[QUOTE=Finagle]
Meats, and hamburger in particular. I’m perfectly willing to heed the advice of nutritionists and cut down a bit on my red meat eating. But if they sell hamburger in 1 pound batches, then it’s easier to just dump that into the spaghetti sauce and eat it over the course of a few meals than it is to repackage it into smaller packages when I get home.[/QUOTE
The butcher at your supermarket will give you smaler portions of pretty much any meat (sans the national packaged brands). Just ask him/her to divide it.
Snack foods. This is especially bad at the convenience stores, where everything seems to be a $1 “Big Grab” these days. Dammit, I just want some Cheetos to tie me over, not a freakin’ meal-in-a-bag…
There’s not really anything I wish came smaller. I cook for a family of 4 and I tend to buy a lot of stuff in bulk so there’s some things I wish they made bigger!
I just wanted to share a tip for keeping your celery and lettuce fresher and help it to last longer. Wrap it in aluminum foil! Actually, I’ve been wrapping my veggies in that new Press-n-Seal stuff from Glad and then wrapping it in aluminum foil. It really will keep your celery and lettuce fresher longer.
Also, I though most grocery stores sold eggs in 1/2 dozen cartons.
There should be plenty of health food stores or spice stores that carry spices in bulk so you can buy as much or as little as you want. They’re also generally of higher quality than spices you find in grocery stores.
Pretty much all grocery items (except cheese, I never have a problem with cheese going bad or not using it all). But everything else, produce, bread, milk, meat (especially meat - what on earth can I do with two pounds of hamburger without hating the sight of it after a while, and sadly, the butcher quits at 9. I never make it to the store by 9. I’m lucky if I make it to the store before 11.) even things like breadcrumbs.
I never even come close to using it all.
Eggs - the local stores will let me buy a single egg - so I don’t usually get stuck with a dozen of those rotting away.
S0pices - at least two stores sell those in bulk, so if I need a teaspoon, I buy what I think is a tablespoon (for like, $.15) and may have some left over - but it’s way better than buying a $5.00 jar that will go bad.
I agree with Small Clanger on the issue of clothes: with ‘vanity sizing’ I’ve been finding it harder and harder to find jeans/shorts/skirts/etc. that fit. When I was in high school, a size 6 or 8 was about the norm for me. Now? A size 1. Yup. A 1 (maybe 2, depending). And I’ve definately gained weight since high school. The stuff in the kid’s section usually doesn’t work for one reason or another (kid designs, fit is different, etc.).
I add:
Brownie/cake mixes. Not all ‘from scratch’ recipies can be scaled down sucessfully, and paying $0.75 (or so) for a single brownie that usually has plasticy frosting on it… Yuck. There are times where I just want a few, not an entire pan full! (The brownie bites from Kroger are pretty good, but they come in bags and a bag has too many brownies in it.)
Pre-made biscuts (the kind where all you have to do is plunk 'em in the oven to bake). Pillsbury does this, kinda. I don’t want that large of a bag of them! I just want a few! I don’t eat biscuts enough to go through them all before they get all freezer burnt, and I don’t eat enough at one time to use up the tubes of 'em sold in the fridge section.
Alcohol, especially liqueurs. I like to try out new mixed drinks, or a recipe will call for a couple of tablespoons of some liqueur. Then I’m stuck with this huge bottle, which for as much as I like to experiment, is still a lifetime supply. Too bad it would be tacky to show up at a party with an opened bottle!
Has anybody mentioned that bread freezes well? Pop that extra bit in the freezer.
That is why I loved going for groceries in Germany this spring…
You can get 200 grams/1 decent sized hamburger portions , as well as single very nice steaks…and a pair of chicken wings if you want…a single thigh, a single leg, a leg and thigh of pheasant, or duck, or chicken, or goose or turkey …or a whole bird … but then again they have a different shopping style with a big shoping day for the non frige foods, and get fridge foods wither that day or for only a few days at a time. I loved having the case of shelf stable milk and heavy cream always around !
the variety in the Real market we were in was better than in many butchers shops I have run into here in the US. You could buy tiny cans of fruit or veggies, and an incredible array of nifty convenience foods [like toothpaste tubes, but with creamcheese and caviar, or cream cheese and salmon or cream cheese and herring] and teeny tiny jars of about 7 different varieties of honey - about enough for a couple f cups of tea [they came home with me so i could decide which ones i wanted to buy bigger jars of.]
Though what i miss the most, is the variety…they have 10 manufacturers…but they may make 30 different products instead of here in the US where we have 30 manufacturers making 10 products. Knorr only seems to let the US import about a quarter of what they sell in Germany=( major whinging here
Do eggs actually go bad, when refrigerated? My wife and I currently have about 20 eggs in the fridge, but usually eat them for breakfast only on the weekends. Should I think about using them pretty soon?
