Grocery Shopping: What Works for Me

(Thank you to everyone who voted for CHG in Culinate’s Death by Chocolate contest. If you didn’t see it early yesterday, the entry should be up now. Voting goes through the 8th. Yay!)

Recently, Kacie over at Sense to Save posted an online challenge asking bloggers to recap their grocery shopping methods. I really liked the idea, and figured it might be good for blog transparency purposes. (A.k.a. Do I walk the walk?) Also, I’m secretly hoping someone out there has a better system, and is willing to share.

So first, here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how I USED to buy food:

1) Become hungry. This part was simple. It usually involved moving, speaking, or watching an Olive Garden ad. (Curse you, unlimited breadsticks. CURSE YOU.)

2) Go to nearest bodega/supermarket/insanely expensive coffee shop. I live within a one-block radius of three delis, a supermarket, and a KFC. In the old days, I’d cruise over to any one of these and pick up whatever tickled my fancy (which was everything).

3) Buy whatever I want to eat. Price was no object.

4) Shovel food into gaping maw. Fat/calorie/preservative content was no object.

5) Lament lack of funds and ever-expanding tuchus. This part generally involved a lot of self-loathing and vows to never eat again. Needless to say, the pledges didn’t stick, and I was back at Step 1 pretty dang fast. Why, hello there, vicious, self-perpetuating circle of poor eating habits! My name is Kris.

My old method lacked forethought, concern for my health, and any discernable spending strategy. These days, it’s different. I cook. I plan meals a week in advance. I study nutrition labels like I’m being tested later. And while the following process may seem a tad time-consuming, I promise it’s not. Half of it happens in my head before pen is ever set to paper. I:

1) Take stock. What food do I need more of? What am I okay with for another month? Why the crap do I have 128 ounces of chicken breast? This step ensures I know what’s already on hand, so I don’t go buying a ninth pound of poultry.

2) Plan ahead. Which holidays are coming up? Birthdays? What foods should I be on the lookout for? If it’s close to Thanksgiving, butter, onions, or sparkling cider are good bets. For the Super Bowl, chips and beer are the order of the day. Prepping for celebrations this way has saved me a ton of dough.

3) Gauge moods. What are The Boyfriend and I craving? What have we OD’d on lately? (A.k.a. Is it possible to consume too much spaghetti?) By checking our appetites before I set out, I avoid guessing and extraneous purchases while shopping.

4) Consider the blog. What can I make for Monday and Friday? Do I have a backup in case something goes terribly, terribly wrong? (See: Teriyaki Sweet Potatoes.)

5) Make a preliminary list. Based on the previous five steps, what are the foods I absolutely have to buy, whether or not they’re on sale? Here’s a recent prelim list, from the week I made Curried Sweet Potato Stew:

• Fruit
• Veggies (peppers, mushrooms, etc.)
• Snack dip
• Tomatoes
• Romaine
• Carrot
• Ginger
• At least four sweet potatoes
• Broth
• Brown lentils

6) Browse online circulars. What are this week’s loss leaders? What produce has the biggest markdown? Is there EVER, EVER a deal on soy milk? (Answer: no.) Each Friday, I read three local supermarket circulars for values and adjust my list accordingly. I also …

7) Record good deals in a price book. JD at Get Rich Slowly has the definitive post on these guys. (Go! Look now! Then come back.) They’re KEY to scoring deals and keeping track of cost cycles over the course of a year.

8) Research recipes. Is pork going on mega-sale? Will broccoli never hit $0.88/lb again? If there’s a solid discount item (or items), I’ll plan a recipe around it and note whatever else I need.

9) Make a master list. Ultimately, what do I want to buy? Based on all the previous steps, I create a final shopping document complete with brand names and prices. (That’s making it way more complex than it sounds. Really, it’s a piece of notebook paper.) When I hit the aisles, I don’t deviate from my plan.

10) Eat. What will tide me over while I shop? This strategy is all over personal finance blogs, and for good reason. It keeps my impulse M&M purchases WAY, way down.

11) Grab my canvas tote. It’s pretty! And environmentally sound! (But mostly pretty.)

12) Find my keys. I lose them a lot.

13) Shop. I hoof it, so my final haul depends entirely on A) my upper body strength at the time, and B) what can be crammed into my fridge. With four people sharing it, space is at an extreme premium.

And that’s it. All told, I blow about two hours and $45 each week (including walking time) on planning and shopping for a pair of people. Compared to Crystal and Keren, it looks like amateur night at the Apollo. But it’s much better than before, and I’m still working on it. Specifically, I’m trying to better these areas:

1) Coupons. The online databases are useless for my zip code and most coupons are for convenience products, which I tend to eschew anyway. (Also, I’m lazy. Oh, so very lazy.) Nonetheless, I know they CAN be a boon, and resolve to start a collection.

2) CVS/Target/Walgreens deals. While CVS and Walgreens are pretty far away and the Brooklyn Target is legendarily insane, it’s worth braving all three for the discounts.

3) Eating less meat. The Boyfriend and I thrive on poultry. (If God’s a chicken, we’re kinda screwed.) It’s comparatively thrifty and can be cooked 14,000,000 different ways. Yet, legumes, veggies and starches are cheaper. If I can ease Chicken Provencal out of our diets, it could make a big dent in the budget.

So, all you readers out there – how do you shop? What improvements have you made in your system? What’s your best grocery tip? Our operators are waiting for your call. (Translation: comments are open.)

(Photos courtesy of Flickr members Tortuga One, and Neato Coolville)

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When Food Frugality Pays Off: See Ya, Sallie Mae

Next week, barring disaster, I will pay off college. Undergrad and grad school, both. I'll be 30 in November.

Before we get into how eating frugally and healthily helped that happen, we must do this:

*Happy dance!*
*Happy dance!*
*Happy dance!*

Okay. Sweet. On with the show.

Between a small scholarship, tuition reimbursement from my job, and eight years of incremental Sallie Mae payments, I started the year with a little more than $15,000 in college debt. Being fairly oblivious, it never dawned on me to dump it until I perused Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. It’s the kind of life-changing book that advocates debt awareness and financial responsibility, and it convinced me to tackle my loans before I even finished reading.

So, in addition to moving to a cheaper place, cutting cable, and living off the salary I made three years ago (and banking the difference), I decided to chop my food bill. To my surprise (not really), of all my self-imposed cash conservation rules, the chow-related ones were hardest to follow.

This is partially because I’m thrifty, but not a cost-cutting psychopath when it comes to my gaping maw. I eat, I take trips where meals are a key component, and I go to roughly 12 billion baby showers a year, where I purchase layette sets in exchange for massive plates of chicken francese. So, yeah - chopping the comestibles budget was not easy. But I managed, and axed a few calories, to boot. Here’s how:

1. I started brown-bagging it to work. When you’re employed in the smack center of the most expensive five-block radius on Earth (Schtimes Square, Schnew York), your lunch budget is secondary only to rent. The average mid-day meal goes for about $7.50 around here, meaning it’s easy to blow $1700 bucks annually on sandwiches and soup. Plus, overeating is endemic, as you’re constantly striving to get the most food you can for your precious salary. Since starting to pack from home consistently a year ago, I estimate I’ve saved about $1300 along with several inches off my rear end.

2. I began shopping exclusively from the supermarket circular. The Boyfriend and I save an average of 21% off our weekly grocery bill this way. (I did the math!) We usually spend about $51.55 for food that would have normally cost $65.25, which saves us $13.70 per week, or $712.40 a year. As an added bonus, our fruit and veggie intake has about doubled, since produce is a loss leader and constantly on sale.

