Stocking up

Beginning of the month, empty shelves and freezers.....  well not quite that bad!  Anyone who knows us will now be thinking   'empty shelves?'  as we always have stock.  Lots of jars of olives, tomatoes both cooked and dried,  pasta, rice,  jams, pickles.....

It's only been 2 years since the pista was replaced with a concrete road and we always had lots of stock in,  both bottled, dried and frozen in case the weather was bad and we didn't we want to go out shopping.   We still have stock but now it's mostly things we've produced and have made a years worth of, such as chutney or marmalade.

Recently I've been doing a bigger and less frequent shop down at Berja.  Mercadona is a really good  privately owned chain of supermarkets,  the quality is excellent, the prices compare with Aldi  and Dia which are also in Berja so if you can't get something in 1 shop,  there are 2 more to choose from.  There are also lots of small family shops there plus the usual numerous cafes and bars, it always seems a really bustling small town.  But we've only stopped and walked around it once,  nowadays it's just an in and out shopping  trip.

So this morning the sky was almost clear, the sun was shining - it seemed a good day for a drive.  I left John decorating in the kitchen,  balanced precariously on the wobbly stepladders which have also lost their rubber feet - not good on a tiled floor -   'don't worry about me'   he said   'I'll hang on tight to something'.

It's a half hour drive - about 30kms- down to Berja,  I had a long list  and the car well packed with coolbags and shopping baskets.  The supermarkets charge 5 cents for a carrier but it's still possible to get them free from some places so we have a bag of bags in with the shopping baskets.  The fruit and veg lorry which comes to Yátor every Wednesday doesn't charge for bags nor do some of the local shops so I keep them and use them on days like today.

Back home just before lunch - John was still balanced on the stepladders - as I unpacked around him there was the occasional mutter as he stretched and the ladders moved but so far he's quite safe!

Why is it though, that you can do a big shop, put it all away and nothing looks any different?  Apart from the wine rack that is!   Sadly no grapes this year, or not enough to do anything with as they all shrivelled up really early.  But I am having fun choosing different wines in the shops, something we haven't done for a few years now. 

Roll on 6pm....that's traditionally 'sundowners'   time  although maybe 'cloud downers' would be a better description right now.