4 more sleeps.

It is the third clear day in a row; temperatures are rising, up to about -14 this morning.

So I took a walk with the dog out on the ice, ice being the operative word. No snow on top to speak of, there is some slush that makes it walkable, for me at least. If I stick to where snowmobiles have chewed things up a bit I’m Ok, anything with sheen on it foregetaboutit.

On the way back I checked out the Northern store.
Some fresh supplies were in, the usual greens and salad stuff were in reasonable to good condition. There were a quite a few punnets of blackberries, some were floating in their own liquid, other punnets will be by tomorrow. Raspberries are a nice change as a rule; alas I have not tried them with mold all over them so gave those a miss. I also gave the strawberries a miss; their condition was such they would also be mush by tomorrow. No tomatoes for my salad.

No tomatoes for my salad at Big Land, nor the same variety of over ripe to liquid fruit as Northern either. The rest seemed to be in reasonable to good shape; nothing exciting…………..until I pulled down a lone carton from an upper shelf. Bingo, some fresh portabella mushrooms.,stuffed them all in a bag, cost me less than 2 bucks. Also scored 340 grams of fresh cranberries for $4.99. Not sure if that is a lot but what the heck, it’s Christmas.

Note: I’m not pointing fingers at the stores for the lousy quality of the fruits; it’s CANADA POST that does not inspect for quality before letting the stuff on the planes. There are solutions to this problem, no one with authority is willing to deal with it.

After leaving Big land I followed up on my visit to the LIDC office from yesterday. 40 bucks lighter in the pocket a walked out with a 5kg box of shrimp. This is an on going end of year ritual with LIDC. They bring in shrimp from off their boat; their staff gets first dibs then the public, works for me.