Before you head to the store, spend a bit of time organizing your list by store departments. It will make your shopping so much easier. You may even want to organize it by store, determining what you will buy at a warehouse store and what will come from a grocery chain. We have two different groups of stores for our shopping:
Costco, Target and Vons or Sam's Club, Walmart and Vons
I have found that each warehouse store offers different collections of food, and one may better meet my needs for the month of menus that another. But, it will take a combination of stores to complete the shopping. Most of my items come from the warehouse stores, but smaller amounts, say one can of soup, or a specialty ingredient will come from another store. Our Target has a fabulous grocery section with excellent prices. By the time I get to Vons, I usually only have a few fresh produce items or a couple of less-popular ingredients than other stores carry.
You may want to designate a separate shopping day from your cooking day. This was great advice I received from the book, Once-a-Month Cooking. It will take many hours the first time you shop for a month, but I now spend only about 2-3 hours shopping, and that included driving time.
When I bring the groceries home, I put all the fresh meat in the fridge, frozen chicken goes in the freezer. I leave the canned goods in bags until cooking day. Why put away what I'm going to use right away?
Depending on the size of your freezer, you may want to forego ice cream and extra bread the week of cooking. Once you eat a few meals you'll have room to stock up on these items again.
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