Illustration by Kat Frick Miller
When Nina Tostevin moved in with her three roommates four years ago, they quickly bonded over a shared love of food.
For all of them, but especially Tostevin, finding roommates who valued cooking and sharing meals was non-negotiable. When they met in 2022 through live music venues, they quickly hit it off over fancy cheese, Sunday night dinners and meals shared with friends.
They began pooling grocery costs and cooking meals to share throughout the week, an approach that has brought their monthly food spending down to about $200 a person, tracked using the cost-sharing app Splitwise.
Growing up, Tostevin’s stay-at-home dad taught himself to cook using Julia Child’s cookbooks and Jamie Oliver’s television shows. Cooking and grocery shopping were shared responsibilities in the household of five, shaping how Tostevin approaches food today.
Her most vivid food memories are of summer Sundays, when her parents hosted porch dinners for a rotating cast of friends, neighbours and co-workers. Sundays meant bread salad with Portuguese cornbread, flank steak over arugula with Parmigiano Reggiano and large roasts like pork tenderloin.
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Those dinners have since become famous among her roommates, Etta Gerrits, Sophie Panton and Taissa Cronin, all fellow Carleton University graduates who have spent evenings eating on the Tostevin porch themselves.
On a shared whiteboard in the kitchen, the roommates keep a running list of groceries and meal ideas for the week: bagels, cream cheese and baby carrots on one side; sausage pasta, chicken fajitas and gnocchi soup on the other.
“Whoever has time will pick up the groceries, someone will cook, another will act as sous-chef and someone else will clean up after the meal,” Cronin says.
Since Tostevin has a car for her commute, she typically makes trips to Costco and Adonis to stock up on canned goods and proteins in bulk. The others walk to Farm Boy for fresh produce throughout the week.
They pack leftovers for lunch and have a weekly ritual of a weekend breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, potatoes and sometimes scones.
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The system works because of trust, which the roommates say they established early on. Still, they acknowledge that, with differing portions and food preferences, it can never be perfectly fair.
“Over all, we all save money by using this system,” Cronin says. With four mouths to feed, food waste is rarely an issue.
How we save money on groceries: We stick to routines in our grocery shopping to keep our spending to a minimum. We find that proteins are cheapest when we buy them in bulk from Costco, canned goods from Adonis and produce from Farm Boy.
How we splurge on groceries: Our main splurge happens when we host people, which we love to do. We’ll often buy good cheeses such as brie, halloumi or Merlot BellaVitano cheese and a chili crunch from a local butcher, Piggy Market, to pair with cheese and potato chips.
The hardest shopping habit to keep up: The quantity that we buy makes the mechanics of grocery shopping tough sometimes. We don’t do takeout, so we go through a lot of food, and need to cook everything. It would be impossible to do it if we weren’t all pitching in time, money and energy.
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How we’ve changed our eating habits recently: We’re trying to eat more protein, like everyone seems to be doing right now. We try to get more by adding protein powder to smoothies, adding bone broths to our meals and making sure that each meal contains meat.
Five items always in our cart:
- Kimchi – Jongga – $12.49 for 1.5 kilograms: We go through about one jar a month of these, sometimes more. We really enjoy the taste of it, and pair it with a lot of dishes. Kimchi with scrambled eggs is a quick dish we prepare often.
- Frozen butter croissants – Bridor – $21.79 for 30 croissants: We save so much money by making a croissant and a latte at home versus buying from a café.
- Greek yogurt – Liberté – $2.99: We wait to buy this on sale, when we typically find it for $2.99 at Adonis or Farm Boy. We really enjoy the taste and creaminess of it.
- Red onions – $4.99 for a three–pound bag: Nina has been pickling onions lately. They’re a great addition to meals. We often throw them on fajitas, or a nice salmon bowl with rice.
- Leeks – $2.97 per bundle: A hearty leek soup has become a go-to in the winter. It’s made with leeks, carrots, rotisserie chicken and gnocchi, thickened with flour and cream and finished with thyme and rosemary.