March 7, 2010

I SPENT HOW MUCH MONEY?!

$73 and change. Yeah, that's right...$73 on groceries at Sobey's. Damn their organic and/or all-natural aisles. But you know what, it's probably cheaper than going to Whole Foods and I was in the area so it saved me about two hours of commuting times. Here's a quickie (sort of) rundown of all the goods:

Let's start with meat I can eat:Clockwise from top left: proscuitto, drumsticks, frozen chicken nuggets and whole chicken. I was debating between my usual chicken fingers or chicken nuggets but the five-year-old in me won out and I decided to be all crazy and go with the nuggets this time. Too bad there's no non-HFCS-added sweet 'n sour sauce to enjoy those with.

Things I know I should not have bought but couldn't help it:Popcorn in sea salt and kettlecorn flavours from Popcorn, Indiana. This company makes amazing kettlecorn. It's freakishly addictive. I have to pour myself a serving in a bowl but then I just go back for more servings. I also make Sean hide the bag from me but then manage to get it off the top of the fridge twice before he realizes I'm taller than he thinks I am. Popcorn crack.

50/50 on what I should and should not have bought:On the left is what I should not have bought but I'm a sucker for new things in modern packaging. Metromint flavoured water. I got the lemonmint version. On the right is Newman's Own Oil & Vinegar Dressing. Despite being more than double the other brand that was currently on sale, I decided to get Paul's version because a) it's all-natural and b) contains no sulphites or ingredients I couldn't pronounce. I was a little bit iffy on the red wine vinegar as I'm currently staying away from all wine since it typically gives me a headache but we'll see if the small amount of dressing I use anyway, causes a reaction.

New-to-me items:Almond milk! I'm going to give this a try in lieu of milk in my cereal and oatmeal. Of course, this means oatmeal that I have at home so it'll mostly be oatmeal on the weekends since I don't have enough time to heat up almond milk at work and have time to eat it. I eat incredibly slow. Or I just eta oatmeal incredibly slow. Oh and Kashi bars. I wasn't really crazy about the three flavours I kept seeing everywhere (cherry dark chocolate, peanut peanut butter, seven whole grains and almonds) but then I saw all kinds of other flavours including trail mix, pumpkin pie, raspberry chocolate and the two you see above: Dark Chocolate Coconut and Dark Mocha Almond. I'm excited about the one with coconut--obviously.

Everyone needs produce!Sadly I didn't buy as much produce as I usually do. Actually it's probably okay that I didn't buy that much produce since none of it was organic--oops! But I bought a pound of spring mix, a pound of radishes, pre-cut watermelon (I'm a sucker for pre-cut watermelon--it screams summertime to me) and Liberte Greek yogurt. The yogurt came with a $1 off vendor coupon which was good because it didn't have a price tag listed and at $5, was pretty damn expensive! Good thing I passed on the $6 faux-meat burgers.

And that is what $73 will buy you. It was actually a bit of a shock when I saw the total and had to use my debit card since I didn't have that much cash on me. Saaaad! But at least the grocery store will see that someone is buying their all-natural products and maybe they'll start carrying more stuff. I tend to shop like this in the chain grocery stores (buying the natural/organic stuff rather than the traditional stuff) if the price difference is less than 50 cents for each product. I guess that with 18 different items, it all adds up! Of course, some of this stuff I hadn't intended to purchase and it'll last me a while (ie: all the meat, granola bars, almond milk, dressing) but then other purchases will not last as long and were actually a little more expensive than I was used to paying (ie: popcorn).

Oh well...now it's time to go eat my purchases.

2 comments:

RudePrincess said...

This is an amazing post. I can't believe you can write an entire one on your organic groceries. I love it.

Ive never been big on organic foods but I'm not sure why. I like to pretend that perhaps they taste differently?!? Who knows. I'm slightly crazy it seems. However, maybe it's just the price difference that scares me away and tells my belly not to like the food. haha Now that wouldn't surprise me!

Dominique said...

Sometimes the price difference isn't that huge. Stuff like cake mix and the like isn't always a huge difference so I always tend to go with the organic. Sobey's was dangerous though because the all-natural/organic stuff was in a separate section in each individual section (baking/snacks/cereals, etc) so I basically went through the entire store and looked through each organic section. That's pretty much how I ended up filling my basket. Plus all the meat. I still can't believe 1/3 of my total bill was spent on organic chicken. Oi.