I usually do our food shop online, however I plan the meals and write down everything we need for the week. If I’m going to the shop then I’ll write the list down in the order I’ll move through the shop so that i can just work my way down through the list.
Wing it
I did worse than wing it actually… half of the groceries I got over the past few weeks were from Too Good To Go, so near-expired food that the grocery store winged-it for me💀
Depending on the store TGTT bags can be amazing or… not so much. One store near me will always include fresh fruit, veg, meats, rolls, cans… another will just hand over a bag with like ten kilos of sliced ham in it.
TGTT with a freezer is a game-changer, though.
I make a menu that includes two breakfasts (6 and 9 am) a lunch (11) and six dinners. I account for what i have and list the rest of the needs. Then i go shopping and add two treats(for snacking or dessert) and two beverages (oj, pop, prebrewed coffee, rtc) and a freezer pizza.
If i have to go back that week for anything, i fucked up.
In this economic situation, I really need to use grocery list to make my money last till the next month.
I’ve been eating the same things every day for over a decade. I can manage without list.
My family always made a very careful list which was followed when grocery shopping.
Now that I do my own shopping I also make a list, on my phone though. I note down only the very essentials and leave most things open to what I can find whenever I get to shop. For example, I really need eggs and deodorant so I write that, but if I need veg I don’t list the type of veg, I just note “veg on special” and make my choice on the spot.
Plan meals for a week. Make list of what’s needed. Shop once a week. Rarely eat out. Never delivery.
I have a spouse and child. Winging it simply would not fly.
Anything less than strict adherence to a list would be another fight… and there are already too many of those.
Take stock what’s running out, make a list, wing it.
I’m shocked nobody has mentioned Aisleron (https://aisleron.com/), I use it for my semi-monthly shopping. It lets you organize items, and then you swipe it if you’re out of it/need to buy more. You can have different stores set up, and each item will go to the corresponding location in that store.
It basically functions like a database for grocery items with an intuitive interface.
Oh, did I mention it’s FOSS?
There’s a store like half a block from my apartment, so I just treat it like an external pantry.
I add things to an online pickup order as I think of them, I don’t actually go in the store anymore
I keep a list that is shared/synced with my s/o via a self-hosted KitchenOwl instance. I’ve been slowly porting my recipes over to it as well. Overall very satisfied and it works well.
We use a blackboard and chalk in the kitchen and take a photo of it before we go shopping.
I’m ashamed to admit this but we have a whatsapp group with just me and SO, we list the items there
And just like that, I found a replacement for bring…
Now to convince the wife. Any QoL improvements?
When I first deployed to my VPS the iOS client would keep auto updating and then refusing to connect to the older version deployed (android client had no issues) - they were pushing updates often. I setup a chron job to pull the latest docker image and restart the containers, no more problems. Dunno if that is still necessary or not.
Can confirm it isn’t, I was also a user during that period, and still am, I haven’t had to update my docker image in a fair while.
Same, but we use OneNote.
Yep, this method works really well in a busy schedule.
My spouse and I use iOS so we share lists that we dictate to: “add onions to the grocery list” or “add vitamin c to the pharmacy list” is pretty adhd friendly, and updated live so if one is shopping, that’s inevitably when we remember something and the other one of us can update the list without texting.
I like kitchen owl, but have to use iOS for various reasons, and it’s pretty low friction, even autoorganizing the list by section of store to make it easier when roaming the aisles.
All our recipes are in print or our heads at this point so we don’t need a list-from-recipe feature.
We do exactly the same but with Alexa
Hm, I feel bad enough trying to trust that apple is respecting our privacy in iCloud sync, it’s a stretch, but data processed by an aggressive retailer about my shopping, don’t think I could do it.
One thing I wish one of the grocery list apps could do was to store recipes, then you choose which recipes you want that day/week/month whenever you go shopping, it’s smart enough to know if 3 recipes need flour only put flour on once, then go through and mark ingredients you already have.
Like I can put in a recipe for penne alla vodka or fettuccine alfrado then if I select penne alla vodka it adds : Penne pasta Vodka sauce Heavy cream Mozzarella cheese Parmesan cheese Sausage
Etc to the list. Then I say actually I already have heavy cream and mark it as not needed.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable feature list!
Do you know of anything that does this? I’m kinda tempted to sketch out a plan to do it myself but I already have a totally different project I’m working on and struggling with.
I use Paprika on iOS, which does this.
- import a recipe from any URL - including source, photos, nutritional info
- keeps a database of recipes
- create meals or calendars of recipes
- generate a categorized grocery list
I have a folder full of recipe files from before I got that, but haven’t really looked yet for anyway to import those
I don’t know of anything like that, but it seems like parsing out multiple different formats for recipe ingredient lists would be one of the major obstacles to consistency and reliability.
I don’t know much about digital recipes, other than the crap that is various websites with their ingredient list obfuscation game.
Yeah but I’m not even asking for that. I literally want a “start recipe” button… I enter each ingredient in separate text boxes… Optional “instruction” box to paste the instructions… Later I decide “on Tuesday let’s have home made pizza, then on Wednesday we’ll do beef tips and noodles” and I click a check box or type in recipe name, system sees ingredients I previously entered for that recipe and adds it to grocery list.
No web scrapping or parsing needed. I will enter the ingredients for each recipe but I only want to enter it once
Oh yeah, I get it. On iOS I use a simple database app called Collections that I really like, I use it for mileage tracking and certain kinds of journaling or lists that need extra features like a relational key or lookups or sketch or calculation fields etc. When I can’t find an app that does what I want.
Basically a simple roll-yer-own approach. I haven’t looked into sharing the data dynamically, though. I think Collections is iOS only, probably similar apps galore on android. https://collectionsdb.com/
Christ, why is everything a fucking docker image these days?
I write a list, then I forget to take it with me.
