Day 23: Compile a Clever Shopping List
Posted by kathryn in Shopping Basket
Today in 31 Days to a Better Diet I’m delighted to have another guest post. Welcome to Lindsey from Oh Sunday School. She has a perspective on making it easier to eat well by organising your shopping.
My tip for a better diet is not a specific food or recipe, it’s a method. Now, I know that the concept of being organised can scare the pants off some folk (hello husband!), but if this way of shopping works for you like it did for me, then I can promise it will save you time, money and effort as well as ensuring that you eat well.
How do you create a Clever Shopping List?
Just take these steps:
- Collect your recipes. Whether they are quick print-outs of Taste.com.au or your favourite Jamie Oliver book, get your recipes printed, collated, bound if you like, and then put them on a shelf all together. This is where you will go to for inspiration each week.
- Write up your meals. The day before you do your shopping, sit down with your recipes and write down a meal for each day. try to pick a variety of meals but if you are clever enough, use up each fresh ingredient by using it in more than one recipe. (e.g. if you purchase coriander for a Vietnamese salad, list a curry for later in the week to use up the rest of the herb). Do this simultaneously with the next step . . .
- Write your shopping list. Referring to your chosen recipes, write down all the ingredients you will need to purchase. I go one step further in the attempt to be organised, and write my shopping list in four columns: one for fresh fruit and veg, one for dairy/bread, one for tinned/packaged foods, and one for cleaning products/toiletries. This is essentially the way that my supermarket is laid out, which makes for a much quicker zoom through! (Because who likes hanging around Coles for an hour on a Monday night? Not me!)
- Do a stocktake. This only takes 60 seconds! Do a quick scan of your pantry and fridge. Add to your list anything that is running low so next time you are caught out, you still have plenty of good, nutritious foods to create meals with, preventing you from resorting to takeaway.
And there you have your list: complete and categorised.
The benefits of Clever Shopping Lists
Trust me, it sounds a bit tedious but it gets easier. Once you’ve done this for a few weeks, you will become much quicker and adept at writing up your list. Firstly, you will get to know what ingredients are needed for the recipes you like, and secondly you will get to know your own cupboards and what you need to stock up on or use up. Eventually you will find that it only takes around twenty minutes or so, once a week, to consult your recipes, write down a bunch of meals, and compile your clever shopping list.
The benefit of shopping from a list is, in my mind, massive. It means that I am much less likely to make impulse purchases of foods that I don’t really need or aren’t very good for me, it means that I am guaranteed to have enough food in the house to create fresh, healthful and appealing meals every day, and it means that I spend much less time wandering the supermarket trying to find inspiration!
Put together a Clever Shopping List this weekend and see how it changes the way you eat
Lindsey Clare is from Sydney and blogs about photography, design, food and the everyday at Oh Sunday School.
Shopping list photograph Hannah Boettcher.
23 August, 2008
Comments
Lindsey: thanks so much for your excellent guest post. It’s really interesting to read how you go about organising your weekly food. I think the organisation and planning is at least 50 percent of the battle when trying to eat well. As you say, if you have the food in the house and a plan of how to use it, you’re much more likely to cook than dial for take-away.
I particularly like the way you plan for using up ingredients – your example of coriander in a salad and a curry is an excellent one. And you’ve convinced me that I need to start organising my shopping lists a bit better. Certainly into different columns – I much prefer the idea of “zooming” round Coles. Rather than the multiple circuits I often end up doing.
Thanks again.
Other than having all of my favourite recipes in one place, this is exactly how I do my own weekly shopping list. The time spent pondering past meals and trawling through cookbooks for new ideas is one of my favourite parts of the week though. :)
I am fortunate to be a compulsive list maker. I make lists for everything—often useless lists. But a shopping list is so critical! (For all the reasons you mentioned.) They help so much in reducing waste, and they help inspire the use of things already in the cupboard. I try to keep my list small so that I’m forced to use what I already have. And, it helps so much to find recipes that share many of the same ingredients to reduce waste, as well. Great post!
Fab post Lindsey – this is essentially how I do my shopping lists too!
I tend to feel guilty about buying certain fresh foods (you know, the highly packaged, definitely wouldn’t grow in England stuff) and I don’t like leaving fresh produce in the fridge indefinitely losing all of its vitamins, so for me that matching up of recipes with similar ingredients is a big part of our meal and shopping list planning,
Lindsey. I have a question.
My wife is the list maker and I am the chef. I love making puddings and would love to make them every day. My wife thinks that such essentials as cream and marshmallows don’t fit on the list or our waistlines.
How do I get her to buy more of the good stuff?
thanks everyone for your comments! was such a pleasure writing for Limes & Lycopene, so thanks Kathryn for the opportunity.
kathryn – using up ingredients is something i definitely have to work on myself. herbs are usually fine but it’s more things like pastes and sauces that sit in the fridge for month on end! so planning our meals (and stocktaking the fridge) does help with this.
Max – your wife sounds like a wonderful lady and i’m sure she appreciates your culinary skills (especially in the pudding department).
Max, maybe you could come up with some dessert recipes, which you still enjoy making, but don’t add too much to the waistline – a win-win?
I used to do exactly this. Every week. For over a year. And despite promising myself for the last couple of months I’d get back to it, I still haven’t.
Having to think each day about dinner doesn’t work for me. I’m not eating as healthily and I throw out way more veggies that have lurked too long in the fridge. I’m particularly annoyed about 2 bags of basil that have just gone black, lonely and unloved.
gwyneth – some people think it’s boring but it definitely, definitely works for me! i have noticed a very clear difference in how my husband and i eat (and spend) when we have shopped with a list and planned meals as opposed to without a list/planned meals.
i just don’t think that coming home from work and then having to think up something interesting and healthy for dinner is very easy at all.
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