Look at the itty bitty fruit I found in the mock orange this morning!
He was not impressed with my shoveling the paths after doing the food and water!
Also, it is confirmed that he’s a he. I was able to pluck him out of the tree and cuddle him for a bit, and finally got a chance to check.
We are all sort of dancing around when we will be bringing him inside. He is so tiny, it’s actually startling to come out with the kibble in the mornings and see him there in the snow, so small he looks like something one of the older kittens coughed up rather than another kitten!
We want to leave him with his mother as long as possible, or at least with whichever of the mamas is nursing him. So far, I’ve only seen Junk Pile nursing him with her own kittens, once – and I haven’t seen her nursing even her own kittens since! So it’s entirely possible that he’s on his own, weaned early, and getting only the food and water we’re providing. However, we can’t be sure of that.
So when do we bring him in? We have one cold day coming up, with a high of -11C/12F, in a couple of days, then it’s going to warm up quite a bit after that. We definitely want to bring him in before the winter temperatures really kick in. So far he doesn’t seem to be having any trouble with the temperatures we have now, and seems quite happy to run around and play in the snow. If I look at the long range forecasts, including those that extent to January, we are looking at a very mild December but, of course, the further ahead the forecast, the less accurate it is, so who knows right now.
Do we assume his mother has weaned him and bring him in now? Or do we give him a couple more weeks, to be sure?
Well, we’ll probably made that decision in the next couple of days, before we get that one day cold snap that’s been forecast.
In other things, my younger daughter and I headed out today. I was originally planning to go to the nearest Walmart, but my daughters had their own shopping list for the international grocery store, so we hit the city, instead, where we could do both very handily. Mostly, I needed to pick up more kibble. The difference in price on that alone makes it worth the cost of gas to go into the city. I was able to get 10kg bags for just over $25 each. Locally, the biggest bags they carry are 7.5kg or 8kg bags, and they cost almost $35 each – if they even have them in stock.
Of course, we picked up a few other things while we were there, then headed to the international grocery store for my daughter’s shopping. They have take out food, too, so we picked up some steamed dumplings in a dim sum combo for the drive home. I was leery of doing that, as the last time I got dim sum there, not only was the service terrible, but the dim sum was way over cooked and tasted horrible. I’m happy to say, I had no problems at all this time. Service was immediate and, oh my goodness, did those dumplings ever hit the spot!
Things like this are the treats we allow ourselves to make up for creeping out of our hermitage, making the drive to the city, and putting up with other humans. 😉
Once at home, I backed into the yard to unload. We used my mother’s car today, and one of the snow piles I made from clearing around the cat shelters was almost too deep for it! 😂 I think maybe tomorrow, I’ll shovel out a lane for driving into the yard and backing up to the house. May as well do that while the snow is light!
Once everything was unloaded, we gave the cats their evening feeding as much to get them away from the car, and out of the sun room, as anything else. After I finished parking the car in the garage, my daughter was still trying to get one last kitten out of the sun room! I never saw the bitty baby while we were doing all this, though. Which may be a good thing. Now that we’re all pretty much in agreement about bringing the bitty in (which will bring the number of indoor cats up to 15), it’s hard not to just up and grab him! But more time with the mamas is better for him right now.
I forgot to take a picture while it was still on the flat cart. Not visible, because they are on and under the seat that isn’t folded down, is a box with three rotisserie chickens – which are still cheaper than buying a three pack of whole, raw chicken – a case of 48 cans of wet cat food, and a double flat of 60 eggs.
There’s more toilet paper for stocking up, as well as an extra bag of rice. They did not have the larger bags of cat kibble, so I got four 9kg bags of Kirkland brand, which cost $28.99 each.
The two insulated bags are not completely full, but I wanted to distribute the weight between them more evenly. There’s a litre of whipping cream; something we don’t normally buy, but at $4.69, is quite a bit cheaper than elsewhere. It’s the same with the 10 pounds of butter at $4.99 each. Everywhere else, even the no-name or house brands are around $6.50 each. A big block of Old Cheddar now costs $29.99, and that’s cheaper than the few other places that carry that size. I got a pork loin and pork blade, both of which were small enough to cost under $20 each by weight. (I’m so glad we’re getting a quarter beef in December, because beef prices right now are really high.) There’s a pack of Kirkland brand cream cheese which, at $9.49, is much more affordable here.
I got a 6 pk of canned chicken, which was $21.99 – I think it actually stayed the same price as last month. I got a couple of big jars of mayonnaise that was on sale; regular $10.99, which is higher than last time, but the sale price was $8.49. Since my bee keeper cousin lost so many of his bees to our long, late winter, I bought a 3kg bottle of honey, which cost $24.99 I think that’s actually the same as what my cousin charges. I usually try to get his 5kg size, and the last time I got any from him, it was only a 1 kg jar, so I can’t quite remember. I also got more brown sugar for the pantry, as well as chocolate chips, peanut butter and popcorn. The package of AA batteries, which is mostly for the trail cams, now costs $25.99 – plus the eco fee. I don’t get the cheap brands of batteries, because the trail cams suck them dry in no time. If the new, solar powered trail cam handles winter well, I think we’ll get more to replace the old ones. The batteries on that are still 100%, while I’ve had to replace the batteries on the older ones at least twice, each, since we got the new one.
What else is in there? Oh, a case of bar soap, a stock up on feminine hygiene products, and a couple of packages of tortilla wraps. I did not get any other bread product, though I did look for hot dog buns. In fact, I’ve been trying to find hot dog buns since I got the giant package of wieners at the wholesale store. I haven’t found any! We’ll just have to start baking more bread again. We do less of that in the summer, partly because of the heat and partly because there’s just too many things outside that need to get done.
And that’s it.
I didn’t even fill the flat cart for the cost.
*sigh*
Bahahahahaha!!! Oh, this is too funny! While I was writing the above, there was a sudden noise at my window, and all the cats sleeping on my bed jumped. Now, they are all watching with great fascination, as my daughter cleans, then squeegies, my big window from outside, their heads following along in unison.
Anyhow… Where was I?
Oh, yes.
Distracted.
Like these guys.
When I back up to the house to unload the van, that gets the attention of a lot of cats. Princess even jumped into the back of the van while we were hauling things out. The smell of that rotisserie chicken was just too tempting! She never found it, though.
When we were done, there were about 5 or more kittens under the van. Slamming doors and kicking the sides was not enough to chase them away. I even turned the hose on and tried spraying under the van, which worked for some kittens. Other kittens started chasing the water! So my daughter distracted them with a bit of kibble, long enough for me to get the van started and out of the yard. Once it was parked, I topped up the kibble bin, then gave them their full evening feeding, with powdered lysine dusted over the kibble this time.
