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Food shopping and meal planning

C

CoorsLight

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Nov 16, 2003
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smell good
When you go shopping for food, do you have a list? If so do you plan your meals for the week?

I generally just go to the store and see what produce and/or meat looks good. I’m realizing how inefficient that is nowadays. How do you plan your meals and ingredient shopping? Do you cook for many people?
 
I use plastic containers that are washable and prep my meals weekly. Spend a few hours on a Saturday or Sunday and cook+package all my meals. Use an Android app called Our Groceries. Digital shopping list. :twofinger
 
I go to whole foods every Saturday. I dont make any lists unless its something I really need to remember (spices or milk... etc) I usually go to the meat and fish counter and see what looks good or on sale. I buy 6-10lbs of boneless chicken thighs and put them into portions in bags then freeze them. I get a combo of fish, beef, and either pork or some other type of seafood. enough to make 4-5 meals during the week. I grab veggies, and fruits.. pretty much the exact same every week.. apples, pears, oranges from local farmers market, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, beets, ginger, celery, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, and I may be missing a few things. I just plan my meals off whatever of those I feel like. throw some rice into rice cooker and have a simple meal. or fire up the bbq to make meal for me and my lady. Whatever produce isnt used by friday goes into my vitamix and I make juice out of everything so nothing goes to waste.

It may not be the cheapest way to shop but I have gotten myself into a pattern and I really eat healthy and always know what im going to make to some degree. I may look up a recipe or two during work to see if i can switch things up. I hate meal prepping because I dont like all that shit sitting in my fridge all week, and also ive seen lots of people who tend to eat the same thing day after day. I also like the idea of cooking what im going to eat fresh.
 
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Over the years, I've developed my "cooking" to be all about convenience while still being healthy.

I don't meal prep like I used to, but when I did I'd go shopping on sundays and get 2 different proteins, IE fish & chicken. I'll get 5 pieces of each, toss those in the oven, bake it, throw it in the fridge. Add on some steamed vegetables and/or rice. This would cover lunch and dinner.

For breakfast, I'll make a breakfast shake. about 1,000 calories and it takes a minute to make. 4 eggs, kale, oats, protein powder, almond butter, MCT oil

All of the aforementioned are not for taste value :laughing
 
i always have a list - lots of specifics, but also general things - items like ‘fish’, ‘berries’, ‘salad stuff’, etc. i had this weird thing when i was younger where when i was in a big store with lots of stuff on the shelves (grocery stores, hardware and drug stores), it was like my brain seized up and i couldn’t remember why i was there. i’d stare at the shelves until things started spinning and i would pass out on the floor. making a list and crossing things off of it is very task oriented, it helps keep me focused and it’s been much better since i started doing that.
 
I typically cook what looks good. We get a half pig from a local farmer every so often. So tomorrow, pork chops look good.

I am horrible about meal prep for work. I really have to be better at it. But I usually eat pretty well.
 
Brokenlink said:
I typically cook what looks good. We get a half pig from a local farmer every so often. So tomorrow, pork chops look good.

I am horrible about meal prep for work. I really have to be better at it. But I usually eat pretty well.
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question for you - how do you cook pork chops? i’ve had really really good ones, but can’t prepare them myself if my life depended on it. no matter what i try, they come out dry and tasteless. i haven’t tried using the sous vide yet - am worried i’ll fuck them up in that too.
 
Meal planning has been a god send for our family. We plan the weeks dinners on sunday and put them on a white board. My wife shops accordingly. Its so much less stressfull to come home and get dinner started when you know what you are going to make ahead of time. It helps make cooking fun again. It also helps one parent get the ball rolling for dinner if they come bome before the other.
 
I plan out all of our meals at the end of the week--breakfasts, lunches and dinners--and then I do one big shopping trip. I do all of the cooking part of one day, so the really dirty stuff happens all at once. I give the kitchen a thorough wiping down after. Stuff is prepped and ready to assemble, or just needs a quick heating up during the week. Meals meant for later on in the week gets frozen. Things like fish get eaten in the first day or two. Ya gotta like leftovers at our house, but nothing goes much over five days old. We almost always have good home made food for all meals, and portion control is a must--I don't have extras! My meals are pretty simple. They're usually comprised of one heavier item and then a green salad. We have fresh fruit for dessert with a little cookie or something. I'm generally gone from the house for 12 hours a day and often don't get home before 8. I run a business. We like to eat decent home-made food from quality ingredients and don't want to pay a fortune or eat at 10 at night, so this is our routine. It really came out of necessity.
 
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Kinda of a 3 level hybrid-combo deal for me:
-Staples: grains(sprouted wheat bread), proteins(chicken breasts/salmon/rarely beef)and veg based fats(avocado/Adams peanut butter/raw almonds/evoo)replenished weekly, monthly, or annually depending on consumption.
-Fruits and veg once a week in weekly organic box-o-stuff delivery, supplemented with 2-3 times weekly store visits for whatever the box lacks.
-My roughly one night per week special dinner splurge for which I make a special trip to purchase anything I don't have.

