Shopping

Going to the store

I have  few posts that I've been meaning to share this week, but I haven't had a spare moment to sit down and write them. It's been a crazy few weeks at work to say the least. I think a mental health day may be in my future.

Meanwhile, life goes on and I've been cooking up a storm. I baked a pound cake for the first time for my grandmother's birthday last week. It was pretty good, but it's not hard to admit that we would have enjoyed a  super-sweet Entenmann's pound cake just as much. It's the thought that counts, right? Then, last night I made vegetable beef soup because it was cold and nasty out and I'd had a lingering cold for six days. We bought a baguette of crunchy bread to go with it. Yum! And wouldn't you know it, I woke up this morning feeling chipper and having no cold symptoms to speak of. Amen!

So anyways, I have been busy, even though I haven't been posting that often. I've been thinking for a few weeks about posting an update about my dreaded grocery shopping adventures. (If I haven't mentioned it before, I hate grocery shopping with a passion). I thought I'd share a little bit about my weekly shopping experience and how it's evolved a bit since this post.  Another year has passed and I have modified my shopping rituals to make them a bit less painless. Maybe this can help you if you also dread the grocery store like I do. Or maybe you have a better method that you could share. Oh - and I'm also going to share a picture-iffic post showing a normal week of meals here at the Davis casa.

Planning the Meals:

For me the hardest part of shopping is the first step, figuring out what we want to make the following week. This was the most stressful part of the whole weekend for me. Last year I would spend an hour looking through cookbooks and racking my brain to come up with the perfect menu.

Let's just say I've let that go. To plan more efficiently, I came up with an at-home menu of all of the meals that I have cooked and had success with. Much of that list was compiled by looking back at the blog and remembering what I had cooked, and what actually tasted good when I cooked it. I used to try to cook at least one or two new recipes a week. I have gotten to the point now that I will only cook a brand-spanking-new recipe if:  a). It's a special occasion b). I see or hear about a recipe that I am really excited to try or c.) I'm super bored of everything on my menu and I feel like digging out a cookbook and trying something new. I have enough guilt in my life that I don't need to add one more thing to the list. (Abbreviated guilt list: not sweeping the floors enough, not taking my dogs to the park enough, not grading papers fast enough, not calling my family enough, not working out enough, not changing my pillow cases enough...need I go on?) Not on the guilt list? Cooking the same meals again and again. I started this blog as a food journal of sorts and I'm not going to let it guilt me into anything, dammit. 

If you don't blog, this might not be a problem for you, but you may still feel like you have to "keep it fresh"  by trying new things so your family doesn't complain or so you don't feel like you're cooking the same thing every night.

The menu has helped me because it is a quick reference that I can use every week to make choosing meals utterly painless. I have it broken up into categories by main entree.

For example, here is my "chicken" category:

Chicken:
Creamy Chicken
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Chicken Parmesan
Chicken Tenders
Barbecue Chicken
Baked Chicken Breast (breaded or non-breaded)
Tandoori Style Chicken
Honey-mustard Glazed Chicken Thighs (or other)
Garlic Chicken Stir-fry
Chicken Tacos
Chicken Curry (Indian)
Chicken Fried-Rice
Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce
Pan-seared Chicken Breast with Balsamic and Garlic
Baked Chicken over Portobello Mushrooms
Chicken Pot Pie
Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Chicken Noodle Soup (also in soup section)

I usually select at least one item out of this category because we always have left-over chicken from the week before. For example, last week I made Chicken Noodle Soup and Chicken Parmesan. Other items that we make frequently (usually just because I have the recipes memorized and don't have to look anything up) are:

Homemade Pizza - with sausage, green pepper, and onion
Pan-seared Pork Chops - with a veggie and a side
Chili - in the fall and winter I make this about once a week
Spaghetti - or some form of pasta
Creamy Chicken- with tons of mushrooms
Chicken Parmesan - I can usually get Greg to make this, which is a huge bonus


 Making the List:

After selecting the menu, we make the list. This is also something that I have finally gotten smart about. I typed up a pre-made list of things that we get every week like deli items, onions, mushrooms, fruit, veggies, chicken, granola bars, and juice. Each week I just print out the list, add what I call the "week-specific items" and head out the door.  

I also split the list into two sides because we shop at two different stores each week. Okay, side note: We are a tiny bit crazy (we call it cost-efficient) because every weekend we go to Whole Foods and Target for our shopping. We go to Target for the boxed stuff like granola bars (they have Kashi for about $2 less per box than W.F.!) and paper and cleaning products like t.p., paper towels, Windex, etc. At Whole Foods we shop the perimeter of the store. We get fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, yogurt, bread, cheese, and deli items. It would be way too expensive for us to buy all of our food and other supplies there, so luckily there is a Target in the same shopping center and we can get a lot of the items on our list for a discounted price.


The last thing that I did to simplify my life was to put the list in order of the store's layout. For example, in Whole Foods,  the first stop is the fruit area. So, the first thing on my list is fruit. The vegetables are behind that, followed by the seafood and then meat counter and so on. Therefore, as we are walking around the store, we can just go down the list and easily cross things off instead of searching for them.

 Liking my Weekends:

You may think I sound OCD or crazy for putting this much effort into a few stupid lists, but what I have realized is that taking about an hour or two of time once to make my menu and organize a pre-made grocery list has saved me about an hour and a half of time every weekend. (Remember, I was spending almost an hour each week just looking through cookbooks before writing my list). That makes my monthly allotment of fun-weekend-time about six hours longer. And life is good.


Thanks for reading my very wordy thoughts about food and being only slightly OCD. Stop by in a day or so to see my photo tribute to a week in the life of the Davis meals. (AKA: The product that comes out of this crazy planning stuff).