One thing we have not been doing of late is putting out feed for the birds. Normally, this time of year, we’d be switching to deer feed, but I’m not sure if we’ll be keeping that up. One reason is the racoons keep tearing apart the hanging feeder. We started just leaving seed on the ground, but not all birds like to eat from the ground – and the racoons still eat the feed meant for the birds. So when the black oil seed ran out, I just didn’t get more.
The deer, however, are still checking the feeding station out.
When I got home, drove through the gate and was back in the van after locking it again, I looked up to see a stag in our “parking lot” area near the garage. It had just come through the inner yard, and was standing there, staring at me! I started to drive very slowly, and it made its way into the overgrowth where there had been standing water during this spring’s flooding. The grass there is actually taller than the deer! It didn’t even run off, but just slowly made its way through the fence around the outer yard, and kept on going.
So beautiful.
We might not buy more seed for beside the house, but at some point I want to start getting a round hay bale and leave it out behind the barn for the deer, to draw them away from the house.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
After today’s trip, we should be done with stock up shopping for the month! It is less than we normally would have gotten, but it was what this month’s budget allowed for. We still saved enough by driving to the city to make it worth the cost of gas. Locally, gas prices dropped to 180.9 cents/L, but I filled my tank at Costco at 175.9 cents/L. It’s 3.79L to one US gallon, so that works out to 685.6/US gallon (US$5.03) locally, or 666.6/US gallon (US$4.89) at Costco.
Gas prices are still way too high, but I’ll take any break in price I can get.
And that’s it. Our monthly stock up shopping for November is done.
This turtle is more than ready to climb back into her shell.
This is also the first photo taken with my new phone!
I set the new phone up to the bare essentials, making sure I had Discord set up because that’s what we used to message each other with, then headed out. I stopped along the way to pick up some fuel and breakfast (it was about noon by then!), then sent a test message home. It wasn’t until I got to The Wholesale Club and connected with their free wifi that I saw my message never got sent. Not connection to data. My set up wasn’t complete. Which meant I couldn’t have made a call if I needed to. Ah, well.
This store caters more towards restaurants, especially take-out places, so while there is a lot of what we’d find in their regular retail grocery stores (Superstore/Loblaws), there’s a lot that they carry only at their wholesale locations, or things in sizes that are only here.
For this trip, I picked up their last two biggest bags (9kg) of dry cat food. They always seem to be low in stock on that. They had other sizes and their no-name brand, but these were the better deal per kg. I also picked up a 32 pack of canned cat food. When I get to Costco, I’ll be picking up more of both, of course. There’s no way this will last us long. The outside cats go through almost 2 bags of this size a week. The wet cat food is just for the inside cats. The dry cat food has gone up to $30.99 a bag in this size. The wet cat food in this size was $26.99 I used to be able to get them at Walmart for under $19 just a few months ago.
In the non-food items, I picked up a couple of packs of paper towels, because it was cheaper per package to get 2 of them than just one, by about 40%. I also picked up a 6 pack of facial tissues, which I usually get at Costco or Walmart. I found some biodegradable liners for our kitchen compost bucket. A spur of the moment purchase from the restaurant supply section was a wooden muddler. It’s designed for mixing drinks, but it will come in handy the next time we make sauerkraut. It’ll work better than what we made do with, before. There’s also a 4 pk of distilled water for my husband’s CPAP humidifier, and a jug of windshield water fluid rated to -45C/-49F for the van.
I picked up more peanut butter for the pantry. I was very tempted to pick up a big restaurant sized bucket, but that was just out of budget for this trip. There’s a box of Sweet and Salty peanut granola bars that was cheaper than even Costco. I picked up the giant bags of pasta, in penne and rotini, for the pantry, which will be repacked into more functional sized containers. We should be well stocked for pasta for a long time, and if we really need to, we can make our own from scratch, too.
There’s a giant container of stuffed olives – a favourite snack of my husband’s, as well as a cooking ingredient – and a restaurant sized tin of tomato paste. I had been planning to buy a case of tinned tomato paste at Costco, but after making our own and canning it in those little tiny jars, we’ve been spoiled at being able to use a spoonful and seal the container for later. I have another case of those jars, so we can open this giant can, transfer the paste into the little jars, and water bath can them like we did with or own. We’ve been going through those pretty steadily, so more will not go amiss!
I picked up some seasonal coffee creamer for my daughters – the Christmas flavours are out already!, and only 3 pounds of butter. The no-name brand was $5.99 each. I’m hoping Costco, where I usually get 10 pounds at once, will still have better prices. There’s a tub of sour cream, and smaller blocks of old cheddar, marble and mozzarella cheese that were ten bucks each. Usually, I get a giant block of old cheddar at Costco, and I still might do that. We’ll see. I also picked up a bag of AP flour, there’s a flat of 30 eggs, plus four big bags of frozen perogies, in two different flavours. They were only $4 each! I would have gotten more, but it’s a long drive to keep things frozen, even with the insulated bags. There’s a bulk package of wieners (I’ll get buns another time), a giant summer sausage, and a box of frozen chicken tenders that was only $20. I’ll get more “real” meat at Costco. The bunch of celery is for making bone broth, and I picked up more sweet potatoes, now that we’ve found we like them in certain soups. I like them in general, but I’m the only one.
I almost got a 50lb bag of potatoes, but after looking at them through the window in their paper bags, I found they were not really in good shape. They were the “irregulars”, which I don’t mind, but I do mind if I see what looks like scab, or bruising. The bulk sized boxes “table potatoes” cost almost double, so I just got an ordinary bag of russets. Oh, and there’s a big jug of olive oil in there, too.
So that trip is done for now. I won’t be able to make another trip into the city until next week. Tomorrow, I’m taking my mother’s car in to get the slow leaking tire fixed, so hopefully, I can use her car instead. We’re trying to use the van as little as possible, until we can finally replace it.
Once at home, and the girls helped me put everything away, I got to work on finishing setting up my phone. The phone came with a data transfer cable, so I could potentially hook my old phone to my new phone and transfer data that way. It never worked. It kept telling me the cable was connecting and disconnecting. Then an alarm started sounding from the new phone, telling me that it had detected moisture or debris in the connector. !! I tried cleaning out the old phone, but it made no difference. I finally gave up and tried transferring data through wifi. That too forever to get working! I kept getting messages saying that both phones had to be on the same wireless connection (they were), then the new one would tell me it needed to disconnect my internet so it could use the wifi alone. I even tried turning on the BlueTooth on both phones (it made no difference), then turning on the NFC on the old phone – there doesn’t seem to be that option on the new phone. Then it finally started working.
