Now my wish is to get in to the store with a minimum of fuss when it is not busy with crowds of shoppers. I move too slowly for people in a hurry and sometimes they hit the back of my heels with their carts.
The carts are bigger than in the past and hard to manoeuvre with sore hands and wrists. Last time I was at a store on my own I couldn't pull a cart away from the end of the line which was jammed too tightly together. Now when I get a cart with a wonky wheel I abandon it quickly. It's a complication not worth dealing with.
Lately I found a new store that has great fresh reasonably priced food in the salad area. For $22 yesterday I got enough food for 2 dinner main dishes and lunch and snack food for almost a week. All healthy work-savers and chopper-stoppers. The same place has a whole wall of prepared and/or chopped food so the only barrier is money. It's like shopping Nirvana for bad hands. Sometimes I even manage to shop only one aisle.
Salmon Shrimp Salad
Our new method of cooking involves making large quantities, eating the same thing for a few days and also freezing half when we make it. The days we don't have to "really" cook are great.
And it seemed like such a coincidence that I saw friends on Twitter talking about freezing food on the day I wrote this post, although at 4x the recipe quantity they are far ahead of me.
Mega Lasagna
Here's a tweet that demonstrates just how happy we can be with frozen resources:
RAW@RAW4RAIf I take spaghetti sauce out of the freezer for dinner, I can get by one more day w/o grocery shopping. Once again, #YAY for freezer meals!
That sentiment inspires me!
We used to grow our own vegetables. I wistfully remember the garden plot where the kids and I worked together. Now it's a memory because of the work involved. We used to grow so many tomatoes, and zucchini that we shared with our neighbours.
Just mentioning tomatoes reminds me of my grandson. That's really him in the picture, not a doll.
The concept of turning over a new leaf is not an theory anymore. It's a new reality for many whose lives have been altered forever by a diagnosis. Of course that is not the only life changing event that can occur. Most are more desirable and some are a lot worse.
So I will embrace my pre-chopped, frozen and pre-made food while I shop in the off hours and try to eat healthy and look on the sunny side.
Sun by Reem
This post is really great, Annette, as it makes people who don't have these challenges really think about what they can't see on the surface. We have got into a pretty good routine with meal prep sharing here, although I admit Carmen did more this week as I was wiped more often. We tend to trade off. :)
ReplyDeleteI do like this trend to pre-prepared food as it really helps the chronically ill, not just the chronically stressed. The only issue is making sure the price is right. It sounds like you have got around that. We buy mostly from Superstore now, although Thrifty's is not doing a bad job of being competitive for the more specialty food items like pre-prepared food.