We did our groceries at Food Basic again today.  I’m not a big fan of grocery shopping but it does give me a tiny bit of retail therapy.  What can I say; I love spending money!

With our son’s GFCF diet, we spend quite a bit more time shopping for food now than we did before.  We read every label and search, normally in vain, for something to feed him.  Eating gluten-free isn’t that hard and neither is eating dairy-free, but comibining the two has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

While reading the label on the potato chips, I discovered an interesting and disturbing trend:

Firstly, I should explain that the Food Basics brand is called Equality (part of the Fresh Obsessed group) and these products tend to cost less that brand name items and they are packaged in a rather plain blue design.  We buy a lot of Equality products because we find that the quality is just as good as the food from the big names and the price is right.  A lot of the products are transfat free too, which is very important to us.

So I was reading the label on a pack of the Equality brand Ripple potato chips that have a flavor that would be described as plain, regular or salt.  I was pleasantly surprised to read the ingredients as potatoes, canola oil and salt. 

Such simple ingredients!  You wouldn’t call the chips healthy - because chips are never described as such - but the list makes me feel good about feeding them to my children who, by the way, love them.  I know what’s in them and I understand each ingredient.  No long words, nothing ‘hydrogenated’ and no words that end in ‘ate’ or ‘ium’ or ‘ide’.

But then I went further and looked at the flavored chips:  barbeque, sour cream & onion, all dressed, etc.  The ingredient list was shockingly long and confusing.  Obviously, I put a pack of the plain chips in our shopping cart rather than the flavored ones!

When I got home, I tried looking up the ingredient list online but found that although the company had a website, the ingredients were not listed there.  I wanted to be able to post the list here but obviously I can’t remember the details from the packet I read earlier today.

So instead, I will quote from the President’s Choice website, which is the brand from the Independant store.  For the record, when we’re not shopping at Food Basic, you’ll find us at the Independant and we regularly buy their store brand as well.  Their website is much more comprehensive and includes ingredients.

Here goes:

PC Thin Ripple Cut Potato Chips - Regular Flavour
Ingredients:  Specially selected potatoes, vegetable oil, salt.

Sounds good!  But then there’s…

PC General Tao Chicken Chips
Ingredients:  Potatoes, vegetable oil (canola and/or sunflower and/or corn), seasoning [sugar, brown sugar, hydrolyzed soy and corn protein, fancy molasses, spices (including chilies, ginger), salt, maltodextrin, monosodium glutamate, onion powder, gum arabic, natural flavour (including garlic), caramel colour, sunflower oil, citric acid, glucose solids, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, silicon dioxide], salt.

Oh my.  What does it all mean? 

OK. How about organic chips?

PC Organics Regular Cut Potato Chips - Barbecue
Ingredients:  Organic potatoes, organic sunflower oil, seasoning (organic sugar, organic tomato powder, sea salt, organic corn flour, organic onion powder, organic garlic powder, organic spices, natural mesquite flavour, citric acid, silicon dioxide), sea salt

And, everybody’s favorite:

PC Kettle Potato Chips - Cheddar Cheese & Green Onion
Ingredients:  Potatoes, vegetable oil (sunflower and/or safflower and/or canola), seasoning [modified milk ingredients, corn maltodextrin, green onion powder, sea salt, sugar, cheddar and enzyme modified cheddar cheese solids (contain soy lecithin, hydrogenated soybean oil), yeast extract, sunflower oil, spice, garlic powder, citric acid, disodium phosphate, corn syrup solids, flavour], sea salt.

Can you understand why I chose to stick to Regular chips?

I was at work the other day and got to talking to a customer about her child’s toy.  I can’t even remember now what it was, but the discussion then turned to another toy that the child has recently received as a gift.  It was an alien in a test tube, the mother told me.  You keep it alive by feeding it and giving it the appropriate amount of light and dark.  And it even has a visible beating heart!

Intrigued, I asked her what it looked like.  “Well,” she shrugged, “like a little alien.  It’s ugly!”

I want one, I thought to myself.

(You’ll think that we’re there all the time, but…) we went to Wal-Mart today and I asked one of the associates there to help me find this little alien in a test tube.  She looked puzzled.  And assuming that she’d never heard of such a thing before, I can’t say I blame her.  It does sound strange.  She took me to a colleague of her’s and I asked the question again.  This time, I got a knowing nod and her assurance that they were selling like hotcakes.

In fact, the sales associates corrected me: “they’re not called ‘Alien in a Test Tube’”, she told me, “they’re called ‘Test Tube Aliens’”.  Very sorry.  I stand corrected.

