My friend who lives on the far side of town sometimes picks up my flashfood order from the Superstore in his area, and sometimes I'll collect his from Wholesale Club and we'll exchange it at the club, more or less in the middle. Saves gas, saves time, etc. Knowing he was going to the store, I checked and bought a couple of these Oka cheeses. I've always liked Oka cheese - something good coming out of Quebec. No way am I buying it at $6.99, but for $2 I'll take two. Reminds me of a medium soft Gouda.

It looks as though we will need such savings as according to the Canada Food Price Report 2022 https://www.dal.ca/sites/agri-food/r...port-2022.html we will be paying more in the coming year. The report forecasts food to increase in cost by 5 to 7%. "This year’s report predicts that a family of four, including a man (age 31-50), woman (age 31-50), boy (age 14-18), and girl (age 9-13) will pay up to $14,767.36 for food, an increase of up to $966.08 from the total annual cost in 2021."

That comes to $4.64 per person per week.

At Superstore yesterday. One aisle had it's usual bog paper display. The next aisle had the same. I didn't think much of it apart from it being unusual. Then later I was walking 'down' an aisle and there was their display of rice which I'd already selected from.

At this point I thought wasn't I just here and I realised I was facing the other direction, covid measures requiring "one way street" for each aisle.

Having heard about potential supply difficulties - delivery drivers not being exempt from border requirements - I wondered if this was either trying to meet potential panic buying of rice and bog paper or whether stocks of other things were already short and spare rice and bog paper was filling up what would otherwise be empty shelves.

Superstore this week - lots of gaps on shelves and seemed to be the case on an Instacart Walmart shop too.

Apart from after a big snowstorm I've not seen any gaps on shelves and that's in small town supermarkets.

Similar experience in BC. Superstore must have had 2/3 places selling Uncle Bens microwave rice.

Other thing I've noticed is the sharp increase in prices since September - just yesterday noticed a 25% price increase in no name burritos (I use them for a quick breakfast on the road).

It's all relative

I've not reall noticed gaps on the supermarket shelves here, or at least no more than is usual in the winter, if the ferries can't run because of the weather. The exception being Costco's cool room with the fresh fruit and veggies was markedly less full though. No berries at all this week.

Everything seems normal here but then perhaps my shopping list is not the same as everyone else's shopping list. I wouldn't, for example, notice an absence of doughnuts or products intended for the microwave.

Chopsticks for sushi are in backorder. I coped.

My stepson likes eating with chopsticks. He must have a bit of Chinese in him.

Or Japanese, or Korean, or...
I like the look of kiddies training chopsticks. I should get some

This week's Walmart shop via Instacart.
The shopper told me (and sent a couple of photos) of shelves with nothing on them.

Rice spread over two aisles in Superstore again. Hard to say what was missing
No Asparagus and strawberries that were advertised. Either sold out within 2 hours of opening or expected delivery not arrived.

On the plus side, big slabs of beef tenderloin available @ $10.88 lb.