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The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has forced us to pause our lives. There are dozens of horrible things that go along with that pause, but there are some upsides too. I don't know about you.
##Make a Plan
Okay, so much for the philosophy, let's get into the practical steps. The first thing to do is figure out what you like to cook and what you like to eat. These things are not always the same, especially if you're cooking for kids. I hate eating soup, but I like cooking it and the rest of my family likes eating it so it makes sense to factor soups into my meal planning.
That really, is the first goal of making your shopping life easier: planning. Know what you want, know what you need to make what you want, and go get it.
I have come to think of it as three levels of kitchen economy. First there is what most of us do most of the time, which is we buy what we want to eat today, maybe two or three days if it works out. For example, you might want a loaf of bread to make a sandwich today, but you'll also have bread left over for tomorrow.
The next level is the meal planning level. You come up with five to seven meals you want to make, write down the ingredients, and then go get them and makes those dishes over the course of the next week. You can even extend this to 10 days. I know some people who do this for three or four weeks even. This is where I suggest you aim: a solid meal plan for ten days, which means you only need to go to the store two or three times a month.
There is a level beyond that which
##Buy in Bulk
Once you have identified some ingredients you use regularly, buy large quantities of them. Do not buy large quantities just because you want something on hand. If you don't eat it, don't buy it.
Chances are though, there are some base ingredients that store well, no matter what kind of food you like. Fans of Latin America cuisine can stock up on rice, beans, and masa. Love Asian food? Stock up on rice, noodles, and fish sauce. Love Italian? Grab extra pasta and canned tomatoes.
Stocking up can be addictive, but remember, the point isn't to turn your pantry into some overstuffed prepper paradise, but to reduce your dependency on the grocery store. Start out buying enough for a month. Then move to three months. But if you're single, you don't need to buy 50 lbs of beans. Estimate what you need by looking at your weekly meal-plan based grocery list and doing the math. If you used two pound of rice last week, buy a ten pound bag this week and see how long that lasts.
If you live in city and need to drag home bulk purchases via mass transit then just buy one item at time. You can buy bulk items online, but beware that shipping costs add up quickly. This is one place I find Amazon Prime difficult to beat. I've had 50 pound bags of flour delivered to my door for nothing, which is frankly, astounding.
If you don't want to lug a 25 pound bag of beans around the city, or you don't want to drop $50 on beans all at once, you can also buy a five pound bag every time you go to the store. If you have space in your kitchen, pick up some food grade storage buckets and just dump your five pound bags into the bucket. A few months down the road you'll have five gallons of beans and no back strain to show for it. This what I used to do, though since the lockdowns started I've switched to buying bulk online.
##Keep Track of Your Pantry
You may have noticed I mentioned keeping track of things several times. This is in fact a core tenant of good kitchen economics: know what you have. There are all sort of apps for iOS and Android that can help you keep track of what's in your pantry. The good ones use barcode scanners which make it pretty quick and easy to catalog everything. The trick is making sure you update the app when you use something.
I have tried just about every tracking app out there from the fantastically detailed, very near professional grade open source software, to simple, slick phone apps. One of my favorites is Paprika. It's a hybrid app, tracking recipes and pantry supplies and then combining the two to create a shopping list. It's very good at what it does, but it requires considerable time up front to enter all your recipes and ingredients.
I know people who swear by Paprika. I also know people who really love tk. My problem is that I'm lazy. When I am cooking I tend to just grab things and use them. I don't follow recipes very often, and I don't want to track down my phone, open an app, search for an ingredient, and mark off that I used some of it every time I pour fish sauce in a bowl. So I don't.
I use a low tech solution I stole from my days in a restaurant: I put a piece of paper on a clipboard that hangs on the inside door of one of our kitchen cabinets. When I notice something is running low, I write it on the piece of paper. When I head out to the store. I grab that piece of paper.
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