Grocery Shopping.

One amazing thing about living in Mexico is how ordinary things are just so different.  It turns the mundane into an adventure.

One such thing is grocery shopping. Without a car.  With a baby.  As Job and I set off today to the center of town to do some shopping, I realized that shopping the way we do is normal to me now and not so big of a challenge.   It’s become a peaceful, enjoyable event of our week.  Here’s what grocery shopping looks like for us. 

At the end of the week I menu plan.  It’s nothing complicated, I just write out five meals for the week and list out the ingredients that we don’t have on hand.   {Maybe someday soon I’ll go into more detail about what our meals actually look like and how the menu works.} The ingredients we normally don’t have on hand are the meat and fresh produce.  If you include pantry items, that makes three categories of food that I need to buy and three places to go. 

1. Produce Stand.

The fresh produce I buy once a week at the vegetable stand a couple blocks away.  I can also buy my chicken there, so I do that at the same time.  I like going here close to the house, because we have gotten to know a lot other women that way.  When we first moved to this side of town, they all kinda looked at me funny and would say hey, but not too much more.   Now, thanks to Job, conversation has become so much easier for them and me.  I mean who could look at such a darlin’ boy and NOT say anything?!  Once every few weeks, we go to the weekly open air market. Again, that’s a post in-and-of itself, but when we go, we buy our fresh produce there.

2. Butcher’s.

Red meat and eggs  I usually buy near my in-laws whenever we are there because they have butcher shop close by {something we don’t have in our neighborhood.}  Most of the time Job stays at the house to play and I slip out for a few minutes.  Again I have my list of exactly what I want and I normally go to three places.  The butcher’s.  The place where you can buy smoked meat {like bacon, sausage links, or ham.  And a little hole in the wall place that sells super fresh eggs.  If I haven’t done my produce shopping for the week yet, I stop my the veggie stand there, cause I like to see the ladies there too.

3. Pantry Items.

Then that just leaves us with one more place to go for the week and that’s to buy pantry items.  We walk to the center of town for this one. {Well, I walk, Job rides in his carrier!} I have a simple list of things to purchase weekly, bi-monthly and monthly.  For example, my weekly list includes sugar, flour, toilet paper, past and dried beans. Some bi-monthly items are oil, rice, and oatmeal. That way I’m sure not to run out of something at the last minute. And if, for some reason we don’t make the pantry item run of the week, everything’s just fine and we aren’t rationing the toilet paper.     

There are rarely sales here for such items, but sometimes the product is less expensive than others.  From week to week I have no way of knowing so I just ask.  In the budget I have few pesos set aside for whenever I find something cheaper than normal.  For example, sugar is normally 13 pesos per kilo and today it was 9.5 pesos so I bought a few extra kilos.  I only buy ask about prices of things that I normally buy.  The items on the list are the ones we use and eat. I don’t want to be tempted to buy something that we don’t like or would never use just because it’s a great deal. 

I do however, also set aside a few pesos to buy “special” pantry items that wouldn’t make it to the list of staples I buy each week.  This items are usually a special treat. Today it was jello packets.  Once everything is bought, I put everything into my bags and step outside and find the nearest taxi.  It’s usually a lot to carry, especially with the baby, so we opt to take the ride home. 

{On our way out the door this morning!}

Whenever Job and shop for the pantry items, I try to make it special. We try to go after Job’s morning nap and after he has eaten so that he’s in the best of moods to enjoy it all.  We take our time on our walk to the town center.  Sometimes we stop by the bakery or go to the park before going to the store.   Today we bought muffins at the bakery and came home to eat them with a cup of coffee.

And with that our weekly shopping is pretty much done!  Of course we buy our tortillas fresh every couple of days and Rafa always asks if there is something he can pick up on his way home from work.  There are also special times like when a truck full of potatoes goes by the house, calling for people to buy their produce  and we buy a crate full of them.