Grocery shopping
This morning Stephen and I decided to do our grocery shopping – a chore we usually attempt about once every four or five weeks. We have been saying we should try and get into town a bit more regularly for this, maybe every fortnight, but I have never gotten over the shopping when I lived so far from town. And that method was to stock up several weeks’ worth at a time. It is just a habit I can’t seem to break. I am sure it saves us money in the long run though, as it is those extras that one puts into their cart each time that would be repeated with more regular shopping.
It certainly didn’t help during the lock-down period of Covid, though. In that time, I was unable to do my regular shop as many items that I would normally buy in bulk quantities were restricted to just one or two. What was normal for me, appeared over-the-top then and I found we were making more frequent trips as we couldn’t stock up as we normally did, which when one thinks about it, defeats the whole purpose of the lockdown, of not mixing with people unless necessary.
Following on from yesterday’s blog where I vowed to have a serious think about my way forwards as far as eating was concerned, my shop today did not include keto products as it has done in the past. I still haven’t had that serious discussion with myself to sort out what I will do to try to lose weight this time, but I thought I would just stick to the basics for the meantime. Normally, I would buy some keto chocolate and many other keto-related products. The book I was reading yesterday promoted fruit, something I am very fond of, so decided to include more in today’s shop. And this time of the year is a great time for fruit, though the cyclone damage may curb that somewhat.
More of the thoughts from the book included eating plenty of vegetables, nuts and seeds to accompany the fruit. I think back to my own childhood on the farm. My dad grew a massive vegetable garden and the large orchard was well-established by the time I was born. We had everything on the farm and it was always our job as children to help my mother fill the boxes of fruit for eating, bottling, and jam. I remember picking the strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, cape gooseberries, passion fruit, grapefruit, oranges and Chinese gooseberries (later became known as kiwifruit) from bushes growing alongside the house, while the plums, pears, nectarines, peaches, grapes, cherries, apples, walnuts and lemons were further afield, next to an old ponga whare, my father had lived in, in his bachelor days. The vegetable garden contained rows of cabbages, cauli, silver beet, carrots, parsnips, pumpkins, marrows and swedes and an assortment of herbs. The potatoes were grown separately in a large, ploughed paddock. Kumara were grown in the sandy soils at the beach. I don’t recall broccoli, or fejoas being grown from home, though I do remember enjoying fejoas and tree tomatoes while staying at my grandparents’ house in Auckland. All these fruit and vegetables were supplemented with mutton from the farm, fish from the sea and milk from the house cow in the early days, though I remember a lot of powdered milk as I grew older – not my favourite thing.
With a background like that, I shouldn’t have any problems at all with my eating, nor with knowing what is and is not good for me. I did enjoy all the fruit growing up. In Northland, we have even more variety with pineapples and banana able to be easily grown.
I shall update in a few months’ time, just to let readers know which way I have leaned. It would be nice to be a few kilos lighter, but it would also be nice to have achieved that with nothing other than healthy eating.