I wasn’t able to transfer all data, though. The new phone cannot support a micro SD card. On my old phone, that’s where my photos and video default to. When I tried to transfer everything, it told me there wasn’t enough room. So I switched to transferring internal storage data only, and it finally started working – only to have something turning on and interrupting the transfer!
Eventually I got it done, but the new phone’s storage is already at 63%. I took a look and found a backup from my old phone was in internal storage, which means that some things are duplicated. Before I’d looked at that, though, I’d removed the SD card from the old phone, and am currently transferring everything on it into my external hard drive.
There’s more than 20,000 files on there, and most of them are photos. It’s going to take a LONG time for that to transfer! Since I want to transfer the internal back up folder onto the external hard drive, too, that will likely have to wait until tomorrow. It’s been about an hour since I started, and it’s at only 4%.
I’m going to have to spend some time figuring out the new phone, resetting things and testing things out. While I did take the one picture, I have yet to look at the phone camera’s setting for quality and resolution.
One of the things my husband did while I was away was order a phone case and screen protectors for it. Smartphones always feel like they’re going to slide right out of my hands, if I don’t have a case on them! He found a style very much like the one I got for the old phone, so it will have a “wallet” cover for the touch screen that can fit a few cards and maybe some cash, and that’s it. I want something as flat as possible, since it’s going to spent most of its time in my pocket while I work outside.
When I turned on the old phone this morning, while starting to set up the new one, a couple of texts came in from the cat lady. She sent pictures of the bitty babies, and they are doing great! I told her that the missing bitty showed up in the cat shelter again. At this point, we will leave things as they are, but if there is any sign of distress or abandonment, she said to contact her and she’ll come get it, too. I was looking for it while we unloaded the van, but it wasn’t in the cat shelter anymore. Likely, it was underneath again, while there was a lot of to-do going on as we unloaded. I will check again before it gets dark and hopefully will see it inside again. I did check one last time after putting the van in the garage, and I saw Junk Pile looking back at me through the window, from inside the cat bed! I have the hardest time believing she’s the mama, since her second litter is still so young, but if she’s decided to mother the bitty baby along with her own, I don’t have a problem with that at all!
Now… time to play with my new phone and get it set up the way I like!
I finally made my second trip to the city to do another stock up shop. After going over our list, I decided it was just a Walmart trip.
Then I got a message from my brother, we chatted a bit, and ended up arranging for me to visit! It’s been ages since I’ve been to their place. My brother has come here a few times, but I haven’t seen my SIL since the beginning of summer. She’s allergic to cats, so she can’t really come here. 😔
We had an excellent visit. Gosh, I love those two so much! 💖
Then I headed to the Walmart to get what I needed.
Well. Most of it.
This came out to just over $300. Almost half of that is cat related. I got four 10kg bags – the largest they had – of dry kibble. We now have enough to last us the month. I also finally picked up a covered litter box. Nosencrantz and Butterscotch still refuse to leave my office, but Nosencrantz has litter issues. She will go to the litter box to scratch away at the litter, the sides, the bottom, and the removable top part that is supposed to keep the litter inside the pan. She still manages to get the litter out. There have been times she’s almost ripped the top part off completely, and every now and then, she tips the whole thing onto its side!
What she isn’t necessarily doing is using the litter box. In fact, there are times when she’ll go to the litter several times, scratching away, then go into my closest and take a dump. Then, after I’ve chased her out and cleaned up her mess, she’ll go right back to the litter box and start scratching again.
So I now have a covered litter box, with a filter, in my closet, right where she keeps trying to do her business.
I did have another extra purchase that isn’t normally part of our budget. I picked up some artificial flowers. My younger daughter and I will be going to my MIL’s grave to tidy it up and leave some flowers, then take pictures to send to my FIL. He’s not physically able to get out there anymore. I’ve actually never been to the cemetery. My husband flew out for the funeral, with our daughter as his mobility assistant. The problem is, she was feeling quite ill during the funeral, and doesn’t have a clear memory of any of it. Still, I know where the cemetery is, though I’ve never been there, and hopefully she’ll remember enough that we won’t have to search too long to find the grave.
One other unusual purchase was a request from my husband: nacho fixings. Actually, only the chips are an unusual purchase. The cheese is something we regularly pick up; there’s just more of it this time. I got more Old cheddar, havarti, gouda and mozzarella.
We like cheese.
While I don’t pick up a large jar of olives every month, it’s still something we get fairly regularly. My husband loves green olives, just as a snack. As for the chips, I got 4 big bags, and hopefully we’ll get one batch of nachos out of them. They tend to be pretty broken up. When we make nachos, it’s in my big roasting pan. Enough for the four of us, and usually some left over for the next day. 😁
I remembered to get hot dog buns. I also picked up some rye bread, and some garlic naan. It’s cheap turkey season, but I only got one turkey. Looking at the other meats, none of them appealed to me, so that was it for meat. I wasn’t too impressed with the fruits and vegetables, but the cabbage looked good, so I got a head of cabbage. The Stove Top Stuffing was on sale for only 88 cents a box, so I got two. Thanksgiving is next weekend, and we’ve got a good start on what we’ll have for dinner. I also got a couple of 18 count cartons of eggs, and a couple of bottles of coffee creamer – pumpkin spice and maple flavours – for my daughters. I remembered to look for alcohol swabs for our first aid kit, but couldn’t find them. I asked a staff member and found out they now sell them from behind the counter! I even had to pay for it there. When I mentioned this to my daughters, my younger daughter, who was working at a pharmacy when the “15 days to flatten the curve” started, told me that they had to do that, too. People went nuts, and didn’t stop to read directions, so things like alcohol swabs, sanitizing gel, etc. all had to be hidden away to keep people from stealing them, or snagging them all for themselves. I know the other stuff is out and easy to get at, so I do wonder why the alcohol swabs would still be a behind the counter.
I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I think that’s all that I got today. Oh! I remember now. I got a 4L of milk, too. Usually we get 2L cartons, but we’ll be doing more baking over the next while. I also picked up a case of chicken flavoured ramen noodles for the stash.
What I didn’t get:
Butter. We still have some in the freezer, but with more baking on the horizon, I wanted to get a few more, but even their cheaper house brand is now more expensive than I could justify. Not when we still have a few pounds in the freezer, and a big bucket of ghee on hand.