3. I switched to water. Admittedly, I was never big into fruit juice or soda, but I like Crystal Lite a LOT. The chemical aftertaste appeals to me in a way I can’t explain and don’t want to. Happily, agua is just as thirst-quenching, not to mention free. Oh, and it doesn’t contain any of these: Maltodextrin, Citric and Malic Acids, Raspberry Juice Solids, Aspartame, Red 40, Calcium Phosphate, Acesulfame Potassium, Blue 1.

4. I became a Trader Joe’s convert. Not for food, you see, but for booze. Where else on god’s green earth can you get a glass of semi-decent Sauvignon Blanc for $3? Despite lines that stretch to Peoria, The Boyfriend and I visit TJ’s wine store regularly, saving between $5 and $10 per bottle. We purchase less beer now, too.

5. I launched a blog about frugal, healthy food. Finally, an activity that encompasses my passions: eating, giving unsolicited advice, and linking to George Clooney pictures. But seriously, I find it’s much easier to save money and think nutritionally when I feel some responsibility towards others for being consistent, accurate, and informative.

Besides these five steps, I also:

• Stopped frequenting Jamba Juice and Starbucks
• Snacked increasingly on fruits and whole grains
• Relied more on generic foods
• Cut my meat intake
• Obtained a Costco membership
• Shopped using a grocery list
• Began cooking in bigger batches
• Stocked a decent pantry
• Emphasized whole foods and meals cooked from scratch
• Started a price book

Sadly, my restaurant expenditures have not changed. I’m still dining out or ordering in twice or thrice (that’s right, THRICE) a week, which wouldn’t be terrible except for my fancy-schmancy tastes. While I don’t begrudge myself the occasional date night, there’s gotta be a way to slash the bills. It’s something to work on for the future.

In the end, though I made some mistakes, it worked. College is (almost) paid off, man. While I’ll miss Sallie Mae’s jumbled interface, bad-deal consolidation offers, and bizarrely middle-aged “college student” photos, I’m glad our relationship is over. It’s time to concentrate on new things now, like saving for a house, going to India, and of course, linking to George Clooney pictures.

But once more, for old times’ sake:

*Happy dance!*

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Fear Itself

I have dinosaur hands.

They’re not green or scaled, and they don’t have that weird, hooky claw. Instead, they’re microscopic, pretty close to inoperable, and noticeably out of proportion with the rest of my body. When coupled with my stunning lack of coordination, they make certain tasks a bit tricky, if not extremely frightening.

Up until last year, the scariest of those challenges was operating a knife. I could never secure the right grip or put enough strength behind a chopping motion. Cleaving a piece of meat was an effort, and dicing vegetables took longer than Das Boot. On the rare occasions I cooked, I inevitably got tired and embedded a blade in my thumb.

Abundant blood loss and intense fear of further self-mutilation drove me to seek food elsewhere: the college dining hall, the work cafeteria, Burrito Loco across the street – anywhere but my own home. Finally, when the expenditures started piling up (see this post), I gave in and signed up for a Knife Skills class.

The three-hour session was a revelation. I learned technique and economy of movement. I found out why a big knife is better than a little one, and the difference between a julienne and a chiffonade. I saw how an onion could fall into a million tiny pieces with just three accurate slashes. Yet, these discoveries were nothing compared to the big one.

Turns out, the dread of slicing my fingers into Vienna sausages was representative of a much greater cowardice: essentially, I had been afraid of the kitchen.

What if I picked up a hot pan on the wrong end? What if my knuckles got caught in the cheese grater? What if the dirty dishes became insurmountable? What if I poisoned my parents?

What if I made something, and it was terrible?

I have Conan O’Brien’s commencement speech to the Harvard Class of 2000 hanging on my wall at work. In it, he says (and this is a wee bit paraphrased), “Every failure [is] freeing … Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally.” Emboldened after Knife Skills, I endeavored to apply this idea to the kitchen.

