Name: Bharat Joshi (left), cancer researcher. Shopping with his wife, Pragna Joshi (centre), and friend Trupti Soni

Store: Punjab Food Centre, 6635 Main Street

Items: Mango pickle chutney, jaggery (solid unrefined palm sugar), eggplant, snap peas, big bunch of mint, canned patra (spinachlike colacacia leaves)

Where it's headed: Mint for tea and mint parathas; jaggery to sweeten curries. "Indians like their food a little bit sweet as well as spicy, so we add it instead of sugar to food," Bharat says. For the patra: "You take the patra and add chickpea flour, cilantro, spinach, green chili, and roll it, dice it, and then steam it."

What's for dinner? Home-made chapatis, snap-pea curry, dal, rice. "We cook Indian and Italian at home. We eat Indian food almost every night. Once a week we'll go out for Italian or Mexican."

what they avoid: "We are vegetarians. We never buy meat."

Guilty pleasure: They buy Indian sweets once in a while, but not often because "they're not very healthy." Occasionally, they'll buy butter. "We don't use it every day."

On shopping: Bharat says they live around UBC but shop on Main Street because that's were they find the ingredients they want.