The rising cost of produce is hitting homeless shelters hard.  Those that provide meals for clients are tweaking their menus to try to stretch their budgets.  Canada’s inflation rate rose last month, thanks to the climbing prices of fresh fruits and vegetables.

It’s up 1.6%, as the sinking dollar pumped up prices across the produce section.

At the Ottawa Mission, if there is one thing that Chef Ric Watson knows, it's how to turn a few simple ingredients into something delicious.  But that's even challenging for him these days.

“Prices have increased drastically,” says Watson, “It is a challenge to even prepare the menus we prepare.”

So celery has been largely chopped from meals here, along with green onions, and ground beef is stretched as far as it can go. Here's why. Watson says in November, a case of green onions cost them $40.  That has jumped to $90 a case.  Celery has gone from $39 a case to $99; that's an increase of more than 150%.  And the price of hamburger has doubled in a year.

“We’ve had to substitute or eliminate it and go with something else,” he says, “It’s too expensive to use.”

And if places like the Mission are feeling the pinch of the increased price of produce, imagine the clients coming here.

“They have to come here because they can't afford to put food on their tables,” says Watson, and I see a gradual increase in our numbers as well. I’m hoping things level out soon because it could be very scary.”

Over at St. Joe's Women's Centre, Betty Leonard knows all too well how scary those costs can be. 

“I don't buy fruits anymore and vegetables are four times the price,” she says, as she grabs a cup of coffee over the lunch hour, “So, most of the time, I’m not even buying vegetables.”

Salad is still on the menu for lunch today at St. Joe’s, along with a few pieces of pricey tomato thrown in.  These places pride themselves on offering healthy meals; the only access many of the women there will have to fruits and vegetables.  But what they offer on the lunch plate, they now have to take away from somewhere else.

“What's going to happen,” says Marsha Wilson, the director at St. Joe’s Women’s Centre, “is that I’m going to take money out of other programs to put in the food program so we're going to have to cut back on other things for the women.”

The Ottawa Food Bank has allocated $60-thousand dollars this year to buy fresh produce over the winter months.  That money is almost all gone already and spring is still months away.