I don’t doubt, just questions things. Last night around 8.30 or so I got a call from my mom in Toronto, she sounded in a bit of a panic. My mom is one of the coolest people I know and hardly ever shows emotions (my entire family is like that), unless it’s something sad. In her typical “Trini” accent she started off… “Son you have rice?” Where was she going with this? They had just come back from the grocery store and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Across the board the prices were sky-high and in some cases you couldn’t get some items. I’m not sure if this is typical to our Caribbean heritage or not, but we eat a lot of rice, flour and we do find a way to cook just about everything with oil.

So I promised my mom last night that I would go out and get stocked-up on the items I mentioned above (ones she said that the prices were high). I just came back from driving around from grocery store to grocery store like a freaking mad-man. Rice - We usually get the 8kg package of long grain brown rice which usually cost about $7-$8. It took me 4 stores to finally secure some (most stores the shelves were bare) and the price was close to $14 a bag when - I finally got 2 bags. Oil - the crappy stuff that we never buy, that usually sells for under $3 L were being listed at $7.48 and above. Hopefully when we go to Costso in an hour they’ll still have the good stuff (low in saturated fats and cholesterol) at a descent price. The small bottle were over $7 for a 500ml bottle at the grocery stores. Flour - Yikes.. if you could find it, the bags we usually purchase were up from $5.50 all the way to $13.00.

I’m telling you.. it was kinda apocalyptic out there this morning when all I was seeing were bare shelves and double and triple the normal prices for food stuff. Looking over one of the receipts from this morning I noticed I paid over $4.00 for a package of hamburger buns that normally cost less that 2 bucks! Note to self - better learn to bake bread with the expensive flour you just purchased.
How the $%#$ are we supposed to survive with these HIGH food prices and food shortages? Yea… driving around from store to store will also cost me. Gas is listed at $1.25 and above per Liter. That’s about $4.72 a gallon for my American friends.

Time to buckle up people! I didn’t doubt my mom last night, I just questioned what she was telling me since only last week I didn’t notice any difference in prices at the grocers.