WhyNot, I used the grocery game for awhile and eventually let it lapse. I really was having a problem not buying things because they were on sale and I had a coupon. Plus, I found that I often had to buy more than I would use for a very long time to get the deal in question. That said, I’ve been considering doing it again because I’ve gotten better about my coupon and sales flyer usage. I haven’t figured out which of the two Chicago Sunday papers have the best coupons, though, and I don’t know if I should be considering it again. Just in case.
As for everyone else, I really appreciate the input. I do have the intention of figuring out my meals in advance, and buying once a week (possibly more if I can for fresh produce), but I have never once been successful at that - to the point that the thought is a hair daunting, especially now that I’m cooking for only me. The last time I made my chilli I made enough to have chilli for what feels like the rest of my life, and I had only made the single batch! I guess I just have a hard time figuring out leftovers, and how to either make them into something new (which would be best) or just choke them down. Again, I’m getting better at this because I am forcing myself to do so, but I’m not to the point I need to be to keep my waste (of money and food) low.
Friday is my day for going out shopping. I’m planning to try to figure out what I have “in stock” Thursday, and shop with the sales flyers and make a plan of attack. If I luck out, and have extra time tomorrow, I will run to one of the nearby stores and take advantage of the buy one get one free on my favorite bread. I have a freezer, I could do well with that, but only if I have time to get there.
I’m a compulsive hoarder, and unfortunately that’s extended to my kitchen as well. Combine this with an atrocious memory and you’ve got a recipe for carnage.
I have a bench that’s entirely covered in spices, oils, vinegars and sauces (BBQ, tomato, worcestershire, gravy granules). Some I’ve doubled up on because I needed (x) for something I wanted to make and forgot I purchased some a few weeks/months earlier.
My pantry is an old linen press that is floor to ceiling. The top couple of shelves have some equipment on them, but I have about five deep shelves full of dried/tinned foods - rice, pasta, tins of soup, shelf-stable ready meals. Again, things I think I need, but forget I have, that I then buy and don’t use.
I have a full size fridge/freezer. Fridge has some foods in, but is also full of jams, cheeses, perishable sauces like mayo. The freezer is packed with frozen veg, meat pies, chicken breasts, steak, icecream. So is my chest freezer. My full-size chest freezer.
Have I mentioned there’s only 2 of us in the house?
I need to throw it all out and start again. Some things I’ve had in the house since we moved in, and even frozen food perishes after a while.
I have adopeted a strange way of eating/cooking/shopping/organizing the kitchen. I have gone for a minimalist approach and try to live like a pioneer. I keep all the necessary staples around and a list on the fridge to write down when I am out of something. Then I go shopping every day (there is a market on my daily route) to pick up a main ingredient for dinner plus any staples that may have been added to the list.
For instance, I used up the last of my yeast last night making bread and tonight I might make a zuchinni casserole. So when I stop at the store, I will pick up yeast and zukes knowing that I have bread crumbs (that I make myself from the bread I baked myself), eggs, milk, onions, spices, etc. to make the meal with.
I’m strange, but it is fun. And this summer, I am starting a vegetable/herb garden so that I can kind of live off the land.
I always keep staples on hand, and when some non-perishable I use regularly is on sale at a good price, I’ll stock up. Other than that, I mostly keep from running out of things by making up a meal plan for a week, checking the pantry/fridge, and getting whatever else we need in a big weekly trip. I tend to go shopping on Wednesdays because I have the day off. Usually by Saturday we need to top up things like milk and bread, so there’s a mini-grocery run that day, which I might do or my husband might, depending on who has more time or who has to run other errands that day.
We have a teenage boy in the house now, so anything remotely resembling a snack food is subject to disappear without notice But this system helps!
This is amusing to me, because on the one hand, chili strikes me as something easily remade–taco salad, enchiladas, serve over starch, serve with sour cream, guacamole, cheese, chips, etc.–and on the other hand, there is a moderately sized pot of chili in my freezer waiting to be declared old enough to throw away.
(There is a magnet on my refrigerator which says "Leftovers: Food stored in the refrigerator until it is old enough to throw away).
On the other hand, the last time I fixed chili, I both fixed an excessively large pot–trying to get the meat/beans/tomatoes/ ratio right, and fixed a not especially tasty pot. So I froze some, and ate some for the rest of the week.
If you don’t already, freeze lots of your leftovers. Put them in containers–Cool Whip or Gladware or Ziploc Freezer bags-- in one or two serving size portions, and freeze them. Then, next week or next month, pull one out a day or so before you intend to eat it, thaw it in the fridge, and presto! chili for one or two.
Other than rice, spices a bottle of olive oil & one of rapeseed, I don’t keep any non-perishable food around the house (no pasta, no soup cans etc.). So basically I just have to open the fridge and see what I’m missing at the end of the week.
I also plan meals for the week. I do it over a few days, though, just thinking about what sounds good that we haven’t had in a while. I buy large quantities of meat on sale and store them in meal size portions, based on the fliers. I always check if I have all the “staple” type ingredients by going through each recipe.
I keep the inventory in my head mostly, but I also look at the stuff in the freezer quite often. I have a small chest freezer, and I keep like meats together in a plastic grocery bag. Chicken breasts and chicken legs go in one bag; pork tenderloin, pork chops, link sausage go in another; shrimp and fish in another. So when I think of a meal I want, I check if I have the meat for it, and if not, I add it to the list. Or vice versa! If I have a ton of chicken because it was on sale, I look at chicken recipes.
