Grocery Shopping 101: How to Shop Food Efficiently
This short and sweet guide will help you plan your grocery shopping better and to skip the walk to the candy shelf every once in a while.
How to shop groceries… properly
As the current situation is challenging enough, we don’t need extra stress worrying about our diet and constantly forgetting about something when going grocery shopping. This short and sweet guide should therefore help you plan your grocery shopping better and to skip the walk to the candy shelf every once in a while. Spoiler alert: checking your fridge and writing a shopping list based on what’s missing doesn’t quite get the job done.
The best recipe to optimize your grocery hauls is …
A pinch of “bought too much”, a little “oops, forgot something again” and finally three tablespoons of “and this thing once was a cucumber?! – no just kidding, that’s definitely not it! Avoiding such situations is easier than you might think, just follow these simple tips and convince yourself.
How to plan your next trip to the supermarket
Before paying a visit to the grocery store of your trust, you have to keep more in mind than just dishes that you may (or may not) want to cook. There is nothing wrong with having actual dishes or groceries in mind that you enjoy eating, we just need to get a little deeper into that topic. Try to plan your next grocery haul based on actual recipes, that way you will find out about the exact amount of ingredients you will need. Think a couple of days ahead or even a week and look out for different recipes you want to cook in that time. By doing so, you can make sure none of the above mentioned “oopsies” reoccur as they used to.
Sound’s like a lot of work? Once you got used to that method, you will get a better feeling for different ingredients needed and even before you recognize it, you have built a new routine.
Useful apps to improve your nutrition planning
Of course, you don’t have to go through the process of optimizing your grocery shopping planning all alone. There is a huge variety of smartphone applications which are there to support you in multiple ways. Let`s start with “Bring!“:this app is a total gamechanger – it assists you in creating shopping lists, informs you about seasonal or regional products and inspires you with innovative recipe ideas. You can also find a lot of virtual cooking book applications such as “Chefkoch”, “frisch gekocht” or”kochbar“. Another handy tool I’d highly recommend to you is the application “Zu gut für die Tonne”. The concept simple: just insert your leftover groceries and the app will recommend you different ways and recipes to use them up. Thanks to that little helper, you will feel less guilty when you don’t feel like cooking once in a while or (hopefully sooner than later) you and your Co-Fizzies spontaneously decide to go out for some Pizza.
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Don’t fall for tempting offers
Sophisticated advertising strategies work wonders in making us think that we pay less when we buy two pieces than when we only purchase one. We come across such and similar offers every time (when) we go food shopping and we keep falling for it. Especially our sweet tooth finds it very difficult to refrain from such special offers. Just look at it that way: The final amount on your receipt is still going to be higher when you buy more, no matter if single purchased pieces are on discount. So before falling for an offer next time, ask yourself whether you really need the discounted pieces. If you need more than one piece anyways (according to your recipe based shopping list), you can call it a lucky day and take advantage of that offer. If not, leave it. Quite simple, isn’t it?
How to store your food space-saving
It can be challenging to store your stock of groceries regarding the fact that your kitchen storage space is quite limited. To solve that problem, I have a one-worded solution for you: organization. There are so many cheap and easy ways to organize your kitchen, just scroll through some pinterest pictures and you will soon find out that a few boxes and easy DIY projects will get the job done. Let’s not forget the option of reusing old packages. A lot of groceries are packed in an unnecessary space-consuming way, filling those foods into reused containers such as old coffee cans or jars will safe up a lot of space. Some groceries even make a pretty cool kitchen decoration. There are many stylish fruit bowls or pasta containers that will give your kitchen that certain something.
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Let’s get this started!
Now that you got all the theory on how to optimize your grocery shopping, you just have to put it into practice. Yes – you read it right! You are just a few simple steps away from stepping your nutrition game up. The current situation already has enough negative aspects, but let’s try to see the positive as well. We currently have a lot of extra time that we can use to wave our bad habits goodbye and build new routines. So let’s make the best out of it and most importantly: stay safe.
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