More about food...

I am glad you guys seem interested about food! It's one of my favorite things in the world!

I had somebody ask me on facebook today about the price of milk and it made me realize I didn't go into the prices in my last post. I hope you are sitting down.

I'll convert all the prices to US Dollars to make this an easy read. And keep in mind most of this is organic or the healthiest choice I can make.

Fresh chilled milk is sold by the quart here. It works out to be $10/gallon. (ouch!)
Free range organic eggs are $5.50/dozen (not too bad?? I'm used to paying the premium for local eggs...)
A brick of TIllamook colby jack cheese is $7 (what!)
Envirokids Panda Puffs cereal $4.50/box
5lb bag of organic flour $7
3 conventional sunkist oranges $1.40 (yay!)
normal size container of strawberries/or small pint of blueberries (conventional) $4.75
small pint of organic strawberries is about $5.50 and they never look very good
organic salad mix in a bag or plastic box just like we see in the US is about $5.75
pint of haagen daas ice cream is $7 (this is probably for the best)
frozen package of 2 organic boneless chicken breast is $14
sandwich bread is sold is 8 piece loaves from the bakery counter--for organic multigrain it's $2.80, for conventional wheat bread it's $1.80. (You should see the ingredients on the conventional bread! I can't even remember... margarine was one and some preservatives identified to letters and numbers. Are you kidding me?)

Wow I think I'll stop now.

But when you think of how all this stuff gets here it is mind blowing! Gone are the days of really trying to eat locally as is so fashionable to do in Oregon. All the food here is flown in from somewhere. Not cheap.

A few nights ago we were craving some chips and salsa. It was $20 to get a bag of chips and little containers of fresh salsa and fresh guac and a tub of creme fraiche (instead of sour cream which is way harder to find). After we were trying to add up what it would cost to buy all the ingredients (our kids were not having it when we were at the store so that's why we bought the prepared stuff...) and we figured it would have been stupid expensive. And I still haven't seen fresh cilantro. It's got to be here. Thai food is chocked full of it right?

Our poor kids were sick of cereal breakfasts and we bought a toaster so we thought we'd treat them to a box of Eggo waffles. And of course that requires maple syrup. Normal size small bottle of Canadian maple syrup $10, box of Eggos $5. Dang!

Now on the other hand you can get a McDonalds ice cream cone for a quarter. And B and I had a few meals out when we were here in February for under $20 at some dim sum places. Street food is dirt cheap too. And it tastes great but I know it's probably not very good quality... We can go out for family pizza and only spend $20. It almost seems like eating out is the cheaper way to go... If only it were as healthy.

Monday is the 2 for 1 night at our local pizza place so we planned to do that last night but once we got all these groceries home we decided to cook here. It was a great little dinner but the pizza would have been much cheaper.