Grocery Shopping

I need to admit first off that I stole the idea for this post from my good friend Deanna. She blogged about grocery shopping for the family earlier this week in her blog adventuresofsuperfam.blogspot.com Her post got me thinking about the way that I grocery shop and as I headed out to the grocery store this afternoon I was really thinking about different personalities and the different ways that we purchase and prepare food for our families.


My friend like many others shops with a purchase. She heads to the grocery store with a list and a plan. Each day has a planned meal and the food that gets purchased has a purpose for each of those meals. She has written that she hates grocery shopping, but I think that someone who puts this much effort into shopping can't hate it that much.


There are some areas of grocery shopping where I completely agree with my friend. The experience of pulling up to a discount grocery store on a Saturday where there is barely room to push your cart and then finding out that half the sale items are already sold out (seriously who gets up at 7am to grocery shop on a Saturday) is extremely frustrating to say the least, but in all honestly I enjoy grocery shopping.


I know that many of you will think that I am crazy for saying this, but since we have been eating healthy I find grocery shopping as an opportunity to decide how I am going to feed myself and my family for the coming week.


I do not shop with a plan and I do not plan my meals in advance. The main reason for this is that I am just not that organized. Part of this is due to my ever changing work schedule. I like knowing that if I am going to be late at the last minute I can text my husband with some quick and easy meals ideas for him and the kids rather than committing him to the plan that I had for the evening. This is very specific to our family as not every has an unpredictable work life.


My trip to the grocery store is usually based around the sale items for the week. Which grocery store I choose is based on a number of factors; the sales for the week, how much of a hurry I am in and my food. For some reason shopping at the "nice" grocery story makes me feel happier than the "discount store".


Today I was a bit cranky and just wanted to get it down so off the my nearest grocery store it was. This is one of the nicer stores. 


I start in the produce section and then make my way around the perimeter. This is were the bulk of my shopping takes place. I then head down the aisles to pick up other staples such as cereal, lunch snacks etc.


The benefits to this way of shopping is that I am more likely to try new things if they catch my eye. The limitations of this are that when I get home I sometimes hear things like - "you bought more potatoes or we have enough bread for a bakery." Well you can't get everything perfect, at least the only thing I forgot was garbage bags.