Groceries

As a follow-up to Carrie's weekend post, our groceries from Fresh Direct arrived last night. It was pretty sweet that someone else packed them and hauled them up the stairs for us, but it's a little strange to get groceries in boxes. The service is great, the food looks fresh, but they don't sell many of our staple items (and only have name-brand options of many products) and their regular prices really aren't competitive with what we usually pay for the same foods.

Plus I just really LIKE grocery shopping. I used to be obsessed with reading grocery store sale flyers, looking for the best deals, but my lust for that has dulled with time. Admittedly, our usual grocery-shopping routine probably sounds a little crazy to some. We do a big shopping trip every 3 weeks or so. We plan out meals for the upcoming few weeks before we go, and make our grocery list based on that. The Target store near us has a pretty large selection of groceries and some of the best prices around, so we start there for a lot of our staples. We then head to the Trader Joe's that's about half a mile past Target and stock up on produce and most of the other items that Target doesn't sell. This does tend to leave a couple of specific products that aren't at either store (we're picky about tortillas--go figure), so one or the other of us will walk to the grocery store that's a couple blocks away to fill in any remaining gaps. The whole project takes a couple hours, but we get most of our food at the best prices we can find, we get good quality meat and produce, and by planning our meals ahead of time, we don't end up wasting much food. Having a plan also makes us less likely to come home from work and say "I'm tired, let's just order take-out, eat mac & cheese, etc." It works for us.

But since I view the Saturday grocery shopping every few weeks as a sacred activity, I'm even less likely to be sold on Fresh Direct's services. But thank you for the $50 coupons--we do appreciate them!

piccadilly-cat sez "ur soda runned away"