I’ve been hearing a lot about how grocery prices are going up in Canada now that the loonie is on a nose dive. I thought prices were bad before. My weekly grocery shop was usually 80CAD to 100CAD last summer, and I had to watch my pennies and sales to get it in under that price if I wanted any fresh veggies, meat, or dairy.<\/p>\n
This afternoon, I headed to Centro to do my big shop for the month where I stock up on pantry staples, get the meat I’ll eat over the course of the next few weeks (freezing some), and buy produce for the week ahead. Basically a Moose Jaw-style supply run, only I’m buying just for a month instead of a couple of them. Those runs, if adjusted to a monthly basis, were about 400CAD a pop and I still had to shop weekly for some things. My average monthly grocery bill was 500CAD and the only way I could have gotten it lower was if I was living there year round and could really stock up a pantry when there were sales and also take up Charles on his offer of filling my freezer with deer meat. I should stress that don’t buy a junk food or a lot of convenience items and I didn’t even buy alcoholic beer all of last summer, with the non-alcoholic stuff being very inexpensive.<\/p>\n
The little Ley in Centro has been totally revamped and carries more stuff, so I hoped that I could do my big shop there since I didn’t have time to go elsewhere. Did it ever! What a fantastic remodel! I found everything I wanted there except hummus, but I did find sesame seeds, so I’ll retry my hand at making my own tahini.<\/p>\n
I had 1,000MXN, or about 82CAD, in cash on me but don’t really worry about my grocery budget here since even with eating out, I only average 300CAD a month on food. That’s right. I can eat whatever I want here and go out as much as I want to restaurants and I’m still spending 200CAD less than I do in Canada. So I just put what looked good in my cart and got enough food that I had to take 40MXN pulmon\u00eda ride back to the embarcadero. Total cost of my shop? 635MXN or 52.26CAD…<\/p>\n
Here’s my shopping list. I’d love to know what a similar list would cost where you live! Prices are in pesos, then CAD. I will say that lots of these items are at sales prices because I don’t like buying things full price, but I do the same thing in Canada so I really am comparing apples to apples.<\/p>\n
Avocados, 2, 6.27\/0.52<\/p>\n
Garlic, clove, 3.6\/0.30<\/p>\n
Sesame seeds, small packet, 8.90\/0.73<\/p>\n
Almond milk, carton, 42.9\/3.53 (the only thing that is the same price as back home)<\/p>\n
Brocoli, large, 4.30\/0.35<\/p>\n
Yams, two small, 10.61\/0.87<\/p>\n
Ground beef, pound, 44.05\/3.64<\/p>\n
Yellow onions, two large, 16.61\/1.37<\/p>\n
Green onions (\u00e9chalottes), bunch, 4.75\/0.39<\/p>\n
Sliced deli ham, package, 58.80\/4.84 (this is thick-cut ham)<\/p>\n
Lettuce (Boston-type), large, 17.90\/1.47<\/p>\n
Butter, two sticks, 21.80\/1.79<\/p>\n
Sliced multigrain bread, loaf, 26\/2.14<\/p>\n
White potatoes, four medium, 8.05\/0.66<\/p>\n
Toilet paper, four jumbo rolls, 11.50\/0.95<\/p>\n
Barilla pasta, two packages, 35\/2.88 (this is why I eat so much more pasta here than back home!)<\/p>\n
Pineapple, half, 11.66\/0.96 (!!!)<\/p>\n
Pork roast, small, 50.14\/4.13<\/p>\n
Beef, two large thin steaks, 46.58\/3.83<\/p>\n
Tomato sauce, three small tetra packs, 11.7\/0.96<\/p>\n
Chihuahua cheese, 200 grams, 28.90\/2.34 (compare to cheddar)<\/p>\n
Oxaca cheese, 400 grams, 55.90\/4.60 (compare to mozzarella)<\/p>\n
Sliced cheese, 8\u00a0slices, 16.90\/1.39 (compare to Kraft real cheddar slices or other higher end slices with real cheese in them)<\/p>\n
Chinese-style soy sauce, small bottle, 15.50\/1.26<\/p>\n
Salsa verde, small tin, 8.90\/0.73 (compare to green enchilada sauce)<\/p>\n
Paper towels, 3 rolls, 20.90\/1.72<\/p>\n
Raisins, medium bulk container, 17.33\/1.43<\/p>\n
Yoghurt, 1KG, 18.90\/1.56 (granted this is a sale price, but the full price is only about 0.50CAD more!!!)<\/p>\n
This was my first time needing a pulmon\u00eda to get home from the Centro Ley and it cost me 40MXN, a fair price. I had just what I could carry home on this side. If I’d had just one more carton of almond milk, I would have needed a taxi here, too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been hearing a lot about how grocery prices are going up in Canada now that the loonie is on a nose dive. I thought prices were bad before. My weekly grocery shop was usually 80CAD to 100CAD last summer, and I had to watch my pennies and sales to get it in under that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,6,815,14,635,814,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-homemaking","category-mazatlan","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-sinaloa","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}