Instead of going grocery-shopping when you pass a store, pass up the store until you figure out what you really want–and how to get it on your budget. Here’s a personal example from today. I’d been having a vegetable lasagna and turkey at alternate dinners and supper. (More on that turkey in another post.) I was thinking of taking out a can of peaches from my emergency storage, but realized that fruit wasn’t “It.” I’ve been drinking canned pineapple juice at many breakfasts ($2.99 for five servings), enjoying a couple of tangerines or an apple left over from my pre-holidays Food Bank delivery (December 20, 2017–has to last until the next delivery after vacation, on January 10, 2018), and having occasional snacks of Bonne Maman jam (just a teaspoon or two–Bonne Maman is reasonably-priced and does not include high-fructose corn syrup, which I avoid ingesting. It satisfies a craving for sweets.)–I didn’t really want fruit…. But that line of thought clued me in that I wanted produce. I started to plan putting corn into the cornbread that I’d be baking once my current zucchini/pineapple/coconut quick bread is gone, but something out of a can or the freezer didn’t hack it. I wanted fresh, and I wanted greens.
After all, today (when I wrote this post--and today is the Vernal Equinox, hurrah!) is only a week past the Winter Solstice, and fresh greens are hard to find at a reasonable price. I went to the produce mart, and was delighted to find that sunny California (well, except for our tragic wild fires) has produced romaine lettuce at a decent price ($2.99 for three hearts of romaine–the bunched romaine worked out to a similar price, oddly enough) to provide at least six large salads. In a less sunny corner of the world, you might need to purchase winter greens like turnip, mustard, or collards, but you get the idea of how to narrow down your choices. Find your “hankering” first. Hand over that cold cash second.
(C) Copyright Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment