Grocery Shopping

New rule: throwing any sort of food out is failure.

That's got qualification, of course, because eating rotting or moldy food is a health hazard, and if you can't afford to waste food then you CERTAINLY can't afford a trip to the doctor (or worse, that money-hole known as the Emergency Room). So the real failure is purchasing something that goes neglected long enough to decay into a health-hazard state. This is what I keep in mind when grocery shopping these days.


So, at left, this week's haul. It cost me $60, which is partly because I live in an expensive part of the country, and partly because I've just run out of meat in the freezer and wanted to stock up. (I'm set for all dry goods because I do a tri-monthly binge at the surprisingly cost-effective natural foods store up near my parents, and that's why there's nothing like beans or pasta or rice in there.)

There's some stuff I'll cook with that I generally expect everyone's got in their house, like milk and butter and eggs, or sugar and flour. Another thing I've got is a huuuuge spice cabinet; it's sort of absurd. I've just gotten some spice racks, so once I get those up and everything in them, I'll include a post about spices -- at the moment, it's just a confusing jumble of identical bottles.

First up, the veg.

In order of anticipated decay: yellow squash and zucchini, parsnip, carrots, onions, and lastly butternut squash. I "rediscovered" a butternut squash on the bottom shelf of my fridge that had been down there for at least two months, and though bits of it were worse for wear, I was able to salvage a lot of it. This revelation prompted me to vow to have one of these on hand as a constant backup, because it's hugely versatile (steamed, roasted, with feta, in a soup...) and apparently will last forever.

The summer squash and zucchini are much more delicate, so those need to be used soon. Also, I dropped one of the zucchs on the ground as I was transferring all this to the fridge and it snapped in half, so tomorrow? Superbowl Zucchini Bread. Lucky brother-in-law!

What to watch for in the other veg: Parsnips shrivel. Carrots go soggy. And supermarkets have recently gotten REALLY sneaky with bagged onions! I used to pick up a bag without a second glance, but now I've noticed that my local's stopped putting out single onions at all, so you're forced to buy a bag, and then you get home and see that two of the onions have rot on the side or have gone mushy. So go ahead and buy the bag, but check it out in the supermarket before you buy. These ones are fine, but it took me two gos to find a good bag.

In the bowl, we've got a yellow bell pepper, a lemon, and a plastic thingie of lemon juice. The bell pepper is here because I'm thinking of putting part of it in the salad, and also because you can snack on these raw without problem -- they're very sweet. The lemon's here to make a point, namely that if a recipe calls for a lemon's rind or slices of lemon, buy the lemon. Otherwise, think of substituting the plain juice. Yes yes, I know that you're supposed to use fresh squeezed lemon and it's better and all that, but if you're just cooking a basic meal, then buying a tonne of lemons is wasteful if you're just using the juice. Save the real lemon for your hobo cocktails.

The fruit salad, for me at least, is less expensive bought at the salad bar twice a week than it is for me to buy fruit and hope it lasts. I'll eat this in three or four days. I used to go and buy three apples and some oranges and grapes, but I can waste fruit like nobody's business, so I'm trying to figure out how to economise on that front, and this seems to do the trick.

Prewashed salad! Yay! It's $4 a bag at my supermarket, while quite a lot of plain lettuce is about $3. Economizing, it might make mathematical sense to just buy the big bag of lettuce, some tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumber. Eh, maybe. If I could guarantee that I'd make my own salad from scratch every day, then I might be better about buying all the individual bits. Instead, I find that the likeliest scenario for me to eat salad is for it to be the simplest, laziest option. Assembling a salad takes 12 minutes, making pasta takes 9, making a tuna sandwich is 5, but opening a bag of salad and dumping some dressing on it takes less than a minute. And thus I hope to make my laziness work to my healthy advantage.

The celery really should've been in with the other veg, but it sort of fits in the "snack" category where I keep the fruit and salad. Celery's great; very good on its own, better with salmonella-free peanut butter, and most certainly necessary for lots and lots of soups. If you're into soups, then celery (along with the onion and carrot from the previous photo) will form the base for a lot of your cooking.

And here's the last thing: meat.

(Notice the prominence of the Sharpie.)

I pretty much buy meat to freeze. I'm not a vegetarian by a long shot, but I probably eat meat less often than your average person. Milk, cheese, beans, eggs -- those sort of things show up more often than meat in my diet, or I have quite small portions of meat in a mess of vegetables. I don't eat much fish because of an early-life confusion about the role of dolphins in the entire fishing proccess, and I have no good reason for not eating much beef, lamb or venison.

I guess I just really, really hate birds?

But it turns out I might have formed pretty cost-effective eating habits, because now I'm not craving meat (relatively expensive). This week's grocery haul also wouldn't have been very meat-heavy, except that turkey keilbasa and ground turkey were on sale. The Sharpie, which I keep in my utensil drawer, is used to mark the date before I chuck everything in the freezer. When I take the meat out, I tend to mix it with stuff that will then allow me to partially refreeze, like a soup or a pasta sauce or something.

And that's it, other than the impulse buy of York Peppermint Patties, which now has me feeling wired and slightly ill. Blech. I'll confess if I allow any of this to go off, to get a better idea of deadlines on food, but with any luck half of this haul will end up in the freezer, just in altered form.

Again, the point of this exercise will be less "what am I hungry for?" and much, much more "what can I make out of what I have?"