Shopping Day

Grocery shopping for a family of eight is quite an interesting experience. It starts generally with one BIG shopping trip, in which I spend most of the monthly grocery budget in one day. I reserve only enough money to replenish a few perishables that are not able to keep the whole month long. This means that many times our food budget is exhausted well before the end of the month. We still have plenty of food, but our options are set. Most of our fruits and vegetables come from weekly purchases from a food co-op called Bountiful Baskets. That makes things kind of tricky, since I can't exactly commit to a menu for the whole month, since I don't know what will be coming in each basket. I do try to rough out a few idea based on what we generally eat. I also try to plan for the needs of our family that month. For example, during baseball season, I know I need most of our meals to be portable.

When I am feeling good, and have the energy, I try to clean out the fridge and the pantry before we go shopping. I used to be better at this. I need to get back to it. Also, I said *we.* Almost all of our shopping trips include myself and my husband. Often our oldest daughter comes along as well. I don't coupon. Ugh! Just the thought gives me a huge headache. Also, I find that many times coupons are for things I just don't ever use. I do compare prices in ads for things like meat. Mostly I buy things in bulk. Oh and I shop for things like toilet paper and cleaning supplies in a different shopping trip as they come out of a different part of our budget. I know, weird, but it helps me keep things straight.

Every time I go shopping for the month it takes about 3 hours. When we get home, we still have to portion out all of the meat into meals, chop and portion out any fresh vegetables we bought and everything else away. I have a love and hate relationship with shopping day. I love seeing all of that beautiful food in the fridge and cupboards. I hate the process of doing it all. It makes me tired.