Last trip to the grocery store I couldn’t find any non-US salad kits, and Silk NextMilk is made down there now, because I guess our plants were the listeria ones. Chip dip was surprisingly hard to find too, although I did it.
I’m very pleased with how many vegetables actually come from Mexico (definitely via the US though), and there’s even a few things you can get from greenhouses, so that situation is less dire than I’d expected.
Not bad. I get most of my veg from local Chinese grocery where everything is a little closer to spoil but cheaper by half and all the sourcing info is in a language I don’t read so I basically wrote that off as a whole in the name of scraping by.
But was decently happy to learn that my spending habits were mostly Canadian centric by default anyway exempting snacks. Mind you I live in a chunk of Van where most of my fav stuff is imported from Asia through local companies and ports so my easy solve was just segwaying hard into Korean and Japanese imports.
The hardest thing for our family are the digital services and social media. We are slowly cancelling Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. But some things are used by my wife’s business (Google, Facebook, Insta) and the just isn’t a good replacement for YouTube.
Groceries are not bad thankfully. For hardware and household items, I can usually find a Canadian product if not at least Canadian made. Not being able to order to my door with Amazon is kind of an inconvenience but really we shouldn’t be leaning on that anyway.
Gasoline is an unfortunate reality for us, since we don’t have money for an EV right now and we need a truck to move renovation materials. And unfortunately construction supplies are sometimes a challenge to source (no way I’m going to Home Depot).
I really hope this gives Canadian industry a chance to blossom.
Most of my groceries are either already made in Canada or imported from Mexico. I didn’t have to change much.
It’s not a cheap way to shop, I will admit, but it can be done. Canada makes a lot of food, especially here in BC where I live. Beef, pork, sausages, honey, dairy, milk-alternatives, breads, and so much more.
For non-grocery items there are numerous retailers that are Canadian. London Drugs is a great one here in western Canada. Online shopping is a bit harder because Amazon is so hard to replicate, but honestly at that point I just buy from Aliexpress. If I’m going to order cheap crap online I’ll just get it from the source instead of sending money to the US.
London Drugs is excellent! They even have an online filter for Canadian products.
BC milk-alternatives
Yeah, I went with Earth’s Own in the end. Their attempt at copying Nextmilk has not hit the mark yet, unfortunately. Side thing - why are so many brands in Burnaby specifically?
Earth’s Own is great. I love their oat milk.
As for Burnaby - I’m not sure exactly. Probably cheaper and more available land for commercial businesses. Vancouver is notoriously expensive and cramped.
Seconded. half the stuff on Amazon is legendary brands like FleySwui08 or Glai77Zalo or Blukogluko. All highly recommended, of course.
Don’t watch any movies or most of tv
CBC has some great stuff, actually. I consume more from them than anyone else, easily. And then a lot of “American” stuff is produced here too, although you’d have to check.
The streaming platforms are a different matter. Even Gem works like ass for me.
Already cancelled Netflix and Prime.
Crave has plenty of good content and CBC Gem as well. I cancelled Netflix and Disney Plus, I will miss the latter a bit because of What We Do In the Shadows, but I’ve watched each episode many times so it’s not like I haven’t seen it. I’m also just trying to read more books in general.
I pirate most stuff anyway, and the rest I borrow it on physical media at the library, so they’re not getting money anyway
I can agree with that, 100%
All the best TV worth watching is already taped in Mississauga. :)
ALLEGEDLY!
Whos doing the taping?
That’s a very good point. I guess it depends on the show.
The last person using BlockBuster.
Stupid easy…
I’m American and I’d rather buy Canadian too
I’m American and I’d rather be Canadian, too. Best I can do is Mexican and that’s looking better every day.
We should probably get out before they close the borders for us too
Then we shall turn this continent into an orgy of maple syrup!
I’m joining the war on Canada… on the side of Canada. 🇨🇦
Hopefully, one of these days they make it easier to emigrate from America, if that’s of any interest to you.
Anyone have suggestions for Canadian cat food that isn’t overpriced? I’ve got like 15 cats so I go through a lot in a month.
Most Purina products are at least produced and manufactured in Canada. I have been using the beyond line of products and my cats love it.
Sadly, it is a mega agro corp.
Huh TIL. I’ve mainly been feeding them that and the co-op stuff (Which they don’t care for so I usually blend them together.)
I guess it uses Canadian farms, but Purina is owned by Nestlé.
