What do you guys do for groceries? Weekly? Biweekly? Any standard purchases?
I generally have to walk by a supermarket on my way home, so I generally buy groceries to especially make a single dish/meal. Otherwise, I carry specific daily use breakfast items such as cereal and almond milk and such.
Aldi, once a week. Sometimes, I’ll top off a little if there’s something particularly worth getting in the special buys section - which, for the Americans among us, is more usually things like tools, workout clothes, and other non-grocery items. Right now, the deals are a lawn mower, Hedge trimmer, chainsaw, some other garden tools like that, and motorcycle gear. After that, it switches to electronics, clothing, and father’s day stuff.
Usually just some staples, a couple of freezer meals for when I’m busy, replacing anything I’m out of, other other essentials. I generally keep it pretty simple.
In NYC there are tiny groceries and boedgas all over. I have a CTown on the same block as my apartment. There are also butchers, bakeries, produce markets, etc. a short walk away near the subway station. I buy exactly what I’m going to use right before I use it.
Some things that aren’t perishable I buy on Amazon to get lower prices or more bulk.
Once a week mainly, I live two blocks from a local grocery so I tend to buy staples once a week as I run out of them and then if I’m hankering for something specific I’ll buy what I need to make it the day of.
Are freezer meals on your end of the world as dreadful as here? The answer is most likely no, but now I am curious about frozen meals outside murica.
Well, depends what you buy, really. You can buy crappy TV dinner style meals that have the texture of both rubbery display food and mush, and what can best be described as “Reminiscent of having flavor.” On the other hand, for not much more, you can get reasonably decent stuff - it’s no restaurant quality stuff, it’s no home-cooked meal, but it’s certainly edible enough, about what you’d get from a cheap-but-decent diner.
Generally, the rule of thumb is to avoid the shit like the sausages-and-mash-in-gravy or Chicken Kiev in a box, and go for stuff like curries, pastas, and so on. At a guess, since the bulk of it is cheaper stuff, they’re happier to use actual edible ingredients for the rest of it, instead of fuckin’ offal and the vague memory of what a vegetable should be like.
I should point out, Amazon - Fresh or otherwise - isn’t really a thing here just yet, and only arrives in September or so. That may or may not change up my shopping habits, that remains to be seen.
We have a whole foods and a meat market near by, where we buy perishibles probably 2-3 times a week. I also grow a decent amount of vegetables/fresh herbs. I order the dried & household stuff on Amazon mostly, although they’ve been moving a lot of subscribe and save products to pantry (which, if I’m going to pay delivery, I’m just going to use peapod). We make monthly trips (we don’t own a car) to trader Joe’s / stop & shop for shelf stable and freezable food. We also bike to the Asian market every 3 months or so for that biz.
We used to go on a massive grocery shop every 1.5-2 weeks back in Beacon.
Now that I live in the City, We get a Fresh Direct delivered every other week, and supplement with various small groceries on an ad hoc basis. We also get a bi-weekly CSA that we pick up at the climbing gym.
We do a Costco run for big/bulk stuff about every two weeks or so. And go to the regular grocery store about once a week to buy random perishable/things more interesting than Costco’s selection.
In terms of Frozen meals, I actually found a few that are actually somewhat tasty in comparison to the regular crap.
EVOL https://www.evolfoods.com/ They actually have taste even GASP a bit of heat in some of them. I was surprised. I don’t tend to buy stuff like this but occasionally I try interesting ones just to change stuff up (and save some money)
Man, I miss Costco, not having a vehicle makes going there useless. There’s a lot of stuff there (like their black bean patties) that are not that good/way more expensive elsewhere.
If you do live in an area that requires cars though, the membership is worth it for the gas alone, groceries being a bonus.
Bi-weekly CSA delivered to our door, supplemented by the occasional Amazon Fresh order and/or walk to the small grocery store (Nijiya) down the block.
Not that groceries are delivered fresh frequently and I can hit grocery stores by walking, I never want to bother with bulk food purchases ever again. Almost everything we cook or eat is fresh.
We do weekly and rarely get supplemental groceries. Usually if we don’t have something, we just go out because we are both really lazy when it comes to cooking (which sucks since we’re actually good at it). We get bulk foods from Costco every couple months, mostly frozen meats. As far as staples go we almost always get chicken or pork, a loaf of bread, salad fixings, hearty veggies, various condiments, fries, beans, and ice cream.
Wegmans has started delivering in Rochester (I think in fear of Amazon), so I get that delivered bi-weekly, and hit the closer Hart’s for the incidentals.
Also in NYC, so I can run out and get something pretty much whenever I want. Mostly I shop biweekly at the store next to the dojo where I practice, because it’s convenient.
My wife and I are also CSA members from May-November, so we do weekly vegetable/egg pickups for a yearly price. It’s good for forcing my hand as far as what I cook that week. The CSA also allows us to order a-la-carte items from other local farms like meat and grain, which I take full advantage of because I cook and bake regularly.
We’ve got a clutch of go-to recipes which we use to make a weekly meal plan and (attempt to) get everything in one fell swoop. We’ve got a car and a couple decent grocery stores so it’s no big deal. We go to Costco and the savings on milk, eggs, cereal, coffee and meat (we have a deep freeze) more than pays for the membership fees.
We also did Hello Fresh (basically, Canadian Blue Apron) for a few weeks, which was great for giving us new ideas but it’s significantly more expensive than buying and prepping the all the ingredients ourselves. The time saving aspect of it is nice, tho.
We used to have a grocery store we could easily walk to and we miss it so much.
Weekly go to the bakery and then, fruit and vegetable market and then supermarket for everything else.
If I have to find a specific fish or meat that isn’t at the supermarket I just go to one of the independent butchers or fishmongers close by.
Occasionally when caught in a jam, have done the order online and get delivered the produce, but I prefer getting most fresh ingredients myself.