Quebec versus Ontario since Maxi belongs to the Loblaws group and Super C is a Metro brand.

This week there were two ingredients not commonly available:  fried tofu puff and tandoori masala. Fried tofu puff is easily available at Kowloons and makes for a great replacement for rice. The puff is much lower in carbs and tasty. We air fry it. Tandoori masala was only available at Amazon, Riley’s, Bulk Barn and in Quebec at Maxi. Amazon was overpriced as are all their spices, and Maxi is not easy for us to get to, but Bulk Barn and Riley’s are both at Billings Bridge Shopping Centre, a single bus trip away. We include feasibility and affordability of using transit in our plans.

If we could get the cheapest price at all the stores, the total amount would be $134.22.

By combining delivery from Walmart, a few strolls to local stores and a bus ride to Billings Bridge, Charles has obtained a price of $143.06 for this week’s shopping list, only seven percent higher than the cheapest price if we could shop all the stores.

Since no single store had all the groceries we needed, this week’s table demonstrates how close each store got to exclusively providing the items in the cart. Each store on its own will cost a shopper anywhere from five to twenty five percent more and any store that provided less than twenty eight of the thirty two items we were looking for was disqualified.

Image description: Table with 4 columns and 10 rows; HEADER: Cart/Cost/%Extra/Items. 1: BEST/134.22/0%/32.00; 2. Food Basics/140.54/5%/28.00;3.Actual/143.06/7%/32.00/4.RCS/144.17/7%/29; 5. Massines/149.65/11%/29.00; 6. Isabella/155.28/16%/28.00; 7. Metro.ca/158.69/18%/28.00; 8. Metro Rideau/159.61/19%/28.00; 9. Rileys/168.12/25%/28.00

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

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