Cuenca Ecuador Mercado Food Cost & Prep
Every Thursday morning, we head to Mercado 27 de Febrero near our house in Cuenca Ecuador to get our fresh (mostly) organic fruits and veggies. This video shares our typical Cuenca Ecuador mercado food cost for a week; this one was $19.
Cuenca Ecuador Mercado Food Cost
Our Cuenca Ecuador mercado food cost is usually about $20 per week for fruits and veggies, plus another $5 per week with our local neighborhood fruit lady and $30 per week at Supermaxi on packaged food (tofu, oats, mushrooms, tomato sauce, spices, rice, etc.).
That means the two of us eat for around $200 per month and we cook most of our meals at home. We were spending over $800 per month on groceries when we lived in Denver, CO so that’s a huge savings, and the food tastes much better.
For more info on our monthly expenses, check out our Cuenca Ecuador Cost of Living video.
When we get home from our Cuenca mercado on Thursdays, I always make sure I have enough time to wash and prep all our fruits and veggies so they’re ready to eat when we want to eat them. Otherwise, if we put them in the fridge without prepping them, we’re less likely to eat them because we won’t want to take the time to wash everything when we’re hungry.
Before I started this process, we used to throw away far more food, and eat out far more often. This process works great! It saves us time. It saves food. It saves money. And it prevents us from eating out as often.
It takes me 45 minutes to 1 hour to wash everything and cut up the fruit (cantaloupe, strawberries, kiwi, pineapple, watermelon, etc.). I crank up some music and enjoy the process of eating a healthy plant-based diet.
See More: Cuenca Mercados
Exotic Fruits
The exotic fruits we ate in the video were Maracuya and Granadilla. Both are members of the Passion Fruit family. They contain lots of seeds floating in a thick, sweet, gelatinous fluid.
Maracuya
The Maracuya is too sour for me, but Amelia likes it. The Granadilla is much sweeter and I love eating them for snacks. I cut off the top and dip out the gooey goodness with a spoon. Yum!
Granadilla
How to Make Your Own Fruit & Vegetable Wash
We use Greger’s recommendation for the fruit and veggie wash: a salt water bath followed by a fresh water rinse. It has been scientifically proven to work better than the store-bought veggie wash, and it costs less.
Hopefully you enjoyed our video, and if you did, please LIKE, COMMENT and SHARE it, and SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel. ¡Muchas Gracias!
Get Our Weekly Newsletter from JP (and Amelia)
PLUS, you'll get several other free perks we think you'll enjoy!
Hola todos! Welcome to my author bio page! Let's see. Where to begin... I grew up in the country on a lake outside a small Kansas farm town. As soon as I could, I got the hell outta there! Since then, I've lived and/or worked in Kansas City, Washington D.C., Denver, San Francisco, and Ecuador. I started and sold a dotcom, wrote a book about it, started a YouTube channel, and now I write a lot. Amelia and I have embraced the Unconventional Life and we want to help you do it, too!
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!