Fast food finances

I just made a prime time pilgrimage for low-fat brownie mix. Is that wrong? There are new episodes of our favourite TV shows starting very soon and I had a passing thought that warm brownies would go nicely with our evening fro yo. I made the mistake of voicing this notion and suddenly the DP turned on the puppy-dog eyes, lamenting that he would go except that his tummy isn't feeling great. (If you're asking yourself why someone with a slightly off tummy would want to eat brownies and fro yo... well, you just don't know us very well. Sugar cures what ails us.)

Anyway, I didn't want to just go to Horny Tim's and buy a couple of brownies and zap them in the microwave, because then I wouldn't get to partake in my favourite part of the brownie process: the batter. Sure, I will enjoy the finished product, particularly when covered in fro yo with a drizzle of chocolate sauce. But I live for the part when I've scraped about 92% of the batter into the pan and am left with the last 8% to enjoy. Batter and dough. So good.

Now, there are three grocery stores within walking distance of our apartment. The furthest is a regular-sized location of a big chain store, the mid-range one is a convenience-sized location of a big chain and the closest one is a fancy rich person store. I knew I could get my favourite brownie mix at the furthest store, but not at the mid-range store. Instead I opted for the fancy rich person store, because it's really close. That's the number one consideration when making such a pilgrimage.

Even though we've lived here for almost two years, this was probably only the fourth time I've been in the store, because I mentally plotzed over the inflated prices the first time I ever went in. It's truly ridiculous. For example, a box of cereal that is $5.49 in the other nearby stores is $7.99!!

But tonight I took the time to poke around this strange land where the wealthy graze. It was like a whole other country! Apparently people in higher tax brackets eat all sorts of different stuff from us. I saw these bags of mini papadams in the chip aisle and some sort of gourmet frozen cookie dough that intrigued me. (Mmmmm...dough...) They had yogurt I'd never seen and quite the array of over-priced chocolate bars. Foreign food in my own backyard. Who knew?

My "can" for this post? That is a good question. Let me have some dessert and think about it.