Dammit.
I knew there was a catch.
Acana is Canadian, though they are not super cheap but certainly not the most expensive either. My dogs like it, and one of them is a picky eater.
sighs in American
hon, we don’t hate you. but we’re really not happy with your Emperor.
Pretty much, right?
I assume we all know some Americans, or ex-Americans. I’m not even close to the border and they’re around. The good ones are all very welcome.
I’m currently switching all my computing/cloud stuff over to Canadian and/or EU providers. I’m going to move my domains to Easy DNS and try out a VPS from LunaNode.
Would you recommend LunaNode? I’ve been looking for AWS, gcloud, Azure, and DigitalOcean alternatives and a lot are underwhelming.
I was about to say there’s TunnelBear VPN, but, just found out they’ve been acquired by McAfee , so boo.
I use Mullvad, based in Sweden. Works great for me.
Private Internet Access is UK-owned, it looks like.
I’m American, and not buying American has been the norm for decades. So far, it’s working out pretty well.
Great until I went into Dollarama and bought an energy drink and now I need to get two gifts for 6 year olds. Most likely at Walmart 🤦🏼
I don’t know what you did in the end, but literally any store is probably better than Walmart, which is privately owned by the Waltons. Even Costco has shareholders all around the world.
Walmart is a publicly traded company. The largest shareholder is the Walton Family (50%) with the rest of the shares purchased by investors around the world.
Oh really? Shit, I missed that, I’m going to have to edit a couple comments.
It’s over 50%, according to Wikipedia, so the basic gist still works. It’s a Walton company with some outside investors.
[https://www.sec.gov/ixviewer/ix.html?doc=%2FArchives%2Fedgar%2Fdata%2F104169%2F000010416924000078%2Fwmt-20240424.htm#id138cb1433b44120b7c101e226ea4cae_157](SEC Document) I’m still calculating slightly less than 50% of Walmart between the Waltons and their Trust.
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The other day I took my German car to the Asian market to pick up curry ingredients and enjoyed the night watching the Red Green show sooooooo…pretty great honestly. 👍
Excellent grocery shopping today. We didn’t buy anything US (we think). The red cabbage didn’t have any country listed and we assumed it’s Mexican since the green ones were. We didn’t have to switch lots but for some products we bought alternatives: taco shells, granola bars, salsa. We also found some Canadian stuff sold out or almost: ketchup, cereal (we picked a different Canadian one). It’s fun to try new stuff! Also really excited about tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, lettuce and basil from Alberta! This is very early in the year for us to get local produce!
No Alberta bell peppers where I shopped, unfortunately. It’s interesting that they’re doing that in greenhouses as well. I went with Mexico, which is fine, they’re cool, but the thing is you know it came in through the US.
I didn’t buy any fresh tomatoes this time around, so I don’t actually know what’s available.
I was impressed that they have them in February. It’s pretty cold an early in the season for bell peppers. Tomatoes grow like weeds but bell peppers are slower. Mexico works as well. I shop Canada first and then almost anything but US second. For example I don’t like garlic from China.
As someone who isn’t a North American… What is a salad kit?
A mix of greens in a bag, often with a pouch of dressing and a bag of nuts tossed in as well.
Thank you… You know, that sounds mighty civilised.
It’s not really cost effective versus buying separate but way cheaper than going to a salad place and it saves stocking space for different toppings and dressings. We started eating more salads because we dont have to eat the same kind daily.
Yes, I suspect I’ll just be eating less salad now, unfortunately.
On the bright side, I’ll save a bit of money that way. Hopefully I still get enough fresh stuff to dodge scurvy.
It is an expensive way to eat. But somewhat makes sense for a single person meal
Hmm, I find the full-size ones usually serve two.
If you ate it twice you could make it work, but it’s going to be soggy on day two.
I can eat a whole Five Guys Large order of Fries my self so…
they’re pretty handy if you only want one salad, instead of eating it every day
Yeah it’s going well. I already knew in November that Trump was going to fuck up the economy one way or another, so I bought a handful of bigger ticket stuff from the states at that time for Black Friday.
The main food staple I’ve had to change so far is baby carrots, I usually get the California organic ones in bulk at Costco. I just have to make a separate trip to my smaller local grocer for substitutes.
Hmm. I was stocked up on carrots, so I haven’t actually looked yet.
I did notice the huge Chinese kind are actually from China. I’m gonna need a different knife if I go with those, haha.
