Reply #77: I live overseas and food prices have risen here, too [View All]

I don't have anywhere near the same amount of convenience food here that I have in the states, so I end up making a lot more from scratch. The problem with that, though, is the incredible amount of dish washing I have to do. Because I cook for a family of five, when I cook I usually run the dishwasher three times a day, besides hand washing stuff that doesn't go in the dishwasher. And while I like cooking, I don't like spending half my days doing it. I have a very picky oldest daughter, a husband who doesn't like many vegetables, and the ones he does like are usually canned, and a house guest who won't eat bland food. My second daughter and I could live on vegetables and soups for lunch, but I'm often pulling my hair out trying to decide what to cook that everyone else will eat.

Even with making so much of our food, the price for shopping for a week used to be between 500-600 dirhams, but now it's 700-800 dirhams. It's 3.65 dirhams to the dollar, so 800 is over two hundred dollars. We don't have coupons, and very few sales, so we can't save money that way. The good news for us is that we can still afford it, but I liked it better when food wasn't so much.