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?
Almost once a week from an online supermarket. I typically plan 4 or 5 meals as I shop, with adhoc rice/pasta/noodle dishes, frozen portions and takeaways/meals out that usually lasts for 8 or 9 days.
I mostly cook vegetarian so most of the shop is fresh vegetables. We do eat chicken or fish once a week though. “Essentials” are pea milk, fruit juice, tomatoes, bread, eggs, avocados, oats, fresh/dried/frozen fruits - everything else is meal dependent.
It’s much easier planning and buying from home and the selection online is much better than any of the local supermarkets. The only thing I regularly buy offline is coffee from a local roastery. There’s some great independent shops in my village, but the green grocer can be a bit hit and miss on quality and it’s rare that I can find everything we would like (or need) so I mostly use for the odd thing/special occasions. I will go to the bakery on a weekend in warmer months though.
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
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.
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 🤤
Shopping is a mix of buying stuff that is pre-planned, and impulse purchases. That depends on a number of factors. If I went to the supermarket to buy e.g. peppers, but the ones they have don’t look good, I can spontaneously change the meal and buy something else for which I can buy good products. Same at the meat frontier, I can easily switch plans if shopping reality dictates differently.
2 cups of rice, 1 cup of pintos, 4 flour tortillas, a nebulous amount of grits, 6 english muffins, 6 eggs, a few bananas and plain oat cereal, two bags worth of frozen veggies (cauli, broc, carrots, bell peppers, onions), a single chicken breast, a small roll of ground beef, a small roll of pork sausage, a half gallon of OJ, coffee, tea, oatmilk, and a hand-waved amount of spices, salsa, seasonings, choese, vinegar, and/or sweeteners.
huh, i eat more than i thought. I shop about twice a month, and usually buy the dry and freezable stuff in bulk so I don’t notice as much how much I’m taking in on the regular.
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)
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?..
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.
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.
My groceries aren’t interesting, but I had a friend who only ate what went into a mug.
He carried around a ceramic mug, either collecting free stuff or telling people about his mug to see if they’d put food in it. Free samples, a few grapes, and occasional hand outs all went into the mug. I filled it with soup when he came by.
Was this wherever he went?
Did he take it when out to eat with friends or on a date?
How much did this mug effect his day to day life?
For the couple months I knew him the mug was either in his hand or clipped to his bag.
I didn’t see his dates and I didn’t ask, but he came by for dinner once and ate his portion from the mug.
As far as I saw, it was a great conversation starter, he made a lot of friends and ate reasonably well.
This would get old real quick.
I was a smoker in a past life.
Occasionally you encounter other smokers who are trying to cut down, or quitting, and limiting their intake by refusing to buy a pack of smokes and simply bumming smokes off the people they encounter.
Sounds nice in principle but obviously this very quickly deteriorates into a parasitic arrangement.
What I mean is, if I went to work every day and there was a guy there with a cup, obviously I’d happily give him whatever, but at any given lunch break if he was hungry he’d know he could search me out for a bite to eat.
I thought it was interesting and uplifting to see people come together to support this guy in a fairly simple way. He just told people about his mug if they asked and didn’t belabor it from there. Even shared candy when he got it.
I worked at a restaurant, where there’s a lot of food waste, so I was happy to help someone out while he found his footing. He didn’t come back on his own, I told him to see me when I’m working.
It’s weird to spin that into a “parasitic” relationship.
Sure ok. I’ll readily acknowledge that I’m a pretty weird guy.
I probably also have a lot of left over baggage from being a substance abuser of minimal socio-economic means. That is to say I just like to pay for my own stuff, and there’s a short list of people I might be very generous with but beyond that I’m not generous (with money) at all.
I guess it’s a bit different if the guy is interacting with a lot of different people every day.
I had envisaged a situation where I work in some kind of cubicle hell scape and every lunch time I need to sneak past old-mates cube in case he sees me and tries to swindle me into contributing some crisps or something.
Fair enough, I can see how that would taint your view of the world. Admittedly, that was a time when a lot of us were poor, in a place where a lot of young people go to get away from their lives. We were all just trying to get by, so we shared what we could.
I probably wouldn’t have met mug guy, if not for the mug, and he was a delight. I say that as someone who grew up in a pretty insular, toxic, pay-your-own-way sort of family. Mug guy showed me it’s okay to ask for what you need and some people genuinely want to help you.
1 lb of salt. 20 lbs of long pork.
The richer the better
I eat a lot of fresh food that doesn’t last a week; I shop every other day. I also eat a lot of things that last forever and are cheapest in bulk, like beans, rice, pasta. As a result, I honestly don’t know what a week of groceries looks like.
What are you eating that only lasts 1 to 2 days?
fresh bread, avocados, fresh tomatoes, fresh meat
It’s not that they go bad after just two days, but a week is too long
I walk each day to the local markets and grab whatever I feel like that day That’s a good walk and is usually my cardio for the day.
Right now, it’s usually a couple chorizos, and then I use the leftover oil to fry potatoes, seasoning the potatoes and then use the leftover oil/spice from the fried potatoes to fry a bunch of diced tomatoes so I have a thick fried salsa.
bag of tomatoes is five quetzales, same for a bag of onions or potatoes.
I grabbed a tamale and some carnitas yesterday for 4 bucks.
I like walking around and seeing what’s open and available each day.
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 go grocery shopping once a week, and I’m buying just for two adults. Most things I get at Aldi, and some things at Giant if I don’t like the Aldi version, or Aldi doesn’t sell it. I do make a list ahead of time, but I buy mostly the same things every week.
A typical aldi trip includes bananas, berries (rasp or blue usually), avocados, some kind of fresh green veg for dinner (typically spinach, asparagus, or green beans), bread, jaffa cakes, coffee, low-fat cheese, laundry detergent & fabric softener, windex, dishwasher pods, toilet paper, canned fire-roasted tomatoes (soooo many easy recipes with these!), sparkling water, eggs, egg whites, almond milk, yogurt, and pierogies. Then I typically get my meat at Giant (most of Aldi’s meat is pretty gnarly), plus things like toothpaste, evaporated milk, sugar packets, paper towels, canned lentils (my Aldi doesn’t carry these???), and a little bouquet of flowers. And then some random things I buy on Amazon, like my tea (yorkshire gold), farro, protein powder, low-fodmap ingredients, etc.
I spend about $150 a week unless I’m out of something expensive like paper towels.
