SHOP SMART

Are you grocery shopping with a purpose or just throwing things in the shopping cart?

If you don’t meal plan for the week it’s highly likely that you are at the grocery store and have no idea what you should buy. This is when you start to throw any nonsense into the grocery cart. You get home from the store and you still don’t have enough ingredients to pull together a weeknight meal. Don’t worry, you aren’t the only one.You would be surprised how many people shop this way and how much wastage they end up with in the long run.

Shopping smart has many advantages. I can guarantee you, that if you shop smart, you will find it so much easier to put together your weeknight meals. Home cooked weeknight meals, means better and healthier eating, and increased savings! There may even be enough left overs for lunch the next day resulting in a double savings. If you find it difficult to cook good meals for your family on weeknights, after you have spent an hour and a half of you Saturday in the grocery store, chances are, you are not shopping smart. 

If you are not one for meal planning, then you want to at least know how to shop smart so that you get the most out of your groceries. Outside of the regular items that we all have in our houses, like butter, eggs, bread, cheese & milk, what you buy in your weekly grocery shopping will determine how and what you eat for the coming week.

Any of my friends can tell you, I am the queen of throwing a quick and delicious meal together. I am going to share with you a strategy that I use, to do my weekly grocery shopping. The first illustration below is an example of a shopping list. 

I almost always create a shopping list before, I go to the grocery store. In this particular shopping list, I have included proteins, starches, vegetables, dairy products, herbs, and condiments. From this list, I can think of about 20 weeknight meals that can be created. Check out the list of possibilities for the ingredients from our shopping list in the next illustration.

As you can see, I have created a grocery list and then all the possible meals that I can created using the ingredients from the list. This is one of the strategies I use to meal plan, which really helps me to get organized for the week. If you approach grocery shopping with this mindset you can decrease wastage and also plan your weeknight meals better, saving you time, and encouraging better eating habits. Shopping smart can also help you to save money, because it stops you from throwing additional items in the cart that you probably don’t even really need. Click here to get a FREE Shop Smart cheat sheet, to help you with your weekly grocery shopping and meal planning. 

Instead of doing a random shop of things you think you need, plan out your list so that you can grocery shop with a purpose!