10 € worth of groceries...

A couple of days ago, I saw someone blogging about this project at flickr.com where people post what they can get for 10 € or the equivalent in their currency.
As I'm a social studies geek, I was hooked by it.
Unfortunately, I'm unable to find the blog and flickr search didn't yield any proper results (help, anybody?).

Anyhow, today I was reminded of the project when I payed exactly 10.22 € for this:


- 1kg carrots
- loose peppermint tea
- 4 chillis
- 4 apples
- mixed sprouts
- a bag of vegetable broth
- 250g dates
- plain soy yoghurt (2x200ml)
(everything organic)

What can you buy for your 10 €/$ 15/ £ 7.50/whatever other currency (yes, very rough conversion made by me)? Not only groceries are allowed!

Groceries

On Thursday after work I went to the Japanese grocery store for the first time in ages.
It's really expensive so this week it wasn't the usual 20-30 € I spend on groceries, but I got some nice bento-able foods.

Afterwards I went shopping after 8 PM in Germany for the first time. Stores just started being open until 8 PM about five years ago, and still it's only the bigger supermarkets- many small stores, among them Asian and health food stores where I mainly shop close at 7 PM at the latest.
Amazing when you commute to work and are never home before six.

However, in late 2006, a new law concerning opening hours was made so now stores are allowed to be open until 10 PM. For the first half year or so only shops in the really big cities (~ more than half a million inhabitants) actually did.
Now for two months, even some (actually, THREE) supermarkets in my "tiny" quarter million city started opening until 9 PM. Wohoo!

- And I know why they didn't earlier: the shops are totally deserted. Just as people in this country refuse to go shopping on Sundays (everything closed here), they refuse to go shopping in the evening.

But the media keeps telling me Germany is full of urban singles. They even have ads telling me to start a family (not joking!). They tell me there are too many unemployed who have all the time in the world. Now where are those people when I'm out shopping at half eight?

Anyway, I found the supermarket to have built a new veggie section with lots of different soy milks, fake meats etc - are we participating in civilisation after all?

What I bought (green is organic) :
napa cabbage, spring onions, cocktail tomatoes, green bell peppers, apples, satsumas, a baby cauliflower, okras, parsley, frozen raspberries, agar agar, tinned tomatoes, veggie "salami", fake fish fingers, tiny baked tofu cubes, soba noodles, coconut milk, whole-wheat bread mix, mugicha (Japanese barley tea), inari pouches, dried kampyo, tinned edamame, chocolate, blanched almonds, dried wakame, star anise, sweet pickled Japanese red beans

Groceries #2

I can't believe November will be over in two hours and this actually is my last VeganMoFo post.

What I learned from a month of blogging everyday is that routines are not neccessarily a bad thing, though I usually avoid them where I can.

After all, I read a lot more on other blogs and discovered many new one, as well.

Today was not much cooking though I had the day of, but I went shopping and got:

-onion baguette
-cocoa powder
- soy cream
- radished
- bell peppers
-clementines
-bananana
- red wine
-olive oil
-rocket
- agave nectar
- white beans
-peas
-rice-oat cereal with berries

Seems very little but I still have plenty of leftover veg from last week.

Groceries

I love to see and listen what other people are buying and have seen a lot of blog entries of that sort, but strangely, it never occured to do it myself. What I love about the place where I live is that there a lots of ethic grocery stores, two organic shops (I hate the word "health food store"... they don't only have healthy stuff, and you find healthy foods in a supermarket!) and nice farmer's markets so I don't have to rely on supermarkets. I'm also in love with dm, a drugstore that has a huge health food/organic section at the best quality but with the lowest prices. I try to shop only once a week after having planned out what recipes I plan to make, but usually I have to go back for something more in the middle of the week. I try to buy organic as much as possible- local is hard because I barely have the time to go to the farmer's markets- I do love to go there if I can, though. I'm proud to say is that 95% of all produce I buy is organic- I don't use much processed stuff, but buy them a lot in ethic groceries because it's not only cheaper, but also better than health food store alternatives. Anyay, don't get me started on non-organic chocolate, cocoa, coffee and the likes. However, that's what my 20 € got me today:

500ml coconut milk
1 bottle Japanese plum wine
a small bag anatto powder
6 bok choy
mung bean sprouts
3 packages ramen noodles

eggplants
apples
bananas
cherry tomatoes
onions
potatoes
2 lemons
2 limes

dried kidney beans
greek-style rice-shaped noodles (what are they called again?)
stuffed wine leaves