The wood screws I needed. Not only did they not have the kind I wanted, but the small boxes of screws were insanely expensive.
I also did not get a new door knob. The knob on my door is probably about 45 years old, is missing a screw, starting to get stuck and generally becoming a problem. Worse, though, is that I’m starting to have problems opening my door – and we have to keep it closed, because when Fenrir and Turmeric come in, they both immediately start hunting down and attacking Nosencrantz and Butterscotch! Cheddar comes in and out, and now Leyendecker is accepted by the ladies.
Yes, Layendecker is doing all right! In fact, he seems fully recovered. Tonight, he gets his last dose of medication. We need to book him for follow up blood tests with the vet, but they are closed until they complete their move to a new, larger, location. They’ll even have their own parking lot now! So we will call to book the appointment on Monday (the day after tomorrow), when they are open again.
Cheddar and Leyendecker go in and out rather frequently, which means having to get up and open the door for them when they start scratching at the mat we have under the door to keep them from scratching the carpet. The problem is, my hands are hurting so much, I’m starting to have trouble turning the knob. There have been times when I couldn’t grasp the knob with my right hand at all because of the pain. Even today, while shopping, I’d reach to pick up a jar or something with my right hand, and would get shooting pains in my phalanges and simply couldn’t grip it.
Because of this, rather than trying to fix my door knob, I want to replace it with a lever style door handle. Something I can open even if my hands hurt.
The only ones they had were the heavier duty ones for exterior doors, complete with a deadbolt. Which, of course, is more expensive. There were no simple, cheap, lever handles for interior doors.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some at the hardware store when I pick up the screws I need.
Which I could have done today, but completely forgot when I had the chance. When I was done at the Walmart, I decided to check out a nearby Canadian Tire to see if they had any seed garlic (the only garlic at Walmart was imported soft neck garlic, which might be treated with something to keep them from growing).
It took a while, but I did find the display!
There were only two bulbs per bag, so I got two bags of two different types. The Nootka Rose (long storing variety) is a new one for us. The other is Music. The garlic we’ve already planted from our own harvest are Porcelain Music. Previously, we ordered our garlic from Veseys, which were packaged by weight, so it felt strange to be paying $6.99 for only two heads of garlic.
We will plant these tomorrow, in the same bed as the ones we’ve already planted.
And there we have it. We’re stocked up for most of the month, with a few extras added. The few things we didn’t get today, we should be able to get locally later on.
It feels especially good to have so much kibble on hand. If I can pick up extra later on, I will. When winter hits, the outside cats are going to be eating a lot more to keep their winter fat, and there are going to be more outside cats than before, too!
Hopefully, it will be mild winter, but we’re not going to be counting on that!
I was planning to go into the city tomorrow, but I was able to change plans and do it today. That means I’ll be available to help my mother tomorrow, when she has to be away from her apartment while it’s being sprayed for bed bugs again.
I did a Costco and a Canadian Tire trip today. We will have to go another trip soon, but I was able to get most of what we need, I think. This is what I got at Costco.
I can’t remember if I mentioned it earlier or not, but we had an unexpected financial hit last month. My husband had a bi-weekly subscription order with Amazon for some sugar free drink mixes. One flavour had been back ordered. Well, it suddenly was available, and they shipped ALL of the back order at once. It worked out to be 10 cases of 16 bottles of mix in total. We only found out about it when almost $500 disappeared from our account on Sept. 13. I thought it was a fraudulent purchase on my husband’s debit Visa, at first! He found out what it was and tried to cancel the order, but they said the deadline for cancellation was Aug. 27. So we were going to let it arrive, then start the return process – only to find out that it wasn’t available for return, because it’s considered a “food item”. There are supposed to be ways to still get refunded, but my husband couldn’t find it. His searches had him going in circles. So we are now trying to sell them through our local store, and hopefully get at least some of our money back!
The hit did a number on our budget, but thanks to having already stocked up as much as we did, plus my daughter covering a couple of automatic payments, we managed all right. It means my focus is largely on replacing what we used, as well as continuing to build up our stash for the winter.
After seeing the prices for me, I’m really glad we’ve got a quarter beef coming in December, that’s for sure! I got a family pack size of lean ground beef, and it cost over $30 – almost twice what the same weight pack cost a couple of years ago.
Along with the ground beef, we got some pork loin, pork chops, a three pack of all beef wieners (but no buns; I’ll get those later. I’m hoping we can do a cook out soon). I also got three rotisserie chickens. Normally, I don’t even look at those, but I’d caught a new shopping video from Our Half Acre Homestead last night, and she mentioned that the cooked chicken was cheaper than the whole chicken. So I made a point of comparing. Sure enough, the bags with three whole chickens in them were all in the $30 range, while the rotisserie chicken was $7.99. On top of the fresh meat, I also picked up a 6 pack of canned chicken.
Normally, I would have picked up 10 pounds of butter for the month, but we still have some in the freezer. I’d picked up a jar of ghee and we still have a bit left. It’s worked out quite well, so instead of getting more butter or oil (which we also still have), I got a big bucket of ghee. At $39.99, it cost less than getting our usual 10 pounds of butter, and it’s shelf stable.
I ended up getting a LOT of pasta this trip. I found boxes with 9 – 500g variety packs of pasta for $9.99, so I got two. Then I found a plastic bag with a different variety mix of pasta, same quantity and weight, for the same price, so I got one of those, too. Plus, I got a case of Kraft Dinner. The girls like KD.
I also got a case of frozen perogies, a couple of containers of sour cream, a multi-pack of Kirkland cream cheese (I forget how many were the package), a 2 pk of goat cheese, a large pack of Old cheddar cheese, a 2 pk of butter chicken sauce, a big jar of peanut butter, a big jar of mayonnaise, a bag of Basmati rice, two packages of flour tortillas, a container of ice tea mix, as well as a 3 pk of Q tips and some extra strength ibuprofen for the girls, as they are running low. I also got a case of Coke Zero for a treat. Plus, I got a large package of facial tissue, the Kirkland brand toilet paper, some all purpose cleaner, a case of Friskies wet cat food, and four 11.6 kg bags of dry kibble.
Oh, the sticker shock on just about everything reminded me of another one I got. I was at half a tank when I left home, so I stopped along the way to put in a bit of gas, with the intention of filling at Costco, at their lower price. Pretty routine. I put in $30 of gas at 165.9 cents/litre. After I finished at Costco and was heading out, I walked past the sign with their gas price – 174.9 cents/litre!!! It took another $60 to fill my tank. On the way home, the gas station I’d stopped at in the morning was at 186.9 cents/litre
Ouch.
