Grocery shopping in Puerto Rico has been a true learning experience. In the past when visiting, we had shopped at Econo because it was close. Now, when shopping for food we end up going to quite a few places.
KC is becoming more and more green (crunchy) and she wishes we could find everything locally. With the gorgeous weather here we expected to find fruits and vegetables in abundance. The Minnnesota growing season is so short, we thought with a longer growing season many fruits and vegetables would be available here.
Farmer's Market: So far, we typically only get cilantro from the Farmer's Market. They have more artisans and local bakeries/food places than vegetables and fruits. There is a locally grown chocolate maker that KC is interested in trying.
Local Fruit/Vegetable Stands: We have found pineapples for about $2.50, and entire bunches of bananas for $1.00. Avocados are also plentiful and cheap here. Once we bought sweet potatoes (which ended up not being sweet potatoes) and some watermelon, but we don't think it was locally grown.
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Local fruit/vegetable stand haul
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Green beans from a local stand: really, really, hard. Didn't buy again.
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Sam's Club: We have a membership to Sam's Club, and it's about a 45 minute drive. Everything comes in large quantities there, but it's SO much cheaper! On our last trip, we bought a large container of organic spinach, a package of 6 peppers, bagged salad, bread, cereal, alcohol, pop, lettuce, green beans, cucumbers, grapes, onions, red potatoes and sweet potatoes (which actually look like sweet potatoes).
We also resorted to buying a package of frozen vegetables, so we don't have to go back to Sam's Club every week. Now, we try to plan our meals around the produce we get here so it won't go bad. This was our most successful trip chalk full of vegetables- so we're happy right now!
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| Bagged Asian salad from Sam's Club |
FreshMart: This is a small store with organic and other healthy options. We buy salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, mixes, rice, eggs, peanut butter, and other miscellaneous items here. They have bulk bins which are cheap where we can get granola, sesame sticks, and nuts too. It's always a pleasant shopping experience, and we can only wish they had more choices!
Econo: After we hit the other stores we go to Econo. Here we typically buy whatever else we need... Organic yogurt, almond milk, Applegate meat and cheese, tortillas, apples, snack items, and meat are common purchases.
One thing we've learned so far is food is MUCH more expensive on the island. For example, we purchased this spaghetti squash one day at Econo, and it was marked $3.89. We were surprised by this price because it's what we typically would have paid in the states. When we were checking out we found out it was $3.89 a pound. So, our spaghetti squash cost us $8.00.
Another example is the Stonyfield yogurt container (32 oz.) is $7.99 here. A cucumber at Econo is $3.00. Applegate meat and cheese is also double the price we paid in Florida.
We still wish we could find more organic options, and meat from a local farmer. But, in the mean time we'll wash our produce in water and vinegar to get pesticides off, and be thankful for what we can find!
