Saturday, February 23, 2019

Can't. Stop. Provisioning.

Look at that Big Sexy Mama!
I can't stop!  In my head, I know that there is a grocery store five minutes away.  I know that it will always have everything I need, and if there is some obscure thing it does not have, I can go another five minutes to a second and a third and a fourth grocery store!  But no mater how good my intentions, I leave the store every time with another load!

Today we went by the grocery on our way home from the boat.  I wanted to pick up some tomatoes and onions because I've been a veggie eating machine and we used them up faster than I expected!  We just went on a major store run two days ago... Today we left the store with over $100 worth of stuff!!!

All this lovely and accessible freezer space is ours!! 
Why yes... that IS three more tubs of ICE CREAM!!! And an ice maker!
I'm going to just go ahead and admit right now that I have a problem.  There, I've said it.  And hopefully, the first step to recovery is admitting it.  But there are many factors at work here that fuel my addiction.  I've sort of always been a food hoarder.  I buy food, then instead of eating that food, I just go buy more food to eat now.  I thought that when we moved onto the boat I could be cured.  We had little space for such foolishness. but no.  It didn't help at all!

Because we really needed to stock up on things we wanted whenever we found them, it just got worse!  It gave me the excuse I needed to find more hidey holes to stash food so that there was no way we would ever go hungry.  Of course, realistically, we would never have gone hungry.  There is food everywhere, it just might not be exactly what I wanted at the moment.  But facts don't help!

Now back to my current situation and in my defence... ICE CREAM!  Yes, and it was on SALE!  I'm relishing the decadence of owning five different flavours of sweet, hard, frozen milky goodness!  Gone are the days when I pay $15USD for a half gallon of ice cream, rush back to the boat and dig a hole in the tiny freezer to stow it in hopes that it will achieve frozen status again.  Gone are the days when I dig out that tub of ice cream with high hopes, only to have them dashed, as I plunge my spoon into the disappointingly soft, semi-melted milk fluff, full of sunken chunks of fruit. Ahhh heaven is properly frozen ice cream!

But don't get the idea that we've gone off the deep end and are living on just ice cream.  Like I said, I've been a veggie eat'n fool!  For every tub of ice cream, we've gone through twice as much broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, proper yams, carrots, and squash!

And Avocados!!!

Tomatoes were 75¢ per pound and broccoli was 3lbs for $5!!!
 Yes, there are avocados in the Caribbean, and broccoli and carrots and many of these things.  But the avocados are only perfectly ripe for about a 20 minute window in time, and if you miss it, they're crap. I've thrown away more avocados than we've eaten because we just can get it right.

And the rest of the veggies, well by the time they arrive to their destination in the Caribbean, they're already on their last breath.  Broccoli is usually soft and unappealing and when we buy it, there's only about two days left in it's life, maybe less!  Carrots and cabbage have been good throughout the Caribbean, but tomatoes have been scarce most of the time.  Who knew there was a tomato shortage??? Onions in the Caribbean are usually small and very hot, and again, they are often almost rotten!

Onions 99¢ per lb.  I bought 2lbs!!! and More avocados!
Oh what luxury!  Now I can take advantage of that sale on Broccoli and tomatoes and just leave them in the crisper drawers until I'm ready to eat them.  And I. Am. READY!  Yeah, it's been a little bit of a problem.  At the risk of oversharing... (yeah I know that ship's sailed) all of this increased veggie consumption has been playing havoc with my digestive system.  Hopefully things will level out soon.

And then there's the meat... Beautiful cuts of meat for cheap!  We can even afford steaks.  Yes, beef!  We got ribeye on sale for less than $5 per lb. and we've found pork for $1.29... and chicken all day long for less than a buck!  Lunch meat was the cheapest we've bought in 5 years and we can throw it into the freezer until we're ready to eat it.  The one package I opened last week did not go rancid in three days like I'm used to!

The dairy and cold cut drawer!
And cheese!  I put cheese on everything but cereal!  Today I found cheese shreds for $2 per bag!  So, I keep buying more and just rotate my stock!  Remember how excited I was to be able to maybe do a little dieting?  Well having all of this food around is making that really difficult!

These grocery stores are sneaky.  They don't just drop the price on the items... they make you buy three to get the price cut.  So, we've got half a dozen various flavours of cream cheese... I KNOW IT's A SICKNESS!!!



I love my new fridge.  I just love it.  And the roomy pantry is kind of awesome too!

It took us several trips to bring all of the canned goods and such from the boat, and it filled this space almost to bursting before we ever started squeezing in additional cans of diced tomatoes because, COSTCO, and extra cans of Bush Beans.

We also found that we had a ridiculous supply of salad dressing.  Probably because the lettuce and tomato situation in Grenada kept our salad consumption low, and partly  because we had so many hidey holes on the boat that we stashed them and forgot where they were.  We were in a perpetual state of thinking we were out of salad dressing!

Well that won't happen again!  It's all here. It stretches deep into the cabinet but these shelves pull out so that I can find things.  So that I don't have to buy more because I can't find things. Now if I can just work on not buying more because they're on sale, or because I think I'll never have another chance to get them again in my life!




I know!  Crackers are important!
So.  Cruising is wonderful.  It gives you the chance of a lifetime to learn about different cultures and begin to see things with an open mind.  Go cruising.

But if you do, and you some day return to real life... you will know real appreciation for the little things.  You'll never take for granted the luxury of being able to walk into a grocery store, yes, just one grocery store, and find everything on your list.

To all of my friends who are still cruising, I apologise for rubbing your noses in it, but I am just so happy!  And I'll work on my problem.  I'll just have to write a thousand times:  I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...I'm no longer provisioning...

4 comments:

  1. Ha! Having the same problem and giggling about it right now. 😂

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh,I miss you! (And not just because of ice cream)

    ReplyDelete