Now that this trip is done, we’ll go over what we’ve got and what I didn’t pick up this trip, and make a new list for the missing stuff. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make a second trip in a couple of days.
I had stopped at the Canadian Tire first, since it was all non-perishables. We needed more stove pellets for the litter boxes. The hardwood pellets have gone up from $6.99 for a 40 pound bag to $7.29, but they also have softwood pellets that are still at $6.99 I got one of each, so we can compare and see which work better. I also picked up furnace filters. For some reason, the 20″ x 20″ size of the type we need is harder to find. I’m only finding them at Canadian Tire, and they aren’t always in stock. They’re not expensive, so I grabbed two 3pks.
Which reminds me. It’s almost time to replace the filter on our furnace. 😊
I also got a gallon of exterior paint for the water bowl house. I picked a yellow close to what the kibble house is. Considering what it’s for, I asked for their cheapest exterior paint. It turns out they only had two options, and one of them had a base coat in it, so really there was just one choice. A gallon of paint cost $52.99 While she was mixing the colour for me, I spotted a display of Flex Seal and picked up a can of clear. That’ll come in handy for some patch jobs we need to do. I remembered to look for a new handle grip to replace the one that broke off our garden fork. I ended up having to ask an employee for help. We both looked around for a while, then she went to the customer service to look it up on the computer and see if it was in stock. There was plenty of inventory in stock, and it was apparently right next to where she was working when I asked her for help! We went back and looked again and finally found it, right in front of our faces. We both looked right over them, several times, without seeing them! I was looking for the same bright blue as the handle that broke off, but the replacements were black.
Along with that, I remembered to pick up some toilet tank pucks. There is so much iron accumulating in our toilet tank, it’s starting to affect how well the toilet flushes. I found two septic safe brands, in 2 packs, specifically to help remove iron and got one of each. We’ve tried one brand before, so when the girls unloaded and put everything away, my daughter popped one of from the new brand in, so we can compare. And finally, I picked up a roll of self adhesive felt padding. It’s for the corner of my bed frame, where we all keep very painfully barking our shins!
Total damage at Canadian Tire was $148.75
Add in the $700 at Costco and $90 total for gas, it was a pretty expensive day!
I called my mother a little while ago, and made arrangements for tomorrow. Hopefully, the guy will remember that she needs to be away for 12 hours and will do her place first. The earliest the letter she got says they will be there is 9am. It would actually be feasible for her to still stay away for 12 hours and not have to spend the night at a motel. She doesn’t want to stay at my sisters, because where she would be sleeping means having to take several steps up and down, just to get to the bathroom. She can’t even stay here because, with my husband set up with his hospital bed in the bedroom closest to the bathroom, she would not only still have steps to take, but a much longer walk. Staying at a motel month after month is a ridiculous expense, but it’s really the best option. Close to home, private, no stairs, and even a bath tub, if she wants to us it – her apartment has only a shower, and she does miss her baths! But if the guy doesn’t come early enough, she may not have a choice. While I can help her for most of the day, at some point, she’s going to end up hanging out in the lobby of her building, like her neighbours do. They can go back into their apartments after only 6 hours, though. My mother had been thinking she could go in early and open windows, but the more stress and anxiety she feels, the more breathing issues she has – and she’s already had stress issues just today. Along with a meeting for tenants today, they had someone in to give everyone shots. My mother thinks it was a Covid booster shot, but she wasn’t sure. Which irritates the heck out of me. People like her and her neighours just line up to get injections that don’t actually work, and causing so many injuries. It’s like playing Russian Roulette, every time. No one is telling them anything to get informed consent, either. Most of the people living there couldn’t understand it, anyhow.
Argh. Venting.
Anyhow.
I will see her tomorrow, and we’ll figure out what to do as the day goes!
Meanwhile, I’m just really, really glad I was able to do a substantial part of our monthly shop today.
Today, I finally made it into the city to do our Costco shopping for the month. Normally, we would have done it more than a week ago. Thankfully, we did get to do our stocking up at other stores, so we weren’t running out of things. I just prefer to get it over with, earlier.
I didn’t want to do it on the weekend, though. I had stuff to do that require a lot of time, so I did my morning rounds quickly and headed out as soon as I could.
This is $481 worth of stuff looks like, including the Pizza Pops for my daughter that she sent me funds to cover. I didn’t get everything I would have gotten, because that already put me over the grocery budget for this trip.
Just to be clear, our “grocery” budget covers food, household cleaners, paper products and cat food, and other miscellaneous items.
Everything has gone up in price.
There are two 11.6kg bags of dry cat food, which now costs $34.99 each, and two 9kg bags of their house brand cat food at $28.49 each. The case of wet cat food now costs $33.99
I meant to get our usual 10 pounds of butter for the month, even though we still have a couple of pounds in the freezer from last month, thanks to also picking up some ghee. I accidentally grabbed 11, and when they counted and found an extra, I just kept it. House brand butter at Costco is now $4.99 each. There’s a package of AA batteries in there, mostly for the trail cams, as well as a 60 pack of eggs, toilet paper, all purpose cleaner, a 2 pack of lemon juice, peanut butter, a couple of jars of mayonnaise, a 2pk of baking powder, a 3 pack of hot dogs, their big package of Old Cheddar cheese, 6 pack of pasta, and a can of pink lemonade powdered mix to try. One thing in there we don’t normally get is a 3 pk of cream cheese, for a recipe we want to try. Some of this is for the pantry, stocking up on the assumption we’ll be stuck for at least 2 months in the winter, but not much.
It’s a ridiculously small Costco shop for the money, but that was what the budget allowed for. I did make a quick stop at a nearby Superstore to pick up a couple of bags their $5 buns, and a non-Costco size of paper towels, a specific snack my husband requested, and a sandwich and drink for me to ingest on the trip home. With that one, I at least had enough loyalty points accumulated that I was able to get what would have been $38 for $8, instead.
The biggest item on the list is always the cat food. We really need to reduce the number of cats we’re feeding!
That done, my afternoon was spent working on making crab apple sauce. It took 2 hours to remove the stems and flower ends, as well as any damage, from the apples remaining in the one bin from the other day. We still have one more bin to do something with, as well as the bucket of apples I’d set aside for my mother. I called her about it, hoping to arrange a time to come over with them, but she declined them. Aside from the apples she picked here, apples had been left in the lobby of her building for the residents. She is all done with apples now. I was hoping she’d enjoy having apples from here that were fully ripe. Ah, well.
