I am going to try to do our grocery shop a little differently this weekend. I may have to hit the supermarket at some point, but I intend to get into town today and buy as much as possible from the food coop that I recently joined as well as a fabulous greengrocer and international store I have just discovered. My aim is to buy food with as little packaging as possible so I am going for low waste shopping. It still needs to be low cost though, so I am not going to bust the budget!
It will be interesting to discover how I get on with this. However, I don’t always have time to travel into town. Nipping into Aldi on the way home saves a lot of time.
This week’s meal plan is therefore subject to change, depending on what I pick up. To be honest, it is always subject to change, depending on my mood, the time available, etc. However, sticking to a general meal plan always saves both time and money.
The plan is to use up as much of the Halloween pumpkin as possible in soup this weekend, but if I have time I might make some pumpkin muffins too.
This week’s low waste shopping meal plan
Saturday
Some kind of fish with mini roast potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Maybe smoked haddock. I will see what looks good!
Sunday
Pork chops or vegetable rissoles with creamed mixed root vegetables. We have parsnips, sweet potato, carrots and swede.
Monday
Pumpkin soup with a jacket potato and grated cheese.
Tuesday
Prawns with vermicelli – love the look of this! Simple and tasty food.
Wednesday
Creamy egg curry with rice and poppadoms.
Thursday
Risotto from the freezer with vegetables.
Friday
Stir fry vegetables with noodles and toasted cashews.
Sadly, we no longer have a fishmonger in town so my fish will come from the supermarket. However, we still have one butcher and a couple of greengrocers, some bakeries and a couple of health food shops so I will attempt to get the other ingredients we need from them. We also have a small market but it sells very little food – just fruit and vegetables. Low waste shopping may not be as easy as it once was, but I am going to give it a try.
This week I am linking up with Katy Kicker. If you want more ideas on meal planning and saving money, take a look at her blog. For more of my tips on meal planning, try this post.
It will be interesting to hear how you get on with your low-packaging shopping, Jane. Your food menu for the week looks tasty as well as cost-effective.
Margaret P
So…it was more time consuming than a quick flip around Aldi, but more fun!
Hi, Just found your website this week. I think it’s great!! We are trying to live as economically & sustainably as possible in Suffolk. As we’re in our 50’s with grown up children, we can use tips from how we were brought up to do this, but I have to say we had got into bad habits over the years, which we have to change! I look forward to reading your blog and maybe passing on some of our tips too!
Hi Rachael. Same here. It’s easy to slip into bad habits but satisfying to try to move back to better ways of living. You are just up the road!
A little while ago I bought some cloth bags for veggies but I can’t get all that I want loose from a supermarket and our veg shop is more expensive but I still like to support them, we have a local butcher ( for the husband ) but again, expensive so trying to convert him to less meat. Plastic waste really bugs me too, was talking it over with husband and we were saying about multi packs which are great offender, plastic wrapped in plastic or cans wrapped in plastic, cucumbers, cabbage, bananas, apples , the list goes on and on and of course its about money and convenience for the supermarket. my idea is that in order to cut down on waste it will take management and cutting down on the volume we eat to make it more affordable, not a bad thing in my case as I am rather round, but not everybody can do this esp with families to feed. We use bar soap, shampoo bars, our own shopping bags vinegar and bicarb to clean and whatever small things we can. wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all take a week to live on war time style rations to appreciate food again, a lot of those people continued to eat frugally and home made due to necessity and look at the number of 80 + people are still with us to tell the tale they ate less and moved more which is what I need to do but I am completely aware that it’s not practical for most peoples lifestyle today, i do want to try it myself one day.If we can all do a little to cut back on waste that little will soon be a lot, Chrissie.
Completely agree with all that you have said. It maddens me that multipacks shrink wrapped in plastic are cheaper than individual items
Long time reader, only occasional commenter here. It’s always the fishmonger that goes first isn’t it. But here in our little town (in France) there is a move to get one back (well that and the dry cleaner). Oddly enough the what I consider pretty expensive cheese shop and butcher’s don’t seem to have any problem – probably just the sheer quality. I always take my wicker shopping basket to our local market and if I need packaging I bought some cloth bags quite some time ago so I use them. It isn’t easy though to go “no waste” but we have to try don’t we!
You are lucky – the markets in France are always so fabulous. I actually found a fishmongers van today and bought some top quality haddock, which I took away in my own container. It was delicious!
Strangely enough we have loads of fishmongers! I can think of 3 within a 5 minute walk of each other in the High Street and another 1 minute’s walk around the corner! Maybe it’s because we have such a huge ethnic population round here, where fish is much more of a staple part of their diet. They are certainly all ethnic-run businesses.
Then of course there are the fresh fish counters in the supermarkets…..!