Food Prepping Post #3
 |
| Grocery shopping: how often should we go? photo courtesy of Thomas Le from Unsplash |
July 15, 2020
Hello
World!! Every Wednesday of this month I
have been writing blog posts on how to prep with a view to alleviating the
stress of doing everything at once when cooking at home. I have shared 5 secrets that every home cook should know about food prepping. I would encourage you to click the
link to find out what they are! 😊
Last week, I
talked about how to plan a menu for the week ahead. (please click the
link once again if you haven’t had a chance to.
😊) Today I would like to talk about the second secret to a successful
prepping in our kitchen: how to shop (grocery
shopping strategies). When it comes to
grocery shopping, fewer trips the better.
Marketing studies repeatedly show that money spent at the grocery store
is proportional to the time spent at the store and the number of times you go
per week or per month.
It goes
without saying that if we don’t know what to cook and therefore don’t know what
to buy, we are bound to spend more time at the store than necessary. Planning a meal for the week will solve the
issue of spending too much time at the store, saving us a significant amount of
time and money!
However,
adhering to the newly established grocery shopping regimen calls for an ample
amount of conscientious effort and discipline on our part initially. From my own experience, it took awhile for
me to implement the new grocery shopping strategy, but then it got easier
over time. I used to go grocery shopping
so often before; sometimes I would go every other day! These days I go only once
every 2 weeks. How do I do it?
I minimize
the grocery shopping trips by shopping all the main protein items that made to
the menu for the week in one trip. I
mark on the calendar which day is my protein grocery shopping day. As protein items, namely meat product, tend
to be the most expensive (assuming that you don’t buy its processed counterpart such as ham, bacons, etc.), shopping for the most expensive items once a week
or once every 2 weeks will drastically cut your grocery shopping times and
hence your grocery bills! 😊
When I shop
for main protein items for the week (or for 2 weeks ahead) I also buy main kitchen
staples such as onions, potatoes, vegetables, and fruit. I like to stock up on things we consume
regularly.
Then you
might ask what do you do when you run out of items you need for a recipe? First, I try to use up other things in the
fridge or pantry and if it doesn’t work, I would just go get them, but only the items I need for the recipe! However, you get better substituting over
time. You will eventually learn to improvise
or create your own recipes! I think
that’s where learning how to cook without a recipe (Please click the
link to read my post on this topic! 😊) comes very handy, which happens to be one of the goals of my blog Ms Fusion
Korea!
Hope you find today's post helpful and please leave your thoughts in the comments if you have any other great ideas to share with the rest of the world!! 😉
Thanks for visiting my blog. Please check back for more great cooking tips with a global Asian favor ! 💗😊