The apples took a long time to prep, but they sure cooked down fast! I’ll do a separate post about it later, as it’s not done yet. I’ve asked the girls to give it a taste and add as much sugar as they like, then cook the sauce down, and tomorrow morning I’ll can them while they’re still hot. I don’t actually like apple sauce all that much, but the girls requested it, so it’s on them to get it to their taste. 😊
I don’t know that I want to make more apple sauce with the rest. We shall see.
Unfortunately, my hands are now knackered again. My finger joints are really hurting. As least they’re not so stiff I can’t type, but … ouch.
Arthritis sucks.
Even my elbows and shoulders are giving me a hard time. I did go out and do some work around the yard this evening, but not enough to warrant that kind of pain.
Ah, well. I suppose I should just pain killer up and deal. 😕
This morning, the girls were able to haul wood chips over to the Korean Pine and give them a good mulching. They also got another coat of paint on platform bed frame that will become a litter box platform in the basement.
They fed the kittens early, to keep them out of the way, emptying the kibble bin in the process. Turns out I should have bought two bags last time, not one.
While they were doing that, I did my morning rounds. Checking on the garden beds, I found myself able to hand pollinate more Ozark Nest Egg gourds, Styrian pumpkins and summer squash, as well as get a harvest.
There was a surprising number of cucumbers to pick.
I don’t know what to do with them anymore! We planted adequate amounts of cucumbers for our own use, but with my sister being so very generous in giving us some of her own cucumbers we have more than we can use! We like cucumbers and pickles, but not that much of it! 😉
With the ground cherries, I’m just picking what is ripe enough to fall to the ground; there are many more on the plants that are still very green, and getting very big!
The beans might be winding down, but the yellow pear tomatoes are winding up. I’m hand pollinating the summer squash as much as I can, so hopefully we will be picking more those, soon, but sometimes, there’s just nothing to pollinate.
Whenever I pause to take a picture of our morning harvest, I try to get two set ups; one spread out like in the above photo, and one with everything back in the colander.
While I was working on that, I had two kittens that were very, very interested in what I was doing!
This one was ready to climb right into the colander! The little black and white one, whose paws you can see at the top, kept trying to play with the pea pods while I was trying to take the first pictures.
Silly babies!
My plan for after I finished my morning rounds was to head into town and pick up another bag of kibble, to last us until my husband’s CPP Disability came in on Monday. We got a nice surprise, though. It came in today. So I decided to do a Walmart trip at the nearer, smaller city, instead. Costco can wait until the main pay comes in on the last business day of the month.
After seeing the Old Farmer’s Almanac prediction of a “glacial” January and February this winter, the girls have put together a stock-up list of non-perishables, on the assumption that we will have at least 2 months where we won’t be able to go anywhere. Every shopping trip, we already try to get a little extra for the pantry, but we’ll be working to step it up a bit for non-perishables, whether it’s case lots of canned soups, or extra Costco sized packages of toilet paper. We’re trying to figure out how to re-arrange the old kitchen to store things like paper products, since that room freezes in the winter.
With that in mind, while at the Walmart today, I did pick up some extra flour and a couple of cases of ramen noodles. I also picked up a small plastic storage shelf that just barely fits in the old kitchen space where the rocker is. I’ll need to find another place for the rocker, but the little shelf has already freed up space that had been taken up by cases of canning jars and paper products. We moved a plastic couch that had been in the sun room, into the old kitchen, where I pictured being able to sit in the cooler old kitchen on hot summer days, only for that to never happen. We’ve been using the room for too many other things. There are a couple of old wooden shelves that aren’t being well used, but I don’t want to move them, as they are strong enough to stand on, giving us access to the breaker panel. I guess we could move the couch to the storage house, but that’s already so full of stuff, there really isn’t anyplace to put it there, either.
We’ll have to figure something out, since we want to convert the old kitchen to a sort of walk-in pantry.
The thing that will take up the most space is going to be the bags of kibble. Today, I was able to find a couple of 10kg bags, along with the usual 7kg bags we get at Walmart. When we make our Costco run, we’ll get their 9kb bags, too. We have a hard time stocking up enough kibble to last one month, never mind stocking up enough for 2 months!
Ideally, we’ll be able to adopt out more kitties before winter, though, and won’t need to buy so much cat food!
While I was out, I got a message from my daughter, updating me on what they were able to finish before heading to bed for the day. I’ll have to make my way into the basement to see how much further my younger daughter got down there. During the night, I could hear large things being moved around. Meanwhile, her sister got the remaining fresh tomatoes sliced up, and they are dehydrating in the oven right now. Once those are dry, I’m debating what to do next with them. We can just store them dry, put them in jars with olive oil, or powder them. Eventually, we’ll probably have all three.
Since we will likely be dehydrating more often, I decided to look at dehydrators. There were none at the Walmart, so I went across to a Canadian Tire. After much searching, I did find one in the hunting section. A small one, way out of budget. Ouch!
I didn’t get a dehydrator, but while wandering the store looking for one, I ended up getting a few other handy things, including an extra jar holder for canning, like we already have. When it comes time to make and can tomato paste, they will be in 125ml jars. The jar holder is designed to stack smaller jars on top of each other, which will allow me to can up to 12 small jars at once, which will save us plenty of time.
While on the way home, I stopped at a farmer’s market I’d never been to before. There were some of the same vendors I have seen at others, including one that sells fresh produce. They did not have a lot to offer; looks like they are having a difficult year in the garden, too. I did find the pie lady, though, and picked up an apple bourbon pie. I don’t know how large this particular market normally is, but it seemed there weren’t very many vendors. There are a couple of others I’ve been to last year and can compare, and those have most definitely seen a major drop in the number of vendors. The types of things being sold has changed, too. Not a lot of fresh produce, canning or meat products, but more direct sales booths, like Norwex or Pampered Chef, and hand crafts. I’m glad I stopped by, though. Along with a lovely pie, I found some excellent handspun yarn. I think I’ll give it to my daughter, though. I haven’t been able to crochet in quite some time. My fingers have become far too stiff, and the high humidity of late has been brutal on my arthritis. I do miss it, though. 😞
Ah, well.
Now that I’ve done the Walmart shopping, I find myself seriously considering making a trip into town. They still have that case lot sale happening, and a few cases of canned soup for the pantry would not go amiss.
The question is, do I have the energy for another drive into town today?
As I’m writing this, I’d have to say no. I do not.
