The Ins and Outs of Remote Living Grocery Shopping
Before we moved to Beaver Creek, we learned the grocery store was nearly 500 km away. I distinctly remember the moment. The shock. 500 kilometres?! One way?! More than the cold, more than the isolation, more than the bugs, this was what we would have work hard to adjust to.
In the months leading up to our move, I spent a good deal of time thinking about—worrying about—cooking. I was not a cook. Don’t get me wrong, I loved to eat, but I preferred meals cooked by someone else. Ideally a professional. Not only did I have to think about the skill and knowledge required to cook, I also had to think about grocery lists, recipes, meal plans, and food storage. Sure, these are normal things, things the average person thinks about on a daily or weekly basis. But the kicker in our situation was that we’d be doing groceries every 6-8 weeks. I had a LOT to learn.
Three and half years later, I’m still learning. Yes, I’ve mastered a thing or two (or more) with regard to grocery shopping, meal planning, and the actual cooking, but I still make mistakes. The system we’ve developed requires constant tweaking and I’m forever trying to improve it so that mistakes don’t happen. Mistakes like running low on food in general and having to resort to lentils, again. Mistakes like running out of specific ingredients, so that oil has to be used instead of butter. Products have spoiled, produce has gone mouldy. I’ve been halfway through a recipe only to realise I’m missing that one critical ingredient, like sugar for a friend’s birthday cake. But mostly, it works.
The point is, I’m no expert, but I have gotten the hang of it. The routine has become normal enough for me that I’m somewhat surprised when others express incredulity and interest. As though I’ve forgotten my own trepidation when we moved here. So, in response to questions, I’m going to share some details about the nitty gritty of our grocery shopping trips.
Planning:
Waltzing down the aisles, stacking the cart full of groceries, examining new products – that’s the easy part. The hardest part of our epic grocery trips is the planning, and this was even harder in the early days. At that time, I had almost no concept of how much food we’d need for a week, let alone nearly two months. I’d become very accustomed to wandering over to the market down the street from our apartment to buy ingredients for a single meal (on the rare occasion that I cooked). That all changed when we moved north.
Over time, I’ve developed a system that seems to work fairly well. Between grocery trips, both C and I keep separate lists of things we notice we need. For instance, I might take the last container of olive oil out of our pantry. Once it’s open, I’ll note that we need to re-stock. The idea is that we indicate what we will need before we’re completely out (easier said than done, sometimes!). Once the grocery trip is imminent, I go through our two fridges, cupboards, pantry, and chest freezer to create an inventory of sorts and a master grocery list on Excel. We print out a copy of this when we head to town.
An important part of planning is thinking ahead. When I create our master grocery list, I need to consider special occasions, new recipes, and social events that I might need to cook or bake for. For instance, C’s birthday is coming up, and he loves cheesecake. Needless to say, I’d better make sure I have all the necessary ingredients to ensure he has a great birthday!
Preparation:
Trips to the grocery in my past ‘city-girl’ life required little more than a re-usable bag and my wallet. I had no idea how carefree my grocery shopping experiences were at the time. These days, grocery trips require ample preparation. C and I normally do our best to go on grocery trips together and over the course of two days. This means lining up days off which can be tricky as I work Monday-Friday and C is a shift worker.
The 10-hour round trip verges on too much for a day, especially when it’s coupled with a day of shopping—not just food, of course, but also supplies for the dog, hardware items, pharmacy, possible medical appointments, car maintenance, etc. It’s doable in the summer when the sun barely sets, but in the winter the near 24-hour darkness and frigid temperatures make for a difficult trip to do in a day. Which means we have to book accommodations. And that means a pet-friendly hotel downtown (Chilli always comes with us!) so that we can get cracking first thing in the morning. In the summer, we sometimes camp to save about $200 hotel cost.
Because the drive is long and the highway is isolated, we make sure to travel with first aid gear, a Garmin inReach, and a well-stocked emergency kit. We also pack 2-3 coolers, re-usable grocery bags, and bins to store our purchases. And then there’s the clothes, toiletries, and Chilli’s food and gear. Phew!
Meals:
After we return to Beaver Creek with enough food to feed a small army, it’s time to start cooking. Well, scrap that – first, it all needs to be put away. We carefully fill our two fridges, our large freezer, and our pantry. Produce and fresh food we’ll use first is placed in the kitchen fridge so that it’s easily accessible.
I am often asked how I possibly make produce last 2 months. The simple answer is that I don’t! We buy only as much fresh fruit as we can consume before it spoils. Things like berries need to be eaten first, while apples tend to last longer. If, for whatever reason, we don’t get through fruit like apples, pears, or plums—even berries—they’re made into sauces, compotes, or crumbles. These can be frozen for later, too!
When it comes to vegetables, I use a similar method. Certain vegetables have to be consumed more quickly, like tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocados (or are those fruit?!), whereas things like carrots, cabbage, and cauliflower last longer. When we have ample fresh produce, I plan our meals accordingly. Some of my favourite meals during this time include roasted vegetable bowls and salads.
At a certain point, we inevitably run out of fresh produce and that’s when our meals shift to include frozen vegetables. We aren’t vegetarian, but we consume a lot of vegetables and don’t eat a lot of meat. This doesn’t change at any point over the 6-8 weeks. Near the end of our grocery stock, we eat lots of soups, stews, and sauteed vegetables. I find that frozen kale or spinach, for example, can be added to just about anything!
While I don’t meal plan, per se, I do have a rough idea of the meals I will make. Some are standards that we eat regularly, like lentil soup and roasted veggie bowls, others are somewhat less regular, like risotto or quiche, and the rest might be new or for a special occasion. I find that in having a rough plan, I leave room for changes, leftovers, dinners with friends and so on.
Garden:
We’ve had a garden for three of the four summers we’ve lived in the north, and it’s been a godsend. During the summer months, we’ve been able to purchase limited produce and eat fresh greens from the garden daily. Our kale yield has been quite good, and because we eat so much kale – both fresh and frozen – year-round, I chop and freeze a great deal of it. The garden has allowed us some flexibility during the summer months and makes it so that we don’t have to rely as heavily on soups and stews especially in the warmer months!
So, there you have it! You now know some of the ins and outs of grocery shopping for remote living. Every trip to town I take for groceries allows me to get just a little closer to perfecting the system. This year, I hope to can more extensively in the fall so that we’re bringing fewer tins into our house. Step by step, I’m learning to be more self-sufficient!