A Tim Hortons Detour (and a Broken Habit Loop)

 Sooo... if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been trying to ditch my Starbucks addiction. Well, my addiction to Starbucks hot chocolate.

Sooo… if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’ve been trying to ditch my Starbucks addiction. Well, my addiction to Starbucks hot chocolate.

But Starbucks is my happy place, where I can sit, sip a drink in the early morning, and get some work done without distractions. It’s just that the hot chocolate is having an impact on my waistline.

So, I had this idea that I could walk to McDonald’s (or drive). It’s only a 30-minute walk and… it might be a good substitute.

Yeah. No.

My first visit to McDonald’s was an epic fail.

I decided to drive because some of the reviews said that their hours were a bit erratic. They are open 24 hours for drive-thru but are supposed to open at 5 a.m. for walk-ins. I showed up at a very respectable 5:40 a.m. to find the doors locked. I could have gone through the drive-thru, but I didn’t have the patience. So I got back in the car and drove to another Starbucks… not my regular one. Sigh.

So… if McDonald’s isn’t reliable, then I don’t want to walk all the way there and find them closed. They are not an option, at least not for early morning visits. Back to the drawing board.

Option 1 – Local Aquatic Centre

It’s about a 20–25 minute walk and has a café area with seating in the lobby. Not sure if they have Wi-Fi or electrical outlets either, but it’s an option. Except… reviewers say the café area is frequented by clumps of swearing teenagers. It does open at 6 am, but the little café itself doesn’t open until 9. I guess I could always bring my own tea.

Option 2 – University

Also a 30-minute walk. I used to go there before Covid, when their library building was open 24 hours a day. The library itself only opened at 8 a.m., but the Commons area was open much earlier. Covid threw all of that out the window. I just checked, and now the Commons is locked until 8 a.m. Only students and employees with a key card can access it before then. So that’s not going to work.

Option 3 – Local Coffee Shop

There’s a Serious Coffee about a five-minute walk from us, but it only opens at 8 a.m. I actually tried it for a few visits, but their tea selection is weak. They do have Wi-Fi and electrical outlets, but it just wasn’t my vibe.

Option 4 – Work from Home

This is another option. Just transition away from the idea of getting work done from a coffee shop and work from home instead. I did this during Covid, but I missed my coffee shop time. It’s a place where I can really focus and not be distracted by all the undone items at home. Just me, the laptop, and some focused time to write or work or whatever. So… not sure I want to give that up. I just need to figure out a different schedule or venue that works for me.

Option 5 – Tim Hortons

I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t consider this option sooner. I think there was a point several years ago when I realized Timmies was owned by an American company and… our household was boycotting it. Maybe. Not sure.

Anyhow… get this… I tried Timmies.

It’s across the street from the failed McDonald’s, so within a 30–35 minute walk of home, and an even quicker drive. I went in and ordered a small chai tea with a splash of milk… $1.98 (a full $0.70 cheaper than Starbucks!). I found a seat with an electrical outlet nearby, connected to the Wi-Fi, and it was… not bad.

It’s not the same as Starbucks, which has more of a dark, moody coffee-shop vibe. Timmies is more cafeteria-like, quite sterile and bright. But it had everything I needed. Plus… it opened at 5 a.m. Be still my beating heart! Finally, a coffee shop that was on my schedule.

That was on July 19, 2025.

For 100 days, I faithfully went to Timmies, breaking the Starbucks + hot chocolate loop. And no, I was never tempted by Timmies’ hot chocolate. The only downside… I came home smelling like hashbrowns and scrambled eggs. Not a pleasant smell. 

After 100 days, I tried a Starbucks visit… and I was able to order a tea without immediately reciting, “I’ll have a grande hot chocolate, no whip.”

I had broken the loop.

Slowly, I migrated back to Starbucks. It’s the hashbrown smell at Timmies. It’s just… icky. And yes, Starbucks hits my pocketbook with an extra $0.70, but I’ll take that if it means going home smelling like roasted coffee instead of greasy hashbrowns.

The Trouble with Tiny Soap Bars

As an Airbnb host, we debate, long and hard, about how to offer guests toiletries—things like shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

For the first year, we went through our stash of hotel toiletries, the ones we had snaffoodled during various trips. Little bottles of shampoo and conditioner… sometimes body wash. Sometimes matching, sometimes not. We also had little individually wrapped bars of soap, also from hotels. Then a friend of ours, who also runs an Airbnb, gave us a big stash of small soap bars she had bought from a hotel supply place. That works!

