On an off-season episode of the Fandesals Podcast, my co-host and friend Judith took everyone along with her on a trip to Trader Joe’s. For the unfamiliar, this is a brand of a grocery store chain that has branches all over the United States and sells products under its own name.
To be honest, the only time that I became familiar with Trader Joe’s was when I was already an adult, this was during the time that a relative had given us a jar of their famous Cookie Butter. I remember being hooked on that for a time and I went online to search for where I could buy it locally. I usually ended up buying from local sellers who get it from people in the US to resell here, at a more expensive price (of course). Thankfully there are cookie butter alternatives that you can buy at S&R Membership Shopping. As long as it tastes the same I’m not particular about the brand so I’ve been happy with that. There was also another marshmallow-ish spread that I liked, but I later found it too sweet for my taste. Not sure if it was from Trader Joe’s though.
Another Trader Joe’s product that I like is their Everything But the Bagel seasoning. My boss got me into this and I’ve been hooked on it since then. Again, since there is no easy way to buy this locally, so I’ve been buying similar spices from other brands. There are local resellers, but they don’t always have it in stock and they can be crazy expensive. I may want it, but I’m not too crazy about buying it for the prices that some people are selling it for.
Watching the Fandesals episode made me miss going to the grocery with my sister. We used to do this once a month to purchase what we need for the house. I think that the fact that I enjoy grocery shopping is proof that I have truly become an adult. I find so much satisfaction in buying toiletries and things we need around the house, along with food that we need for the family. Sometimes I run through recipes I want to try for the month and I also make a separate list of ingredients for those things that I want to try.
As someone who lives in the province, our grocery shops are not as large as the ones in the cities and the selection is not as large as we would want. There are still a lot of things that we need that we can’t buy there and we sometimes end up ordering some things online because of it. The only time we truly grocery shop and get everything we need is if we have to travel to the bigger parts of the province where they have malls and grocery shops with a wider range of products and brands. This doesn’t matter as much these days for me since we have limited our grocery purchases lately.
If I had a larger budget, I would go all out shopping for groceries because there’s so much I want to try. Unfortunately, I am on a bit of a budget these days so we don’t do the once-a-month thing anymore. Instead, we go out whenever we need something and we try to make the most of what we have on hand before we go out to shop again. Everything (especially our electricity bill) is just more expensive these days and it has made a dent in our budget. #Recession, maybe?
Do any of you enjoy grocery shopping like I do? Has the economic times affected your shopping habits too? And if you’re in the US, do you like shopping at Trader Joe’s? What do you think of it?
For more on the Fandesals episode at Trader Joe’s, you can watch the episode here. Hope you like it!
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