Of course that's just my requirements. Anything required items not listed above(basically a metric shit ton)is handled by wifey. We all have our little roles we play.:teeth
 
littlebeast said:
question for you - how do you cook pork chops? i’ve had really really good ones, but can’t prepare them myself if my life depended on it. no matter what i try, they come out dry and tasteless. i haven’t tried using the sous vide yet - am worried i’ll fuck them up in that too.
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Brine. Takes a little forethought, but well worth the planning. Maybe supplement with a mustard/cream pan sauce.
 
littlebeast said:
question for you - how do you cook pork chops? i’ve had really really good ones, but can’t prepare them myself if my life depended on it. no matter what i try, they come out dry and tasteless. i haven’t tried using the sous vide yet - am worried i’ll fuck them up in that too.
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TBH, you’re over cooking them. Old temp was cook to 160 to avoid trichinellosis. Farming has cleaned in their act and the new recommended temp is 145

In reality, 135 is perfect.

Brining helps a lot as mentioned

I cook it like I would a steak but just a little longer. In butter, in a searing hot cast Irwin, with bouquet garni

Trichinella spiralis is killed in 47 minutes at 52C (125.6F), in 6 minutes at 55 C (131 F), and in < 1 minute at 60C (140 F). It should be noted that these times and temperatures apply only when the product reaches and maintains temperatures evenly distributed throughout the meat. Alternative methods of heating, particularly the use of microwaves, have been shown to give different results, with parasites not completely inactivated when product was heated to reach a prescribed end-point temperature. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations for processed pork products reflects experimental data, and requires pork to be cooked for 2 hours at 52.2C (126 F), for 15 minutes at 55.6 C (132F), and for 1 minute at 60C (140F).

Therefore if you cook it to 135 and rest it for a few minutes, carry over will push you past the 140 mark for greater than 1 minute.
 
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To answer OP we’re horrible at it

I probably shop 4 days a week to pick up things necessary to finish a meal. Our meals are complex though so I dug my grave.

We do the bulk of our shopping over the weekend getting the necessary proteins and most vegetables. I’ll pick up things as we decide what I’m preparing.
 
Anybody use services like fresh 20? I'm considering it because they do all the planning and shopping list. I suck at thinking of what to make for dinner :laughing
 
The mrs and I do our best to plan for the entire week. It was tough though when our two kids were tiny. Our boys are 8 and 11 now, but already eat like h.s. teenagers despite being underweight :laughing.
When we're in a pinch for time we use Amazon Prime Now to deliver from Sprouts. The app keeps a track of what you bought last time, so we just go through that list and add whatever we decide for the week...depending on the price and if we've had enough chicken for X days straight :).
We usually try to prepare food that can be used for multiple meals.

+1 for a simple brine for pork chops. Makes cooking pork chops idiot proof for the most part.
 
Yakoo752 said:
TBH, you’re over cooking them. Old temp was cook to 160 to avoid trichinellosis. Farming has cleaned in their act and the new recommended temp is 145

In reality, 135 is perfect.

Brining helps a lot as mentioned

I cook it like I would a steak but just a little longer. In butter, in a searing hot cast Irwin, with bouquet garni

Trichinella spiralis is killed in 47 minutes at 52C (125.6F), in 6 minutes at 55 C (131 F), and in < 1 minute at 60C (140 F). It should be noted that these times and temperatures apply only when the product reaches and maintains temperatures evenly distributed throughout the meat. Alternative methods of heating, particularly the use of microwaves, have been shown to give different results, with parasites not completely inactivated when product was heated to reach a prescribed end-point temperature. The U.S. Code of Federal Regulations for processed pork products reflects experimental data, and requires pork to be cooked for 2 hours at 52.2C (126 F), for 15 minutes at 55.6 C (132F), and for 1 minute at 60C (140F).

Therefore if you cook it to 135 and rest it for a few minutes, carry over will push you past the 140 mark for greater than 1 minute.
Click to expand...

This. Most people overcook pork shops.
 
littlebeast said:
i always have a list - lots of specifics, but also general things - items like ‘fish’, ‘berries’, ‘salad stuff’, etc. i had this weird thing when i was younger where when i was in a big store with lots of stuff on the shelves (grocery stores, hardware and drug stores), it was like my brain seized up and i couldn’t remember why i was there. i’d stare at the shelves until things started spinning and i would pass out on the floor. making a list and crossing things off of it is very task oriented, it helps keep me focused and it’s been much better since i started doing that.
Click to expand...

My sister suffers from this as well. The worst was a grocery store in Montreaux where our language skills were lacking and it was two stories. You enter on the lower level and check out is on the upper level. My sister was panicked til we figured out how to get out.

Abacinator said:
Anybody use services like fresh 20? I'm considering it because they do all the planning and shopping list. I suck at thinking of what to make for dinner :laughing
Click to expand...

We’ve been using Blue Apron for a couple of years. Before then, I didn’t cook very often and had limited experience cooking varied ingredients. This way, I have some great guidance and some of the ingredients are new (to me). I feel like I cook better now and don’t necessarily follow the directions provided. We continue with BA because it’s less expensive than buying all our proteins from the grocery store and I realize we overbought most of the time and threw away a lot of excess. I supplement the BA with different vegetables, snacks, drinks, etc. I also recently got the pasta attachment for my Kitchen Aide so I make pasta fairly regularly. I also bake a lot so we don’t buy that kind of stuff in the store, but we do go through a shitton of eggs, butter and flours (lots and lots of different flours). That’s where my food budget goes these days.
 
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