A family holiday cruising the Pacific sounds ideal. Just you, your hubby and the two kids. It turns out such a holiday has more advantages besides warm weather and cooling off in the ship’s pool. And it comes in the form of FOOD! One of the things friends of ours are looking forward most to on their vacation is a break from the bottomless pits that are their two children’s bellies. Aged 12 and 13 their two boys are literally eating them out of house and home. I can’t wait to not have to fill the fridge every couple of days, their Dad exclaims. He goes on to describe how the previous night the kids polished off everything in the fridge, beginning with half a roast, progressing to raw, salted capsicum and finally resorting to demolishing a couple of apples. Bring on the buffet Mum and Dad say, with only a hint of humour attached. They can eat as much as they like for two whole weeks and we don’t even need to think about it.
We all know the cost of feeding two growing boys on the brink of adolescence is not going to be cheap. But just how much is it costing families? I remember a friend of my Mums saying years ago how it was costing her close to $200 a week to keep her teenage son fed, and he was thin as a whippet. But what about the cost of food today? I know in our household, groceries seem to cost more and more each week. We’re constantly budgeting more for food only to find a couple of months later that it’s still not enough. Is it just me, and everyone I speak to, or is filling the fridge with the basics suddenly becoming an expensive ordeal at the supermarket? Do you shudder as the new supermarket screens rapidly display the escalating cost of each item, and you guess at what the total cost is going to come out to? Do you have $150 in your purse only to find the subtotal reaches that amount two thirds of the way through processing your goodies?
Yes, we’ve resorted to walking around the supermarket with a calculator, meticulously adding up the cost of each item as it goes into the trolley. Our weekly shop has transformed into a multi-stop tour, hitting up NQR stores for bargains, visiting farmer’s markets for fresh produce, and making a special trip to Aldi for their cut-price groceries. It’s a whole lot more inconvenient running around from place to place, and sticking to a carefully thought-out shopping list is a real challenge, especially with kids in tow who are constantly asking for treats. It feels like a necessary evil in these times of rising costs. Honestly, all this effort makes me think I should start planning that all-inclusive cruise now. Hmmm, escaping the grocery grind doesn’t sound too bad, actually.