Now it’s year-and-a-half later, and things are a little different. I’ve cooked some truly vomit-inspiring meals. I’ve washed more plates than God. I can play tic-tac-toe in the burn marks on my wrists. But I’ve also churned out some pretty decent food, an achievement unthinkable to me in 2004. I recognize I’m still not a great cook, but hell – it’s a work in progress.

And maybe that’s one of the secrets to good, inexpensive, nutritionally balanced food: getting over your fears. I’m working on it, dinosaur hands and all.

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A Plan! A Wonderful Plan!

To accomplish what CheapHealthyGood is setting out to do, odds are I’ll need to post something. Links, suggestions, and muted whining are to be expected. I’d also like to scrawl some how-to entries, strategy guides, and generally informative doodles, but let’s see how it goes.

The most important part of the site, hopefully though, will be the actual food. My goal here is to try a recipe, make sure it hits every criteria (cheap, healthy, and um, good), calculate its stats, and post the results. Included in each of these entries will be:

• Pictures

• The recipe itself

• The approximate price per serving

• The approximate fat and calories per serving

I’ll need some guidelines, here. So let’s say:

• All nutritional facts are gleaned from manufacturers’ websites, supermarket listings, and various calorie-and-fat counters from around the web.

• All prices are what I actually paid for each item, divided according to the amount used from a package. In other words, if I bought a pound of angel hair pasta for $0.70, but only used 8 ounces, I list the price as $0.35.

• All the calculations are my own, and are approximate. Cut me some slack, man.

• If a recipe is gleaned from a cookbook, website, or chef (and most of them are), I cite the source ALWAYS, and change the wording as much as possible. Plagiarism is bad.

• The difficulty level of each recipe will assume the cook’s been in a kitchen before, but hasn’t studied under Daniel Boulud for any length of time.

Comments, suggestions, and readers are welcomed with open arms and a strawberry Freezy Pop. For now, here’s hoping.

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Mission Statement ... OF DELIGHT

Back in the olden days of yore (2005), I was pretty convinced that moderately-priced healthy food didn’t exist and couldn’t be made, at least by me. My weight had yo-yoed a few times at that point, and it always seemed like Skinny Kris coincided very strongly with Broke Kris.

See, Skinny Kris liked sushi and roasted eggplant spread. She preferred full-price pork tenderloin over on-sale pork chops, and a nice slab of jamillion-dollar fresh tuna over both. Skinny Kris thought nothing of blowing $5.09 on a 16-oz light smoothie from Jamba Juice when there was a perfectly good $0.35 cent banana over at the fruit cart. Financially, Skinny Kris sucked it.

When Skinny Kris started running out of money, she became Heavier Kris, who hoovered up bargain fries and plowed through cheapo lo mein like the world would run out tomorrow. To her ass’ great detriment, Heavier Kris’ most nefarious weakness was $0.69 Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, a craving that could not be sated until the whole box was gone. Heavier Kris was saving precious dough, but at the expense of her cholesterol levels and now-gigantic bosom.

Being broke and skinny was not fun. Being large and in economic charge wasn’t either. So, in the beginning of last year, I made two resolutions: A) I had to stop referring to myself in third person, and B) these dueling sides needed to reach détente.

A few cooking lessons and serious amounts of foodie blog research (some would call it “lazy perusing”) helped. Reading Suze Orman’s “Young, Fabulous and Broke” and “The Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey helped. Understanding that half-price Cheetos and bulk-packaged candy were The Man’s Tools of Oppression™ helped, too. But what helped most of all was being honest-to-god ready for change.

As it turns out, peaches go on sale at the supermarket for $0.69. Rice is insanely inexpensive, even moreso at the local ethnic grocers. And that roasted eggplant spread? I can make it myself for two bucks, rather than buy it at the deli for six. Realizing and taking advantage of all this was a huge step, but there are tons more to go.

In the end, that’s what this blog is about: change. Yes, it focuses largely on making delicious eats at a reasonable cost, but mostly it’s a journey - to break old habits, discover new ones, and *barf* be a better person.
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