How often do you buy groceries?
What types of things do you consider “essential”?
Do you make a list when you go shopping, or just have an idea of what you need?
Do you do one big trip all at once, or do you pick up just enough to make what you’re eating that night/the next day?
I tend to buy groceries at least twice a month, sometimes it is more than that because of impulse. Otherwise, I operate on a 35 ~ 65 budget.
I consider my monster javas, rice, pasta, coffee/creamer, oatmeal, almond milk, water, bagels/waffles with cream cheese and things to mix the pasta and rice with as essentials. They’re always staples in all shopping trips.
My shopping lasts no more than 10 ~ 15 minutes, maybe less, because I always know what I’m after. I hate having to hop around stores to find things one other store doesn’t have because while I could find cheaper alternatives, I am sometimes met with more pricier options which may force me to go without one of my essentials for a while.
My goal with grocery shopping is to extend rations as much as possible while moderating how much I eat. I do shop for processed foods like frozen and canned stuff, but I find that it actually helps my rations. I don’t particularly pick up things like loaves of bread or produce because from my experience in the past, I always feel like I have to eat them sooner or they’ll spoil and I don’t really like having to feel like I got to wolf down something as soon as I buy it.
Longevity is key to me.
These days, we tend to sit down on Sunday evening and plan out our meals for the week, then go shopping on Monday. We go to the farmer’s market Saturday and plan our meals around what vegetables we could buy locally.
I don’t consider very many things essential. Maybe dry beans, rice (sub millet, quinoa, or other cookable grain as needed), lentils, flour, and salt? Without those I’d have troubles surviving, with an adequate supply of those I could live for months, it’d take a while to even get sick of all the things you can make with it. I’m willing to cut pretty much anything I need to out of my diet if it’s not available and honestly I think the obsession with having all foods available at all seasons is weird.
How do you do your beans and lentils? My mental illness has me stockpile food, so I have quite a bit of black beans and lentils, but I just can’t figure out how to cook them to make them work for me.
The red lentils seem to be less bitter than the brown ones. Lentils seem to be the best option, since you don’t have to soak them as long as beans and I struggle with that aspect of food prep.
If you have trouble with the soaking, black beans do very well with a “quick soak”.
-
Cover them with water about twice the depth of the beans. Add about 1 teaspoon (~5 ml or 5-7 g) salt.
-
Bring to a boil and keep it boiling for 2 minutes. Then cover and turn off the burner/hob. Let soak for 1-2 hours.
-
Add any extra seasonings now (but nothing acidic). Then bring back to a boil and then simmer until soft. Adjust seasoning and you’re done.
They should take much less time than cooking from dry. How long will depend on the beans. Older beans can take much longer, but most should be soft in 1 hour or so.
Yep. That works well unless you’re cooking at altitude, then an overnight soak is the best and easiest way. Unless you own a pressure cooker.
Some beans you can get away with not soaking at all, just cook them low and slow for a couple hours. I’ve done that with great northern beans.
-
All kinds of ways, but I think a good few recipes to check out are:
- cuban style frijoles with the black beans
- red lentil hummus
- dal makhni for kidney beans (needs a lot more special ingredients than the other two though) Green lentils aren’t one of my favourites most of hte time but they do go well with rice
I can find a recipe similar to mine for any of these if you like
We do groceries roughly every 1.5 weeks, or around 3 times a month. It consists of going to a big grocery chain for the essentials and two asian supermarkets for specific stuff that can only be found there. We try to hit them all in one trip but sometimes split them over 2 days because raw, frozen stuff sitting in the car while we go on two other stops is a bit risky.
Crate of 24 beers, five pizzas, two large steaks and a packs of French fries.
You ok? It’s never too late to start eating right. It will make you fell better now and definitely in the future.
concern-trolling is boring
This is kinda where I’m at, but it’s not conducive to GERD unfortunately.
I can respect this. Beats racking my brain every night trying to think of what I want to eat.
The butcher delivers meat once a week on a schedule
About every other week go to the local wet market for variety
Anything else is ordered about once week from the local western style market (free delivery)
I tend to spend a weekend cooking and freezing loads, then not really cooking for weeks.
So it’s a massive targeted shop every few weeks to do that, then mostly small trips (often on foot/bike) to the local shops to get milk and any odd things I run out of, or if I feel like mixing dinner up with something else.
I go almost every day. It’s a good reason to get out and go for a walk.
What I buy mostly depends on prices/discounts. And only what I can carry in my backpack. Potatoes when affordable, otherwise rice; frozen veggies, ham/cheese, bubbly water, beer.