Except… it doesn’t.

Little plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner end up in the garbage. And the bars of soap? Guests would unwrap them, use them once or twice, and then check out. And we were left with a small bar of soap that still had plenty of use in it—but we weren’t going to offer it to the next guest (ick), nor were we going to use it ourselves.

What to do? Well, when you’re cleaning a suite and facing a deadline, you take the easy way out. They ended up in the trash as well. Ouch.

We’ve faced the dilemma from the other side, too, when we’ve stayed at Airbnbs and hotels. At one Airbnb, there was a lovely bar of Oil of Olay soap in a box on the soap dish. I had brought my own soap, so I used that. But on the last day, my niece opened up the bar of soap. Now what?

Well, I did what any considerate guest would do—I took the bar of used soap with me. It was a full-size bar, and I just couldn’t face the idea of it ending up in the trash. So now it rides around with me in the soap container in my bathroom bag when I go on trips.

All of this got me wondering. It’s one thing with an Airbnb, where the host deals with a bar of soap and little bottles every few days, but what happens at hotels? Who are dealing with dozens (hundreds?) of rooms, day after day after day? What happens to all those little half-used bars of soap and containers of shampoo and conditioner? Do they end up in the trash?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

I came across a soap recycling organization. It’s called Clean the World, and many hotel chains partner with it. Little soap bars and plastic toiletry bottles get collected and sent to a processing centre. The soap is sorted, ground into pellets or noodles, sterilized, sent to a lab for testing, and pressed into new soap bars. These bars are hygienic and safe to use and are distributed to developing countries or homeless shelters.

The plastic toiletry bottles are recycled into flakes that are then used to manufacture new products. Not quite as glamorous as the recycled soap bars, but… every little bit helps.

As an Airbnb host, we don’t have those economies of scale. Hotels go through millions of bars of soap every day. So what can we do?

We switched from little toiletry bottles to regular shampoo and conditioner dispensers. They last for months and, when they eventually wear out, can go into our municipal recycling program. As for soap, we switched to liquid hand soap for the kitchen and bathroom sinks. In the shower, guests can use a large pump dispenser of body wash. There’s still a soap dish in the shower if they want to bring their own bar.

It’s not perfect, but it feels like a better balance.

Further Reading

Clean the World's website page

YouTube video outlining the soap recycling process

What's with the Price of Bananas?

There. I’ve asked the question that probably everyone is wondering, but few are actually asking: what the heck is going on with the price of bananas???

If you don’t know, let me lay it out.

I do the grocery shopping in our family, and for years — before Covid — bananas were a stable $0.65 per pound. Without fail. Full stop. Apples, by comparison, were generally around $1.00 per pound. (Prices are from Superstore, may vary in other grocers)

We grow apples in British Columbia. We’re next door to Washington State, which is a major apple producer. We have apples coming out of our ears. Bananas? Not so much. They don’t grow in Canada. They don’t grow in the USA either. The bananas we get have to come from Mexico or Costa Rica or somewhere warm and moist and tropical.

So why is it that after Covid, apples have doubled in price? A five-pound bag now costs $9–10. Inflation? Increased transportation costs trickling down? Who knows. But they’ve doubled.

Bananas? Yeah. No. They’re $0.68 per pound. Essentially the same price as pre-Covid.

Why???

They come from way farther away. They’re fickle to transport — can’t be too cold, can’t be too hot, and don’t bruise them.

What the heck is going on?

I was in England for two weeks in November, and bananas at the local Sainsbury’s were £0.27 each. That’s about fifty cents per banana, or roughly a dollar per pound. Not outrageous, but still more expensive than here.

Turns out there’s a reason — or rather, a few overlapping ones — for this odd price freeze.

There’s currently a banana supply glut, and even though fertilizer and shipping costs have soared, producers have very little leverage with large grocery chains to demand price increases. For retailers, bananas are classic loss-leaders: keep them cheap to get people in the door and hope they buy other things. They’re also wildly popular in Canada, produced year-round, and moved through an extremely efficient logistics system.

It still seems wonky to me.

And rumour has it the price may finally start creeping up, because producers are now operating on razor-thin margins.

Time will tell.

Wielding Economic Power in the Kitchen

Cooking at home is cheaper than eating out.

True or not true?

