How often is food shopping done in your household?

[Robin Garr]

Fun question! After thinking about it, I picked the first one (every day or nearly), although it's a close call between the first and the second for me. In this spread-out city, I don't have any food-buying source within a reasonable walking distance, although most of my regular haunts aren't a terribly long drive. I love to run out and hit one or two of my favorite shopping spots every couple of days and let what I see inspire that night's dinner. I don't do this every day, but it's not at all unusual for me to do it two days in a row, and it's a very rare thing that I don't buy <i>some</i> food item every couple of days. Howsomever, we also eat out a lot, and on occasion go to a bigger store (Whole Foods or Kroger's) and stock up, so the correct answer is, "It varies."

We eat vegetables almost every day, there's a very good produce store a three mile walk round trip near our house, and so I shop almost every day we eat dinner at home -- currently five or six nights a week.

The real tension in my mind is between driving seven miles (14 round trip) to the closest Whole Foods or walking to the Market Basket. Whole Foods is generally better, but exercise and careful shopping with some very good frozen food options usually wins out.

Every few days on the average, although I might go out a couple times some days, then not buy anything for a week.

There's a Safeway 1 block from my house, and obviously I go there for last-minute things, but I try to avoid them. I shop at five other places regularly. Grocery Outlet, PCC (Puget Consubers' Coop), and QFC, which used to be a good, mainstream supermarket, but now Kroger owns it and things have gone downhill. Also there are the two produce stands - McPherson's, which has poor to OK produce, but terrific prices, and uh, the Filipino place, which has not only produce, but canned goods, meats, and well, a lot of things I just can't even imagine without going there.

Oh, yeah, there's the Columbia City Farmers' Market too, but it seems I never have the day off when they're open. Too bad!

Dave

Depends on the season. From April to November, I shop the Farmer's Market for all my produce, EVOO, eggs, nuts, and whatever they offer. Winter, I love Costco for the Campari tomatoes, but buy the rest of my groceries at one of our local supermarkets.......Raley's or Safeway.
Meat is usually from our local meat shop that still does the cutting, plus custom cutting, and now carries some mighty fine seafood, giving the local fish monger some competition. Good thing!
I go once a week, usually planning my menus a few days ahead of time, with leftovers mixed in to give us a break from cooking. Always on the search for new recipes, this is subject to change. I am a true hunter and gatherer.

Since I get paid only once a month, the big shopping for us is the first of the month. However, we will go to the store once a week to buy stuff so it'll be fresh.

Make sense?

Well, we have a pretty well-stocked corner grocery store about two blocks from our house. By well-stocked, I mean stuff like a real butcher, a decent wine section, bread from a variety of artisan bakers, a decent cheese selection, high-quality baking ingredients, etc. In addition to milk, butter, eggs, and the rest of the staples. Because of this, we've gotten very disorganized about shopping in general. When we need something, we walk over to Taylor's. We often don't think about all of the things we need, so it's not uncommon for us to walk over there three times on a Saturday or Sunday. Apart from that, I stop on the way home from work at a Nugget market (a local chain that carries good stuff) at least once every other day. There's also the farmer's market on Sunday and emergency stops at Safeway or Raley's.

On an average, we probably hit a grocery store of one form or another around 8 times a week.


Mike

[Jenise]

I wish I could say I shopped nearly every day because that's how I prefer to do it and have in the past when there were more options available, but where I live now, I shop about twice a week. I virtually never leave home for other purposes, though, without squeezing in a grocery stop of some kind.

Fascinating, there really are all types of shoppers out there. We've been two kinds.

For the first couple years we lived together, shopping always followed the "What do you want to eat?" "I dunno,what do you want to eat?" conversation. That meant we either went out to eat or shop every day.

The last three years, now that we pay more attention to what we're eating (and visit the weekly farmer's market) it's once a week exclusively. We hit the farmer's market, Trader Joe's, [optional trip to Costco], and Safeway on Saturday, and that's it. Sometimes I resent having to come up with the whole week's menu on Friday night, but I can't argue that we cook a much higher percentage of meals now that we plan. I'd estimate we stick to the menu 90% of the time, maybe even more, so we rarely need a mid-week visit.

Walt