I saw one good thing when heading into town with the cats this morning. The gas prices dropped 10 cents per litre, overnight. At 169.9 cents per liter, it’s still higher than it should be, but every little bit helps.
I was going to fill the jerry can after dropping off the cats, but the cats didn’t get dropped off. On deciding to head into the city, that will just have to wait again.
Before hitting the Costco, I went to a Canadian Tire to pick up a couple of bags of stove pellets for cat litter. I also picked up some ant traps. I would prefer not to kill off ant hills, since ants are also pollinators, but there are a couple of hills that are large enough to damage some garden plants, plus we’re seeing more of them in the house.
We’ve hardly used the van this month at all, and the gas tank was almost full when I left home. Costco gas prices were 159.9 cents per liter for regular. A considerable difference! So I topped up the tank, anyhow.
I had expected doing a Costco shop in the middle of the week would be quite, but nope. It was insanely busy! At least I wasn’t fighting a flat cart around crowds of people. With the other stock up shopping done already, I didn’t need to get more dry cat food. I was able to just just a regular cart for a change!
In the end, I didn’t get much at all.
With reason.
This is what Cdn$350 looks like. Plus change.
Under the cart is a package of Kirkland brand toilet paper, a package of 60 eggs, and a case of the cheaper canned cat food. 48 cans in that size.
I also got 10 pounds of butter (at $5 a pound, that’s at least a dollar cheaper than other no-name or house brand butters, but higher for Costco prices), a package with 3 whole chickens, a triple pack of all-beef wieners, and a pork tenderloin. There’s a 6 pack of canned chicken, mayonnaise, peanut butter, cooking oil, AAA batteries, 2 packages of tortilla wraps, and a 2 pack of hot dog buns. Oh, plus a package of white button mushrooms and a big block of marble cheese.
That’s it.
This is one of the smallest Costco shopping trips I’ve done, but it still came out to pennies over $350
That’s just painful! There aren’t even any fruits or vegetables in there, either.
I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if our own garden was producing, but it just barely is. Most things are, if not a complete loss, at least a month behind in growth and development.
This morning, my plan was to head out early to do my morning rounds, then go to my mother’s to help her shut down her sleep test, get it all together, then bring it to the city.
Of course, that meant I got almost no sleep at all.
Since I was going to my mothers, I was actually wearing normal people clothes while doing my rounds, instead of my usual grubbies. I didn’t want to be stinking of bug spray while at my mother’s, since she does have respiratory issues, so I didn’t use any when I headed out.
I have never been attacked by such swarms of mosquitoes before – and being eaten alive by the buggers is par for the course these days!
Where are all the dragonflies? They usually show up in droves to eat the mosquitoes, but I’ve only seen one so far, this year! I suspect they, too, were negatively affected by our horrible spring.
I practically ran through my rounds, and it wasn’t until I was in the safety of my mother’s car and on the road that I realized I was leaving more then half an hour earlier than planned.
No matter. It gave me time to top up her gas tank and pick up one of those 5 Hour Energy thingies. I was going to need it. I was still early, but my mother was more than happy to be unhooked.
We finished off the questionnaire that came with the tester. These were questions on how easy or not it was to use the machine, how comfortable or not it was to sleep with, and so one. Once she was set up last night, my mother was quite fine with it, though the pulse oximeter did come off her finger, even with the tape, once during the night.
Getting the tape off was not easy. In hindsight, when I put it on, I should have deliberately folded under a corner to have something to grab onto. The tape is very light and flexible, the adhesive works quite well, and my mother’s skin is very loose and stretchy!
That done, I encouraged my mother to go back to bed after I left, then headed for the city. Once I got to the place, it was just a quick drop off with the most cheerful and friendly employee I’ve seen in ages. 😁
Since driving over an hour to take less than a minute to drop off the kit would have been quite the waste of gas, I took advantage of the situation. I am rarely in this area of the city, so I headed to a liquidation centre that was on my way back out.
With this place, there is no way of knowing what will be available at any given time. On this trip, if I’d had the budget – or counter space – for it, I could have gotten a great deal on all kinds of Cuisinart kitchen appliances. I didn’t even bother looking at the clothing section. I did go through a section where they have things like household linens, tools, paint supplies, hunting and fishing gear, etc. I was very tempted by some heavy duty interlocking floor mats to put over our horrible kitchen floor, but it just wasn’t something I could justify picking up this time around.
I didn’t get a lot while I was there, but what I did get was mostly for our “stockpile.” I got a couple of big boxes of granola type bars. I used to get them fairly regularly at Costco, where they used to cost about $15 a box. The prices have gone up, but I haven’t look at them in ages. Here, they were at $9 a box, so I got two. I didn’t bring any ice packs along, so I wasn’t going to get a lot of refrigerated stuff, though there wasn’t a lot to choose from this time, but I did pick up some farmer’s sausages and the like. The AC works in my mother’s car. 😉 Some extra toothpaste made it into the cart, as well as a nice big box of English Breakfast tea. 😊
The big savings on this trip was on two items. The first was canned beans. The same brand name I have been getting at Costco in 9 packs, where they used to be just under a dollar a can, but the prices have gone up even at Costco. I haven’t been there this month yet, so I don’t know by how much, but at the local grocery stores, they are at just over $2 a can now. Even at Walmart, they’re at just under $2 a can. I found them at 89 cents a can. The cases were open, but they held 18 cans. I filled a case with two different flavours, though there was a third flavour available, too.
Then I found a display of bouillon cubes. In the local grocery stores, they are about $1.30 for a box, which isn’t a bad price at all. I like to keep a selection of them handy in the cupboard; chicken, beef, vegetable and mushroom. They had all but the mushroom, and at a very good price, but the vegetable cubes were on a limited time “4-for-” deal that worked out to 49 cents a package.
I picked up eight.
Once done there, my next stop was a Walmart, where I got mostly cat food. We should now have enough dry cat food for the month (for the amount we get, stocking up for longer than a month is very difficult), but I still want to pick up one more Costco sized case of wet cat food. For the pantry, I picked up a couple of big cans of iced tea mix. They’re cheaper at Walmart than Costco, and in the summer, my husband and I go through them pretty fast. Our daughters prefer iced coffee. 😄
They also had good supply of the large bottles of hydrogen peroxide, which we use to shock our hot water tank, so I got a couple more of those, as well as adding to our supply of painkillers.
All in all, a productive trip. After this, we’ll need to go over our supplies and make a final Costco shopping list. I should finally be able to use the van, so I’ll be able to stop at Canadian Tire and get more stove pellets for the litter boxes. Those bags last a long time! I likely won’t be able to make the trip until next week, though.