Potatoes are more expensive than rice in the Netherlands?
Edit: just did the math for my German prices and they seem about equal. I always thought rice was a bit more expensive.
Edit 2: just realized that it’s easier and cheaper to prepare a meal with potatoes for me. I’m cool with plain mashed potatoes or simple pan fried potatoes (about 50c of extra ingredients each) but for rice I need something to go with it, which is gonna be more expensive than what I need for potatoes
I’m not in the Netherlands. Where I live, potatoes were 1.20 eur per kilo last year so I don’t buy it. Normal price should be 40 cents.
Ah, I see. My bad for assuming. Yeah, 1,20€ is way too much.
Two trips each week. One to the local farmers shop, for whatever is available there (mostly vegetables, eggs and bread, but sometimes fish, meat, ice cream, etc), and another to a supermarket for the common things (pasta for my gf and couscous for me, rice, flour, some dairy (fresh cream or cheese), sandwich bread and chocolate spread, sometimes stuff that needs to be refilled like oil, soap, toilet paper, etc and usually an extra meal : either rice and fish for sushi-like thingy, chickpea for nugetts-ich fried stuff, or a can of smthg like chili con carne).
We try to do lists for the supermarket, otherwise we always forget something. For the local shop, what’s available varies greatly so there’s no sense making a list.
Yeah this is pretty much me.
I have unusual eating habits so not the same stuff.
I generally go to the green grocer (farmers shop?), then there’s a wholefoods shop for nuts and pulses and things, then the butcher, then at the supermarket it’s just bits and pieces.
We’ve gotten pretty good at getting things in bulk when they’re on special. Some items are way cheaper to buy on-line like toiletries and medications.
I pretty much eat depression meals, with occasional cooking. Trying to be better, but I still eat a lot of food that isn’t the greatest for you, like frozen meals, that kind of thing. I really should be better, and I don’t know if I should be sad or motivated seeing everyone else’s food in this thread.
When I notice my fridge fails to either 1) hold enough prepped stuff to microwave an entree, or 2) provide snacks or something-pie – it’s grocery shopping time. I mostly keep to the membership stores, so just one/two visits a month, maybe. I only buy as much as I can carry in one trip from car to fridge.
Until yogurt drinks are in season again. Then it’s worth getting delivered by the pallet.
Ayran 🤤
A mix of pre-planned list if we ran out of something or we want to cook something specific and in-shop decisions seeing what’s on promotion that week or what’s close to the expiration date and discounted a bit more.
We try to have like 3 servings of meat per week, and a constant stock of tomatoes, onions, garlic and lettuce and two other veggies (depending on what’s cheap that week: pepper, broccoli, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes).
For dinner we usually try to stock: Bread, 3 types of sliced cheese (a cheap “mix”, a cheddar and something fancy like a Camembert or Gorgonzola), and 3 types of cold cuts (prosciutto, krustenbraten, salami, chorizo, Mett, etc).
We keep a big stock of UHT Milk, pasta and rice, and restock when there’s a promo or we run below 2 weeks of supply. Some lazy food like frozen Pizzas or ramen always needs to be available.
We buy eggs every two weeks from a local farmer.
Usually one big trip a week with short visits on a need-to basis if run out of something mid week.
Usually a head of lettuce, a couple bell peppers, an onion, a lb of ground beef, any other meat that is on sale, a gallon of milk, bread, maybe some frozen or canned items, a bag of chips or some other snack, any staple items I might be out of, and a fifth of WT 101 if it’s on sale.
You buy a fifth a week?..
We manage our “food inventory” with Grocy which calls itself “the ERP beyond your fridge”. It basically tracks every single purchase and consumption of food and also each items best before date. It needs a bit initial setup and you need to remind yourself to checkout stuff you consume but then it’s just great. Not a single item spoiled because it got pushed too far back on the shelf. And since Grocy knows how much of what item we want in stock, it automatically writes our shopping lists with stuff which is about to run out.
So the shopping is basically day to day as we return from work and pass the store just ticking things off the list. And we made a rule for ourselves to only buy the stuff on the list, nothing extra to avoid impulse purchases.
We spend around $200/week for 3 people and cook every meal. Comes to about $3/meal/person. Pretty much just some meat, beans, pasta, veggies, fruit and my kid’s snacks.
I usually pick up enough stuff to last me a week or even two; mostly frozen pizzas, ingredients for curry, sweets, snacks, pantry staples like pasta sauce and pasta. Caffeinated beverages like soda or energy drinks are typically on my list too. I also get toiletries, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper every few weeks.