Oh my word!

I went grocery shopping today at the grocery store in our neighborhood. It was an emergency trip, because we had no food! Anyway, I went in expecting to stock up on some pantry items and I was shocked at the prices!!!!!!! The cereals were all a minimum of $5 and some were $6 and one was $7! And these were not big boxes, mind you. Instant oatmeal, 4 servings, $5.95. A gallon of milk $10!!! Oh my goodness. I bought some canned beans which were quite a bargain and some canned tomatoes that were $1.50 a can. People ask me a lot how I manage to buy groceries with kids and no car in New York City and the truth is that I usually buy them online and have them delivered. It's easy enough and the prices are okay, but not low enough to where I am tempted to stock anything. We are always running out of food here. I also go to Whole Foods in Union Square to buy produce and other things. However, Whole Foods doesn't carry a lot of the pantry food that we like. Instead of canned spaghettios, which my kids eat on rare occasion, they will have the wheat-free, gluten-free, organic variety, which also happens to be taste-free, but I digress... I can't get Stouffer's frozen anything in this city and I really really miss that lasagna. There are dozens of other foods I can't find, but I'm sure there here somewhere. On the plus side, I have found new foods I like that I never would have found with us living in south. On a side note, I happen to know that the cereal companies get busted for price-fixing every ten years or so. I suspect that the $5 box of cheerios has little to do with increasing grains cost, but probably some anticompetitive pricing.