FERRANTE wrote:
> I am doing something wrong? I go to the store, spent $80, and two days
> later, I am looking for something to make a meal, and it is not there.
> I am obviously doing something wrong. I have never went to the store
> with a weekly meal plan.
>
> What methods do you use when shopping for the week? I thought about
> getting a couple boxes of cereal and milk, bread, butter, and
> breakfast is taken care of. Then lunch and dinner. Sounds simple. Is
> it?


I can't tell if you regularly spend $80 for only 2 days worth of meals
or if that happened once recently. You're asking a few questions at
once: How do I make the weekly food budget go farther? How do I save
on the time and effort of shopping and cooking? How do I plan meals on
a weekly basis? It is hard to answer without knowing more about what
you like to eat, but here are general ideas:


Eat leftovers.


Consider staples like pasta, rice, canned tomato sauce, spices as a
separate category in the food budget from perishables like meat, fresh
fruits and vegetables and milk.


Cook from a cookbook for a while. You don't have to do this forever,
but getting used to looking at a recipe and making sure you have
everything to make that recipe won't hurt. Later when you're in the
habit, you can go to the supermarket and wing it.


Try a weekly plan for a few weeks. Again, you don't have to do this
forever, but try sitting down and mapping out what you'll have for
breakfast, lunch and dinner for the week. Try to stick to the plan, but
don't worry about it if you don't. At the end of the week, look back at
what you ate, what you didn't, what got left in the fridge, what you ran
out of, what you hated eating or hated making, etc. Then make another
map for the next week. In a short while, you won't have to make a
formal list of meals, but you'll have a better feel for the amount of
groceries to buy.


Think simple. A meal doesn't have to be more complicated than burgers
with broccoli or baked chicken with a sweet potato. Breakfast can be a
bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit. With that in mind, I sort in the
basket at the supermarket. I group a meat with a vegetable, another
meat with another vegetable while thinking "that's Monday, that's
Tuesday." (I discovered that I save money by shopping twice or 3X/
week, but that's me.) Then it doesn't matter if I don't actually eat
Monday's meal on Monday, but I do get the right mix of meat and vegetable.


--Lia