Tonight, we have three cats to put on fasts. Potato Beetle, Tissue and Big Rig have their date with the vet tomorrow morning. Potato Beetle is still in the sun room, so he’s easy enough to take care of, but we’ll have to keep Tissue and Big Rig with me overnight, as I have a door to close. Unfortunately, Tissue in particular has been aggressive towards Nosencrantz and Butterscotch – both of whom still refuse to leave the room.
I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep tonight.
Ah, well.
In other things, on seeing predictions for rain on the horizon, my daughters moved the bench I built under the market tent for me. There isn’t much room under there with the picnic bench, but it should at least stay dry enough that we can finally paint it. Which I was hoping to do this afternoon, except now we’re under a tornado watch. 😮 I don’t think it applies to our specific area – the watches are very general – but we do have high winds right now. Perhaps tomorrow, after dropping the cats off at the vet, we’ll be able to finally start painting that bench!
Funny how much of what we can or can’t do depends on the weather.
Anyhow. I’m just glad I got the trip to the city done, and was able to add a bit more to our supplies!
To follow up on the post I did with our large shopping trip, to stock up for the month, I’ll go into detail on what was picked up today.
Normally, we would have done the big trip, going to three different major stores on one day, then done a smaller trip to fill in the gaps a few days later. This time, however, we had to wait until the water receded and roads were clear.
Yesterday I happened to see one of the gravel trucks making a return trip past our driveway, and could hear heavy equipment, so I think the washout to the south of us was repaired. This morning, though, the flood warning sign was still at the intersection. The “road closed/local traffic” only sign was gone this morning, though, so the repairs to the west of us are done.
While taking the main road towards the highway, I found they hadn’t tried to do anything with the washout to the east of us. It isn’t as major as some other ones, and can be driven through without too much issue. I stopped at the post office first and asked about the highway conditions. The highway is still closed to the north, but it’s open to the south. I wouldn’t have to go to the next highway to go to the city. In fact, while driving towards the town my mother lives in, I couldn’t even tell that the highway had been washed over, the water levels have gone down so much in this area.
I stopped to fill the tank and got an unpleasant surprise.
The gas prices went up 11 cents, yesterday.
At 180.9 per litre, that’s Cdn$6.84 per US gallon. At the current exchange rate, that works out to US$5.31/gallon, for regular gas.
It cost me about $40 for an eighth of a tank of gas. That means it would cost Cdn$320 to fill my tank from empty right now.
When we last lived in this province, just before moving to the city we came back from, I worked night shift at a gas station. The only time I saw people paying that much on gas was when the drag races were on, and people would fill the tanks in the backs of their pick up trucks to fuel their race cars. The most I ever saw was in the $400 range. Not even the fishermen were spending that much, buying fuel for their boats. This would have been in 2004, when gas prices increased to an astronomical 67 cents per litre.
Those were the days… :-/
Anyhow.
Today, I decided to go someplace I hadn’t been to in 4 years. The Wholesale Club. This is the Canadian Superstore warehouse chain. Their prices aren’t all that different from their regular retail stores, but they do carry more varieties than Costco, and have bulk sizes of things I don’t see anywhere else. They also cater to the restaurant supply market, so a significant portion of the building is filled with take out supplies and commercial kitchen items.
I love going through that section.
Before moving here, we used to go to The Wholesale Club fairly regularly, but the one time I went to this location after we moved, I did not want to go back. It was a real mess and, when looking at their fresh meat section, I was seeing a lot of meat that looked like it had gone off completely.
I wasn’t planning to get fresh meat, though, so I decided to give them another try.
I’m happy to say, things have improved!
I completely forgot to get a picture of the flat cart when I was done, though.
This is what I got today; I had a $300 budget, and stayed under budget.
Cat kibble; three 8kg bags: I had intended to get more, but this was their last three in that size. They also had their no-name kibble, but not even the outside cats want to eat that stuff. Popcorn: a couple of bags. I prefer to buy that at Costco, because we keep the containers they come in, but we were running low. 1 small bag each of pinto beans, navy beans and pearl barley. I want to try making our own baked beans and, if we like them, start making more to pressure can. As for the barley, we don’t often get it, since my daughters can’t stand barley, but every now and then, I have a craving for it. :-) 1 bottle Maple syrup; we don’t often splurge on maple syrup, but it’s a nice treat. Plus, I chose a brand that came in a swing top bottle. It will be kept for future reuse. 1 large pkg toilet paper – it was actually hard to find non-commercial toilet paper rolls! 1 case tomato soup 1 case Coke Zero 1 giant bag Fusilli pasta 1 bag medium couscous – personally, I prefer large couscous, but they didn’t have any. 1 large block each of old cheddar and mozzarella cheese 1L whipping cream 1 large bag frozen potato and cheddar pierogi 1 large bag frozen potato and bacon pierogi 1 box Medjool dates – and no, I didn’t accidentally buy Two Bite Brownies instead of dates this time! :-D 1 bulk pack of wieners 1 pack hoagies 2 bags of 12 hot dog buns – when things dry up a bit more, we’re having a wiener roast! 2 loaves rye bread; rye bread is one of the things we don’t usually bake ourselves 1 pkg flour tortillas
The grand total, after tax, was $273.55
There were a couple of things on my list that we didn’t get. One was plain vegetable oil. They only had it in restaurant sized buckets, which isn’t much use to us. I also couldn’t find corn meal, but that’s something we can buy locally. There were a few things I did get that were not on my list, like the popcorn, Coke, maple syrup, dates and pierogi.
With this place having so much in giant, restaurant sized packages, it will be a good place to go to specifically for adding to our stash. They also have more varieties; where Costco might have something available by the case in one flavour, Wholesale Club has the same number of varieties that would be in their regular retail stores.
While I wasn’t looking for fresh meat, I did check out that section, as that’s what had turned me off last time. I can happily say that all their meats really did look fresh. The big change, though, was that there is now a wall of fridges, mostly with really huge cuts of beef, that is now behind a locked cage. You need to get a staff member to open it up if you want anything in it.
A sad sign of the times.
So that is our smaller stock up trip, to fill in the gaps from our big trip. Anything else we need will be bought locally. About the only thing we might make another trip for is the dry at kibble, but as the weather warms, the outside cats are out hunting, and aren’t eating it as much, so we won’t be going through it quite as fast. I do still make sure to put out a bit extra at the end of the day, for the mamas.
The Re-Farmer 