We took it easy today, just going grocery shopping at the hypermarché. It’s only 1.8 km away, all downhill on the way there – but not downhill on the way back. So we decided to take a walk to get there and take the bus back. I had to spend some time today working on some of my escape games, since the software that runs them did an update last week that broke some things, so the afternoon was spent doing that.
On our way down the hill, we found an interesting tree. It had a variety of women’s underthings hanging off the branches. So kind of like the tree on I-17 north, this tree was in the holiday spirit.
We were running out of a lot of things at the apartment, so we stocked up on groceries. LeClerc is by far the cheapest and biggest market around, they have lots of yummy looking things. We spend 50 Euros, about $60 – so what can you get for $60 in France?
We got: Biscoff cookie butter, pasta sauce, salad dressing, syrup for making drinks, laundry detergent, a small notebook, sausage, baguette, 2 croissants, 2 pains au chocolat, 2 mango tartes, bananas, oranges, grapes, apples, some tomme cheese, taboulleh salad, yogurt, 6 eggs, babybel cheese, and a ready-to cook tray of tartiflette (a potato, bacon and cheese meal). This will make at least 3 days worth of food for the two of us, so not bad at all.
We like to shop pretty much as we do at home, looking for what’s on sale and what will make a good second meal if we don’t finish. Last week we bought a little package of veggies to make soup and there was enough for us to make a second batch of soup tonight. Our tacos from Saturday made enough for us to have leftovers on Sunday. It can be very expensive to travel if you eat out at restaurants constantly, but cooking at home makes it quite manageable – I would say that we’re spending around $20-25 per day for the two of us. We’ve only eaten one meal away from home – the McDonald’s meal – and that was $16 or so.
I can’t complain, the ingredients are top notch and we’ve been able to have some amazing food. We had an omelet for lunch yesterday made with fresh eggs that had a little bit of dirt and a couple of feathers on them. It was delicious, but most importantly – we know exactly where the eggs came from! So thank you to farmer David in the southwest of France for raising the chickens that laid these eggs.
And I did manage to update most of my games this afternoon – one left to go, but I’m saving that for tomorrow.