Today (or, should I say, yesterday, by the time this is published!) I headed into the city to do the first of our stock up shopping trips. I was using the car loaned to us while our truck was being repaired, so it was not at large as it would have been, if we were using the truck.
My first stop was the international grocery store, where I had breakfast – Dim Sum and a drink cost just over $20 – before I started shopping.
This is what $147.62 looks like.
Yeah. That little cart load is almost $150.
This store is where we tend to get some things I would consider treats, though.
The coconut milk was on sale, and my daughters like to use it, so I got a couple of cans. The evaporated milk is for my younger daughter’s baking. They also requested the jar of Lao Gan Ma chili sauce.
The Coke Zero is for myself and my husband, while the Cranberry Ginger Ale is for my daughters – buying both got me the sale price.
My older daughter requested the Monsters, but they are for both my daughters, plus myself, and I took advantage of another 2-for- sale to get 6 cans. The cases were not on sale; just individual cans.
For meat, I got the locally produced smoked bacon slab, some pork chops and some ground beef.
The two types of Gouda are treats. I can’t remember if we’ve tried Forest Mushroom before, but we certainly haven’t tried Smokey BBQ before!
I got an extra bottle of my husband’s favourite soy sauce. For my daughters, I got a couple of cartons of oat milk – the brand of soy milk we used to get is having issues and has started to go bad very quickly, so they’ve requested oat milk in another brand. I thought I was getting plain, but got vanilla, instead! They mostly use it in their tea, though, so that works.
I picked up some black teas that were on sale – a variety pack, plus Irish Breakfast, which was not included in the variety pack. I got a flat of eggs that should last us until we do our Costco shopping, were I get double flats of eggs. I also remembered to grab some recycling bags. They’re smaller than what we need, but it was the largest size they had, and we are completely out. I’ll pick up our usual size bags at Costco.
Using my loyalty card saved me $18.54, which isn’t too bad, I guess.
I had considered hitting a Superstore after this, but I was messaging with the garage and with my SIL about getting our truck home, so I decided to skip it and went straight to Walmart.
This is what $226.69 – including a $10 donation – looks like.
Yeah, that cart looks even emptier.
This is what I got.
The big expenses were the wet and dry cat food. I just got one bag of kibble for the inside cats. I will get more at Costco. For the outside cats, I get 40 pound bags at the feed stores.
Thee was an excellent sale on whole chickens, so I got two. I also found plain oat milk for my daughters – at a better price, too. It’s the same brand.
I got packages of sliced turkey and sliced ham for sandwiches. The light rye bread has gone down in price, so I picked up 4 loaves for now. Oh, and I grabbed a couple of cheeses – Havarti and Old Cheddar.
In the non-food category, my daughters requested some personal care products they will pay me back for later. I also got a 15′ extension cord rated flexible to -40C/F This will replace the one we currently have plugged into an outlet inside the cat house. The current one can have only one thing plugged into it, and it’s used for one heated water bowl. A second one is in the sun room, and now we have a third.
So these two shops came to a total of $374.31, including taxes and a donation.
On the way home, I picked up a bag of kibble at the feed store, which came out to just over $63 after taxes. Next time, I’ll go to the feed store to the north of us, where they have a brand that costs less, and the cats seem to enjoy more. Variety is good, though.
Adding in the feed store kibble and the food, that brings things up to about $457. Plus, I filled the tank on the loaned car for $38 and change, then put $30 of gas into the truck after we picked that up, though my CAA card gave me a bit of a discount. Gas prices had dropped to $1.279 today, so that helped. All in all, we’re looking at $525 total, give or take some change, for the day.
Oh, and another $320 for truck repairs and an oil change, bringing our total spending for the day up to about $845. My daughter will be covering the cost of the truck repairs later, though, so at least that will be going back into the budget!
The next trip to the city for our Costco shop won’t be for a few days. Possibly not until after the weekend. We’ll see how things work out.
If nothing else, it’ll give more time to catch up on getting things done for the winter, outside!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
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