Well… it’s obvious, right? Cooking at home is almost always cheaper than eating out—unless you’re eating filet mignon every night. And even then… a filet at home is still way cheaper than ordering one in a restaurant.

As inflation hammers our pocketbooks and drains our bank accounts, most of us are looking for ways to save money. Or earn more.

There are really only two ways out of the “not enough money” conundrum: spend less, or earn more.

We don’t eat out all that often. During Covid, we kind of lost the habit. What we did discover were meal-prep services like Fresh Prep. For about $50, we’d get two chef-y meals—often with leftovers—that were genuinely delicious. Fresh flavours, new tastes, and no guesswork with spices (the Big Cooking Mystery!). Even better, once we’d made a recipe once, we could recreate it again without paying another $50.

So when Covid faded and we started eating out again, we were… underwhelmed. The food often wasn’t as good as what we could make at home. And it was a lot more expensive.

We’ve gone out for special occasions—like my birthday. There’s nothing quite like a perfectly grilled medium-rare sirloin, especially when you don’t own a BBQ. It was expensive, but worth it. Ongoingly though? Mostly disappointing—and occasionally shocking.

A few weeks ago, we went to our local pub. One half order of nachos and one beer for me (water for my partner). Happy hour beer: $6.25. The half-order of nachos: $17.99. With tax and a modest tip, the total came to $32.

One beer. Half an order of nachos.

Pre-Covid, pre-inflation? Maybe $20. It was good. But it’s not becoming a weekly habit.

And then there was Domino’s.

A small gluten-free meat-lovers pizza for me. A medium veggie pizza for my partner. Delivered.

$57.

For two very small pizzas.

Highway robbery.

Dining out: convenient? Yes. Easy? Yes. Cheap? Absolutely not.

Our culture prizes anything that saves time and energy. DoorDash and UberEats do exactly that—we just trade our time and energy for cash.

So if cooking at home saves money, why don’t more people do it?

Partly because cooking has quietly become a lost art.

Basic cooking skills are no longer mandatory in high school. People can graduate without ever picking up a spatula. I remember sewing and cooking being lumped together under Home Economics. What the heck did cooking and sewing have to do with "Economics"?? It didn’t make much sense to me then—but now it does.

Sewing your own clothes used to save money. Fast fashion changed that. Cooking, though? Cooking still saves money. Treating it as optional is short-sighted. And honestly, I’d add gardening to the Home Ec curriculum too.

Another reason cooking fades out is logistics. Two working parents. Conflicting schedules. Soccer practice. Violin lessons. Someone forgot to take something out of the freezer. It’s often easier to order in, eat out, or give up and let everyone fend for themselves. Getting everyone to the table at the same time can feel impossible.

The cook loses it when someone leaves just as dinner’s ready.
“But you haven’t eaten yet!”
“Don’t worry—I’ll grab a burger.”

But often the real issue isn’t that people don’t know how to cook. It’s that they don’t know how to cook flexibly.

A stir-fry calls for sirloin—have you seen the price of sirloin? What about tenderizing a cheaper cut? Using chicken thighs instead of breasts? Or legumes—chickpeas or lentils? When ground beef gets expensive, lentil bolognese gives the meat version a serious run for its money.

It’s the difference between buying the same things out of habit and fainting at the checkout… versus seeing what’s on sale and adapting. Or—gasp—trying something new.

I used to hate eggplant parmesan. Not because I’d eaten it, but because… eggplant. Mushy. Suspicious. Then in 2006, at a conference, it was the only option. I poked at it, tried a corner—and oh my god. Amazing. I found a recipe later, and it’s now a regular.

I’d never have called myself a chef. At university, I had six reliable meals: chili, corned beef hash, fillet of sole, baked salmon, round steak, and tuna mac’n’cheese (KD-style). Over time, I added chickpeas, curries, lentils, eggplant. Spices still trip me up—I cling to recipes for quantities—but beyond that? I might even call myself a chefette.

And yes. Cooking at home has saved us a lot of money.

Which brings me to Starbucks. 

At Starbucks: 12-oz chai tea = $2.68

At home: $0.18 (tea bag) + $0.12 (milk) = $0.40

I’m paying for convenience. For someone else making it. It’s a trade-off.

And hey—it’s still the cheapest thing on the menu.

Further Reading

A couple of news articles about the decline in cooking skills and it's impact on home economics...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/cooking-skills-decline-1.7064348

https://globalnews.ca/news/5155947/how-to-cook-at-home-more/