I have a loose-leaf binder of recipes from the Internet, or copied from magazines. When I make them I write down any tweaks I made (I always tweak it!) and give it a rating. Or rip it out and throw it away!
Basically, I keep inventory by thinking about food all the time!!!
I have an idea of the regular stuff we use a lot of, and when I buy meats, I usually have a plan.
Ground beef will either be burgers, spaghetti or chili, so I make sure I have what I need to make one or the other.
Chicken breasts can be either broiled and served with veg, cut up and sauteed with veggies and served over pasta, or made into a soup or casserole. Do I have everything I need to make one or the other of those?
That’s how I do mine. And I also do a quick check of the freezer before I leave the house on the day I plan to do the shopping.
Thanks for the link, WhyNot. I’ll read into that. I know a big part of my problem is my actual budgeting of what little money I have. The acquisition of a new girlfriend has caused me to reallocate more funds towards making her happy. This includes food because she likes my cooking! Simply quitting fast food for lunch has saved me a ton! :eek:
For Christmas I bought my daughter (who is a bit paranoid about spoiling food) magnetic timers that you can set on food in your frig and which tell you how long it’s been there. They were cheap. I saw a little sensor that you can use to check for spoilage if your nose isn’t good enough. That was expensive, so I have no idea if it works or not.
I generally have a pretty good idea how long stuff has been in my fridge and freezer. And I’ve got a pretty good sense of how long I’m willing to keep stuff before I’m not going to be willing to eat it, regardless of whether it is theoretically food safe.
It’s just, especialy when living at home, I was sometimes guilty of eating the next-to-last serving and leaving the last serving for someone else.
And now, living by myself, I am sometimes guilty of binge cleaning, rather than washing dishes every day.
I have an incredibly bad diet, so my method is wacky.
When I run out of milk for my cereal, I go to the store to get more. While there, I’ll pick up up about 4 more boxes of cereal, some yogurt, some pasta and sauce, maybe a couple frozen dinners (if on sale) and that will last me until I run out of milk again.
I eat cereal for most of my meals. The other stuff is my dinner back-up. My boss buys lunch once a week or more, so I usually get dinner from that too…and on the weekends, if I go out, leftovers!
Forgot about this! I’ve started actually eating a lunch at work, which is a sandwich. I buy bread, meat, lettuce and cheese on my lunch break whenever I run out. All that stuff stays here at work, so it’s easy to see when it’s low.
We have a white board attached to the side of the refrigerator. When we’re out of something that is a staple item (olive oil, eggs, butter) it goes on the white board. The next person to go shopping usually picks up the stuff on the list.
But for meals…I shop every day for dinner. I pop in to my local Publix each evening on my way home from work and pick up what I need for dinner. If I’m making a recipe I might actually make a list but mostly for us it’s a protein, fresh vegetable and starch. With a very loose running tally in my head of what we’ve had the last couple of days so we don’t have fish 4 days in a row. I might or might not remember that we’re out of soy sauce or that I already have sesame seeds. That kind of information I keep in my head and it’s not always accurate.
Lunch is almost always leftovers. Breakfast is oatmeal because we think it’s helping our cholesterol levels and it certainly has loads of fiber. So dinner is the only meal I really shop for.
I usually keep track of what’s in the house in my head, then when I’m making a list, try to incorporate any ingredients I have that I haven’t managed to use for whatever reason. It usually involves me poring through a recipe book, thinking, “Hmm. That looks good. Wonder if I still have X?” then standing in front of the cupboards for a while and planning the menu based on what’s in there. You know, stuff like the cream of mushroom soup you bought for something else, but never used or the bamboo shoots you were going to put into Chinese food but forgot about - those sorts of things.
Of course, then there are the things my mom decided I simply must have when she came to visit that still sit in my pantry because I absolutely refuse to make anything with them. For example, this horseradish cheddar dip that my mom informed me was my favorite but really smells and tastes shockingly close to vomit - that stuff will go into the trashcan after I stop feeling guilty for throwing food away. That and the turkey base that she got me for some reason (what the hell is it anyway??). I wouldn’t inflict either on our local soup kitchen - one would make everyone retch and the other would make everyone scratch their heads.
I think the papers Teri uses for here are the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune.
I let it lapse as well, but for different reasons: I live in an apartment building, and some well-meaning resident keeps throwing out all the third class mail, including the coupons. :smack: While I could have kept going with just the newspaper coupons, I also found that I could get better deals on Aldi’s regular prices rather than the name brand stuff on sale with a coupon. Since I’m not picky about most brands, it was a whole lot of work for not enough savings for me. But I think her principle is sound - make your pantry the store so you don’t have to rely on the store’s sale cycles. Using her system for just a couple of months taught me the shopping patterns I needed, and then I quit her service.
I have a UPC scanner and when I bring an item into the house, I scan it and store the info in memory. When I use the item, I scan it and remove it from the database. I print out the inventory on my computer.
(Just kidding. I open the fridge and cabinet door and look, and make a mental or written note to stop at the store after work and stock up, usually on yogurt and bananas every week and other items determined in the supermarket aisles. )
But this system helps!
Simply quitting fast food for lunch has saved me a ton! :eek: