Weekly vegetable and fruit shopping

Here is some math, for a change, behind a typical load of our vegetable and fruit purchase and consumption.  What you see here, nicely arranged for photography purpose!, makes  14 kg of fruits and vegetables,  serving the two of us for one week  (when added to other main ingredients such as rice, potatoes, meat,  that is). It costs $33.35. How does it compare to your grocery shopping?? Good deal, is what I think!

Well, if I were to buy the same items in the same quantities from any major supermarket, first of all it is very unlikely that I could have found them all in one place.  Secondly, it would have cost me at least twice this price and easily three times if I were not paying attention to the “specials” of the week. 

To economize, I always buy my stuff from vegetable & fruit wholesalers. This particular load is from Sami Fruits.  Sami is one of the major wholesalers of fruits, vegetables and dried nuts in Montreal with very competitive price. These guys are of Lebanon origin. Other similar fruit/ vegetable wholesaler are of Iranian origin (Akhavan), and we also have lots of small and big Indian origin grocery stores.

It goes without saying (or does it!?) that shopping is one thing, preparing them is quite another.  It usually takes me a whole working day (about six hours) to sort, wash, drain, cut, chop, package, and pre-cook the items you see in the fist picture.   How much that labour is worth? Well, depends on how you look at it. You be the judge! 🙂