So there I stood a few minutes later, holding a toy that was created for children of 7 years and up, and wanting it badly.  Apparently, these things will keep on “living” for as long as you take care of them!  Cool!

Yeah, like I need another baby!  Ha!

The toy cost just under $20.  I ummed and ahhed.  Hubby urged me to get it because “I don’t ask for much” and then he tried “it could be part of my birthday present”. But I turned it down.  I just felt silly buying a toy for $20 simply because I was curious about it.

I’ve just looked up the Test Tube Aliens website and I still think they look neat.  I want one for my birthday.  Hint, hint!

My stepdaughter, who is 17, is a budding vegetarian.  I put it in that way because she says that she wants to become one but never really gets around to doing anything about it.  She’s never been particularly fond of meat and, I’m sure, could live without it easily.  But I don’t cook vegetarian, so she simply eats whatever I cook.

While we were out recently, she saw this horrible-looking chunk of tofu and she actually bought the yucky thing.  Now, I admit to not having any tofu experience so perhaps I shouldn’t comment, but…

Yesterday, stepdaughter had evening plans so she was not going to be around for dinner.  A perfect time to try the tofu!

She looked up a recipe online and started her preparation.  The recipe called for soy sauce and honey, so stepdaughter did as was instructed (or close to it at least).  Then she took out the frying pan, greased it up and dropped her chunks of tofu into it.  From the living room, I could hear it sizzling away.

A few minutes later, I went in to the kitchen to see how her meal had turned out.  Four cubes of pale cheese-like substance lay in a bowl.  They looked slightly fried on their edges.  Stepdaughter and I stood over the bowl and each wrinkled up our noses.

“Wanna try it?” she asked.

“No way,” I said.  “It’s your supper!”

She picked up a piece and gingerly took a nibble from one edge.  “Ugh!”, she shivered.

A few minutes later, the frying pan had been washed, the bowl was drying in the rack and the whole pack of tofu was in the garbage.

“Can I have a chicken burrito, please?” she asked.

A budding vegeratian?  Maybe not.

Most years, we wait until December to buy Christmas gifts.  We always feel like we end up doing it very “last minute” though and it always feels so rushed.  We worry about what to get people and settle for choosing the best that we can find. 

But that’s no way to do it.

With a budget in mind, Hubby and I have decided to start early this year.  We’ve said that we’ll keep an eye open for anything that might be suitable for my parents and siblings as well as for our children.  (Hubby’s family is in the UK, so we don’t need to worry about them.)

Today, we went to Wal-Mart again.  I know it seems like we’re there all the time and, frankly, it’s starting to feel that way.  Anyway, we saw a digital picture frame and immediately thought of my Mum.  She is nearly impossible to buy for and refuses to assist by way of a list.  I think it would be fair to say that shopping for her drives me nuts!

But there’s nothing my Mum likes more than pictures of her precious grandchildren.  So we’ve chosen a digital picture frame and added a memory card.  We’ll load up the card before giving it to her and then she’ll have an ever-changing slideshow of photographs of the ones she loves most.  I’ll even get my brother and sister to send me pics too so that no one is left out.

As we made this purchase long before it will be given as a gift, we decided to take it out of the box to test it and make sure that it was working.  And it’s seems fine.  In fact, we liked it quite a lot and would consider getting one ourselves.

The one we’ve chosen is made by Venturer and has a 5.6″ LCD screen.  At just under $60 Canadian, I’d say that we found a good deal.  And I just know my Mum will love it.

* I couldn’t find a picture Venturer’s Digital Photo Frame so I’ve used one of Kodak’s.  But they look very similar.

We ordered St-Hubert for supper tonite and, oh, what a treat!  We rarely order in.  Now, that’s not to say that we don’t eat our fair share of fast food/restaurant meals.  We just normally go out for the meal.  And the last time we had St-Hubert was when my Mum and step-father treated us to a meal in the restaurant the day before my daughter was born.

(This is significant to me because we have joked over the years that meals out with my Mum causes me to go into labour.  We went out for a pub supper in England the night before my son was born - one month before his due date.  And we went to St-Hubert here in Cornwall with her the day before my daughter was born - 3 weeks before her due date.)

So it’s been 10 months since we’ve had St-Hubert and it was well worth the wait.  Stephen and I filled our faces and had to pretty much roll ourselves away from the table.

To make the meal even better, they told us that it would take 45 minutes and the meal actually arrived in 20!  $9.45 a head for club sandwiches with fries, creamy coleslaw and their world famous gravy.  Yum.

We’ll be doing that again soon!

