Foodie adventures....

I've known that I've had more interesting things to post but you know, some days the days end and everything goes into some black hole in my memory only to be jogged by a weird event.

So this event - I was browsing through the pictures on the camera card checking for pictures of the visiting teams that were here, the campana that Alan worked at, and the VBS programs that we did. Hmmmm.....seems that I'm STILL just as bad about taking pictures as I was when my children were babies. BUT, every cloud has a silver lining and I found pictures of SOME thing that I took thinking about a blog update. So........without further ado....

Grocery shopping is an event here. I will admit I now see the adventure and sometimes even pleasure of shopping for our food whereas before - well, to put it mildly it was a pain. There are about 120 little grocery stores you could shop including the neighborhood tiendas but really only about 4 'big' stores. (Each one of these 'big' stores would've fit in the downstairs of my house back in WA just to give you an idea of the size I'm talking about.)

Here is a picture of my recent score - one flea market, one regular grocery store, and another because the other one didn't have 'it'. $331.41 - pesos that is. :) About $30 American. This trip only took about 1/2 a day all told.

You shop for your fruit and veggies in one section, then move on to the meat department. Here's where you get your cuts of meat, cheeses, and eggs if you'd like. Sometimes the butter is in there but not always. Then you can go to the aisles in said store to get basics like flour, beans, rice, ect....Honestly, for those items we go to a different store. Isstee stocks more of your dry goods type things. Laundry soap, cat food, dried beans, sugars, cereals and such.

The other thing that has taken me a while to get used to is the fact that sometimes you see it, sometimes you don't. It's a bit like Costco. I know you know what I mean when I say that. This is why there are times when our family walks out of Isstee with 6 boxes of Cheerios. We KNOW they won't been there again for 4 months. Yes, we're weird, and everyone knows it.

I am so thankful though that now we live within walking distance to one of those main stores. So every couple of days the girls and I will grab my canvas Sonlight book (now grocery) bags and hand in hand walk to the store. We do eat 99% Mexican so we are right at home handling the veggies, commenting on the quality, and queing up to get things weighed and priced. I now can even yell out what cuts of meat or cheese I want over the heads of those in front of me and they understand me. :) I still prefere to shop when it's not rush hour though. (9am- 12pm or 3pm-4pm)

WHY do we shop every couple of days???? Well.........this is our fridge. Yep, that bitty thing. It was actually given to us by our good friends in Las Cruces who have taught us the skill of dumpster diving. Yes, you heard me. They do it at the end of each semester by the college and egads....lots of stuff. They had two fridges when we were up there last year and gave us our pick. It works really well. Alan built the underneath table for me and now that we live where we're not invested with mice, I can store some of my veggies and non-perishables in it. I don't throw out much food anymore I'll say that! :) Smaller is working beautifully for us!
So - I don't actually hate grocery shopping anymore. We talk about it as an adventure. Practice, practice, practice. :) Off to eat our chicken nuggets. Alan just couldn't resist them in the meat counter.