We develop our odd little habits; usually when I exit our car and collect the plastic bins in which I carry the foods we buy at the supermarket over to the car, my husband hands me a quarter. This supermarket requires a quarter of a dollar deposit for the use of their shopping carts, as a way to convince people not to walk off with the carts. It's a nuisance for shoppers who have no intention of using the carts other than what they were intended for. Yesterday we both forgot the quarter and as I entered the foyer of the store, I made to fumble about in my change purse for a quarter. I heard someone speak behind me, then the voice spoke again.

It was an elderly gentleman who had returned his cart, but instead of fitting it into the slot to have his quarter returned, he was offering the cart to me. I thanked him, placed my plastic bins into the cart, and he turned away, while I admonished him to wait a moment and I would look for a quarter. He turned back to me, smiled, said someone had given him the cart and he was simply doing the same with me; he hadn't invested a quarter and had no intention of accepting one back. Again, I thanked him and resumed my intention to begin shopping.

Before me, as always, was an abundance of shelves holding all any household might ever wish to have available in fresh foodstuffs -- colourful, appealing, fresh and affordable. Canadians pay far less for nutritious foods than people living in most other countries of the world. I bought bananas, asparagus, mandarin oranges, yellow, red, orange bell peppers, romaine lettuce, grape and cocktail tomatoes, grapes, blueberries, sweet basil, sweet potato and bok choy, mushrooms, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and onions.

Moving away from the produce section I added cream cheese, margarine, coffee cream, old cheddar cheese, eggs, cake and pastry flour, tinned salmon, olive oil, grapefruit juice, cornstarch, tomato paste, and a host of other cooking ingredients to the growing pile collected in the shopping cart. Into it also went a bagful of chicken thighs and drumsticks to be used for chicken soup, and a large, long, narrow cut of eye of round roast, at a very modest price. A woman looking at them beside me, mentioned their size. I informed her how easily one slices such roasts into smaller pieces to be separately frozen so that for two people one of those roasts would provide for at least five separate meals, the entire roast costing $10.00.

At the check-out counter, I handed the cashier a plastic shopping bag full of cans of baked beans, boxes of macaroni and cheese, packets of dehydrated soup, tins of chunk tuna and tins of chicken, asking her to return them to the bag when they had gone through the cash register. All of the cashiers are now familiar with this request and they are more than willing to oblige me. On my way out of the supermarket, that bag of groceries is deposited into the large wired receptacle that sits on the floor with a sign reading "Ottawa Food Bank".

When we offloaded our three full plastic containers of all the food we were bringing home with us, my husband took the shopping buggy over to the outside shopping cart collection point, while I took my seat in the car with our little dog Riley to await his return. At that point, he came across an elderly infirm woman experiencing difficulty in properly placing her cart to enable her to retrieve the quarter she had earlier deposited for the use of the cart. He had aided her, and then she engaged him in conversation, as people are wont to do, so he was tardy in returning.

As we began this little regular shopping expedition, so did we end it.