I just saw this OT thread in the list of New Posts. Being an aussie, I thought I'd chime in if that's alright.

Don't forget the exchange rate. Our AUD is not worth the same as the US Dollar.

Aussie, the banana situation I saw you mentioned. I'm a Queenslander so the minute bananas are mentioned I notice. lol When you posted about that problem with the insects following you... I wondered then about bananas and fruit fly too. LOL

Heck, that was awful. Almost all of our bananas got wiped out in that shocking cyclone. There are a few pockets like in northern NSW where there are bananas growing that weren't affected and they filtered through to the market at very high prices. The reason the price went up so high also was because instead of buying in cheap bananas from overseas a decision was made to stick it out without them and wait till the new crops started to bear fruit here.

OK, while I was typing that I was looking up the exchange rate.

0.8199 AUD = 1 USD as of last Friday. Haven't seen today's yet.
http://www.rba.gov.au/Statistics/exchange_rates.html

I'm single mum with 2 grown children at home. One is now 20 and other is 18. I can't really give you an amount spent per week on groceries because it varies a lot but I can't really buy what I want to buy anymore. I've had to restrict our diet a lot. If I bought my organic foods and meats and snacks like raw and local nuts, it'd be all gone in an hour. Bummer really because I want to feed us all the very best produce but a lot of the time I just have learned to make do with cheaper items but good cooking skills. I do love to cook so that helps.