I’ll vote cigarettes too, but with a diffferent packaging preference. I wish the evil, sinister, blood-thirsty tobacco companies would offer “halfsies”: A 40 count pack of half length cigarettes. Same amount of tobacco and same price - but twice as many (of those pleasurable) light-ups than the current 20 count pack.
I think the reason packaging has remained static all these years (and the fact loosies are illegal in my neck of the woods) is due to the evil, sinister, blood-thirsty state, federal and local goverment’s tax regulations. Either that, or the Madison Ave ad firms are far more short sided than I would have assumed.
Medicines, the basic OTC cough and cold stuff particularly, but all of the basic medicine chest standards.
While I’m very grateful my family of two is pretty healthy, I hate throwing away expired meds and buying a new package every time one of us gets sick. Last time it was a recurring cough, great now I’ve got non-expired suppressant, but this time it’s nasal congestion and sneezing? Off to the drugstore I go.
Actually I’m rather quite proud of myself for learning years back to at least buy the smallest possible size, it goes contrary to my thrifty nature not to buy the best value possible. I’d be thrilled with trial sizes of stuff we thankfully don’t need often enough to use up a normal size of before it expires.
If you take that stuff out of the plastic bag and instead wrap it with wet paper towels it’ll last a LOT longer.
I have the same issue. Since the only thing I do with it is chop it up for stuff, I do that to the entire bunch when I first buy it and freeze it all.
My vote goes to restaurant meals. I can leave an expensive restaurant happy and sated after eating an appetizer, entree, dessert, and possibly some inbetween courses. Cheap restaurants? I order one thing and can rarely finish it because there are sixteen pounds of food heaped on a plate. If I do finish it I feel like a pig. :mad:
I wish they would make smaller bananas at the Dole Banana Factory. One whole big plump ripe banana is way too much for a bowl of cereal. Yep, they need to carve some smaller banana-shaped fruit molds and go straight to press.
I wish they sold cans of pop that were 4 or 6 oz. My wife and stepson both refuse to drink pop that has gone the least bit flat. If they havn’t finished a can after about a half hour or so, they declare it undrinkable and pour the rest out.
I’m with you on that! One of the many reasons I love Japanese restaurants is that they give you a sliced orange at the end of the meal. Or sometimes a little scoop of Japanese-style ice cream. Just a perfect little sweet treat at the end!
Maybe restaurants don’t order “little” desserts because they want everybody at the table to order a “big” dessert. But when I go out, it seems like nobody ever gets any dessert, because nobody really wants a big dessert (usually of disappointing taste), and contrary to popular belief, people don’t like to share a piece of pie. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why people are always saying “I’ll just have a bite of yours…” Maybe they’re looking for the equivalent of that single petit-four!
If a restaurant offered some kind of easily-splittable dessert, like a plate of really good cookies, I wonder if people would order it instead of ordering nothing.
Fish: They do make smaller bananas! They don’t have “baby bananas” in your neck of the woods yet? They’ve been common in supermarkets around here for a few years. I only found them in Asian groceries before that. Anyway, they yield about 1/4 the amount of a regular big banana. They taste almost the same, but a little sweeter and richer. They’re not much more expensive than regular bananas.
(One of the produce guys at my local Pathmark likes to give my kid a baby banana when we’re shopping. )
Actually, Coke has six packs of half-sized cans. We get the dinky Sprites and Barqs for the kids all the time.
On a similar note, I always wished they sold beer in eight or nine packs. Six never seems to last long enough and twelve take up too damn much room in the fridge.
Jeans! (length wise) I have short legs, and wide hips, so pants NEVER fit me right. They are either to long and baggy, and fit my perfectly in the waist, or fit perfectly on my legs…and I can’t button them. Yes I know wide hips are good for having kids and such, but these are my teenage years when I don’t want a kid yet, I WANT GOOD FITTING JEANS. Ok, I am good.
Bunches of fresh herbs. I love them, but what the heck am I going to do with a bunch of cilantro that would be 2 cups chopped-up? I’m a cooking maniac, but I’m only one person! (Although sometimes my mom or whoever happens to be around when I’ve just gone to the produce stand is the beneficiary of half the bunch.)
Dried herbs and spices stay fresh much longer in the freezer - half my freezer is filled with those, and with nuts and frozen berries. I love cranberries, but when you buy them from the freezer section, they just aren’t the same as the ones you buy fresh in season. So I buy 3-4 bage then and keep them in the freezer for muffins and such.
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