I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, where you can buy beer at any corner store.  Or ‘depanneur’, as the French call them.  Just head to the fridges at the back of the store and walk in to scan towers of cases of beer.  Every brand and quantity (6, 12 or 24, regular, king-size cans and bottles), it’s all there for the taking.  Or buying, obviously.  And wine too!  The only cut-off is that you need to be 18 years of age and you need to make your purchase before 11pm.

But we live in Ontario now, where they do things differently.  You cannot find beer or wine at corner stores here.  Instead, you need to find a beer store for the beer and a wine store or a LCBO (Liquor Commission Board of Ontario, I believe) store for the wine.

We wanted both today.  We so rarely have any alcohol in the house and I have been itching for a beer.  And we’ll be visiting my Mum on Monday and thought that it would be nice if we brought a bottle of wine.

We visited the beer store located behind Wal-Mart.  Whilst there, we returned our empties and got $4.50 for them and then purchases a case of 12 beers.

I always choose Molson Dry because I find it tastes nice when you drink it but that that beer taste doesn’t linger on the tongue after you’ve swallowed it.  And I like that.  But I always struggle when I’m in the beer store because I really, really like the taste of Rickard’s Red too.  Rickards is slightly more expensive.  Both beers are brewed by Molson. 

I struggle with the choice because I am often in there without Stephen and I worry about choosing a different beer in case he doesn’t like it.  But I’ve discussed it with him now and, although I chose Molson Dry this time, next time, we’ll splash out on Rickard’s Red.  It’s good to have a change every once in a while.

There are several grocery stores in Cornwall and, like everyone else, we have our favorite.  The one we got to most frequently is Food Basics, because it’s a lot less expensive than the other stores.  There are two FBs in town - one on Brookdale and one on Second - so there’s always an alternative in case we fancy a change.

But we do find that the Independent store on 9th has a nice, big freezer section, providing a much better selection of meal ideas.  And I must admit that we do often look for new and interesting meals because we tend to buy the same things every week to make the same 7 meals.

So, the pros and cons of each store?  Like I said, FB is cheap, it’s big and there are two of them.  We know the layout of the store and we know where to find everything.  The staff have always been friendly and we only occasionally find an error on the receipt.

The Independent store is even bigger.  Big freezer section, huge fruit and veg section, cooked chicken, a KFC-style meal area, a deli counter, pharmacy, a bank machine, a photo developer, a post office and more.  As I typed that last sentence, it struck me that the Independent really is an “everything” store.  But you pay for those services.

Anyway, the point of this post really was to highlight the differences between the two stores’ own brands.  For FB, it’s Master’s Choice and for the Independent, it’s President’s Choice.  These brands are always cheaper than the big name brands so that is normally the ones we go for. 

For quality and taste and quantity, I would chose FB’s Master’s Choice every time.

For example, for breakfast every morning, I like a bowl of Frosties.  Or Frosted Flakes, if you’re going for the real thing.  Master’s Choice does a big, family-sized box.  They cleverly split the cereal between two bags within the same box, which helps to preserve the freshness.  The cereal tastes just like the real thing and I can honestly say that I couldn’t tell the difference.

The Independent’s President’s Choice version of the same cereal offers the same prize box but in only one bag.  And it tastes real weird.  I don’t like it at all.  My stepdaughter likes Frosties too and she turned her nose up at it.

The same would apply to the Bran cereal that Hubby likes.  FB’s brand are great, he says, but the President’s Choice ones he’d rather go without.

So we tend to head to Food Basic on a weekly basis and to the Independent when we fancy getting a few frozen meals to fill the freezer.

Me?  I love it.  I’ve had very few problems with Wordpress and it installs like a charm.  Easy as pie, in fact.  I’ve heard about people having troubles with it and some swear by Wordpress alternatives, but I’ve used Wordpress before and I’ll use it again.

What is Wordpress?  It is the application that I am using to create this blog on my own webspace.  It is free and completely customizable.  And there are literally oodles of themes out there to choose from.  Find one you like, upload it to your space and then change the colors, images and layouts to suit your tastes.  I like to keep my themes simple and I felt that this design suited me to a T.  I changed everything to red, my favorite color, and added a beautiful picture of Marilyn Monroe (just because she’s pretty).  I tweaked the code here and there and now I’m pleased with how it looks.

The only trouble that I’ve experience with Wordpress was that an embed YouTube video could be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer but completely messed up the page in Mozilla.  But I am not sure whether that was an issue with a particular theme or whether that was Wordpress as a whole.

My next post will have an embedded video.  If the video stays, it’s because it works just fine in both browsers.  If you check back and there’s no video, well, there’s your answer.

… or maybe it’s just this theme. Grrr.