Grocery shopping

Here's a picture of my shopping for this week: grand total $28.08

(Timor-Leste uses the US dollar as the basis for their currency. So you have US notes - $5, $10, $20 - and Timorese coins - 200, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5, 2, 1 centavos)

Countries of origin:

Timor-Leste (bread $1.25, snack $1.00, fruit $4)

Indonesia (biscuits 65c)

Brazil (chicken $3.65)

NZ (beef mince $2.43)

China (chips $2.00)

Germany (cream $7.25)

Australia (sauce $4.30)

Portugal (cheese $1.55)

Some things I've noticed:

If you're not fussy about its origins, meat is not that expensive.

Fruit and veges are cheaper when bought from the local market (as those shown above) or a street vendor, and fresher than the supermarket.

Biscuits made in Indonesia are crazy cheap - around 50c a packet.

Rice is about $12 for a 15 kg bag. I still have more than half a bag in the house, so it'll be a while before I need to buy more!

Dairy products are sometimes hard to come by. Milk is all UHT or powder; you can buy a case of 12 x 1L UHT milk cartons for about $18. It's a little disturbing that the stock was produced in October last year. I'm still getting through a case that I was given when I arrived.

I am trying to avoid Asian-produced processed foods e.g. instant noodles, flavour sachets, pre-made frozen dumplings etc. as they contain a lot of MSG and my system doesn't seem to handle it well. Back in Australia (and NZ for that matter) I would do a weekly cook with a meal sauce base of some sort, meat and veges of some sort, and either pasta or rice. While you can get some meal sauces the selection isn't huge and they are relatively expensive (although it all balances out, so I don't mind paying the extra on this one item for convenience and familiarity). So this coming week I have decided to try and make my own butter chicken from scratch, using a recipe I found online. Hence the $7 splurge on cooking cream. I'll post the link if it's any good!