Grocery tips for singles
history_grrrl
Posts: 216 Member
Not single exactly, but I live alone and find myself wasting too many groceries. I started getting delivery during COVID and want to keep doing that - so much easier - but now that I’m eating less, more food is going bad. Obviously I need to get smaller amounts of things like deli meats, but I can’t even use veggies quickly enough. A single cucumber or avocado goes uneaten, and those aren’t things I can blanch and freeze (my freezer isn’t very big anyway). I’ve got a basket of peaches and a bunch of bananas that I need to deal with asap. Don’t even get me started with celery. 
I realize this is a “good” problem to have, but help! Have others dealt with this? How do you handle it?
I realize this is a “good” problem to have, but help! Have others dealt with this? How do you handle it?
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Replies
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Well, yes: I'm single. It requires some planning and eating the same days times in a row. Which isn't too bad because it means I don't have to fully cook every day. For me, breakfast and lunch don't have a lot of things that go off quickly. Oats with skyr and raisins, and whatever fruit I have, and bread with 2 to 3 things to put on. The big planning really is dinner.0
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Do you start with a meal plan, or do you just buy what seems good in the moment (but maybe doesn’t seem as good when it’s time to eat)? For me, the key to reducing food waste is having a plan (and sticking to it, which can be hard) and knowing how and when I’m going to use each perishable item. Another thing that helps me is making full recipes (uses up the food), then freezing leftovers (preserves the food). This probably doesn’t help with cucumbers and avocados specifically, though!1
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I actually buy very little fresh food, I prefer frozen vegetables for exactly the reason you describe. When I do buy fresh, I buy the absolute smallest amount I can buy. Peaches are my favorite and we have amazing ones where I live, but I never buy more than a couple at a time. I simply don’t buy things like cherries and grapes where you have to buy the giant, multi pound bag. I usually do a largish curbside order once a month or so for the majority of my homemade meals, then duck in when I need to refresh things like salad bags and oat milk.
Just remember, the store always has more if you run out!2 -
Do you start with a meal plan, or do you just buy what seems good in the moment (but maybe doesn’t seem as good when it’s time to eat)? For me, the key to reducing food waste is having a plan (and sticking to it, which can be hard) and knowing how and when I’m going to use each perishable item. Another thing that helps me is making full recipes (uses up the food), then freezing leftovers (preserves the food). This probably doesn’t help with cucumbers and avocados specifically, though!
Personally I don't plan much ahead. Eating a meal 2-3x after another (or putting portions into the freezer if I have space) I have enough time to plan ahead. A small supermarket is 400m from my home and the whole neighbourhood full of mostly Turkish and Arab shops where I can get what i need. If I don't have a spontaneous idea I might eat one of my go-to meals, usually a quick pasta dish. Worst case I walk to the super and get a bunch of onions for it. And yeah, if I need a big pile of fresh produce then I try to find something with which I can use the leftovers, or change a vegetable for another one that I can use easier. So basically I use hardly any readymade products and my amount of food waste is very low. It always somehow works out.0 -
@yirara It’s always so interesting to me how different approaches to the same thing can be for different people. Where I live, the grocery stores are giant, full of chaos, and you have to drive there, so I try to minimize my contact with it as much as possible, which is why meal planning is a big part of my strategy. When I was childless and lived somewhere walkable, I operated more like you do now.1
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Yeah, I guess this is Europe. I could drive to a big store, or cycle, but the small ones that are pretty much everwhere are generally ok.0
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I ended up just buying my food daily when in that position. Saved a bunch of money in spoiled food.history_grrrl wrote: »Not single exactly, but I live alone and find myself wasting too many groceries. I started getting delivery during COVID and want to keep doing that - so much easier - but now that I’m eating less, more food is going bad. Obviously I need to get smaller amounts of things like deli meats, but I can’t even use veggies quickly enough. A single cucumber or avocado goes uneaten, and those aren’t things I can blanch and freeze (my freezer isn’t very big anyway). I’ve got a basket of peaches and a bunch of bananas that I need to deal with asap. Don’t even get me started with celery.
I realize this is a “good” problem to have, but help! Have others dealt with this? How do you handle it?
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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If you haven’t already, get yourself a set of food savers like this:
They keep produce fresh for a lot longer!
In addition to always having a stash of homemade freezer meals on hand, some things I do are:
-Purée fruits that are on their last legs, freeze in ice cube trays, and use them in smoothies. Or cocktails!
-Buy giant family packs of meat, then freeze in single portions. It’s easy to thaw a salmon filet and sautée some veggies to go with it.
-Make vegetable soup. It’s great to have in the fridge for quick meals!
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Avocado can be frozen. Smash, add a little acid (like vinegar or citrus) to minimize browning, and freeze in ice cube tray or the bottom of muffin tins. Once they're frozen, transfer the cubes/pucks to more compact freezer storage.
I'm lazy, and have lots of freezer space, so I just buy the multi-packs of refrigerated individual smashed avocado at Costco, and throw them in the freezer. 45 seconds in my microwave, and they're ready to use.
I'm single. Usually I don't waste lots of food, but I don't have a great solution for you. I buy very large amounts of veggies and fruits, but I have a goal of eating 800g of them most days, and often eat more (more than a kilo yesterday!). I do rely to some extent on frozen veggies (given my ample freezer space), but that's more to minimize shopping trips than any other reason.
I'd observe that certain veggies keep very well either refrigerated, or even (for some) on the counter or in a dark pantry/cupboard. Examples: Winter squash, spaghetti squash, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, rutabaga/swedes, turnips, parsnips, onions, beets . . . .
Romaine lettuce keeps better than other lettuce. I'm lucky to have lots of local farmers' markets. Leafy veg especially, but also others, keep much longer when I get them there, because they're much fresher to start. I've had bagged spinach still salad-suitable up to 2 weeks after purchase. The thicker the leaf, generally the longer they'll keep nicely refrigerate, i.e., collards and kale keep longer than chard or spinach, generally.
I can use up a large head of romaine quickly by broiling it and using it in salad. (Grilling is better but I don't have a grill.) A good-sized head is about 2 salads-worth.
Some more tender/spoilable veggies keep better (for a few more days than fresh) if cooked. I get baby eggplant, or slice regular eggplant, roast, then put in a tight container in the refrigerator. It's still good either cold in salads or pureed for dip, or reheated, for several days after a whole fresh eggplant would've gotten undesirably squishy.
Also, some fresh veg can be pickled to keep longer (just put them in salted vinegar, possibly with a little water if the vinegar is really strong). It's good to pickle the veg when fresh, not when they're starting to go. Similarly, cabbage can be refrigerator-sauerkrauted (thin slice, toss with salt, put in tight container in fridge), and quite a few veg can be treated similarly to make kim-chi-like fermented veg. I like pickled mushrooms, too.
Fruits can be put in - brace yourself - an alcohol bath, with some sugar fully blended in perhaps, to keep long term in the fridge. (That will limit the use-cases later, of course.) If there's enough alcohol/sugar, some fruits are shelf stable in tight jars: Basically, you've got fruit liqueur plus brandied (or whatever) fruit. Use liqueur recipes if you do that, to keep things safe.
Nowadays, I can find beets in shelf-stable packaging, pre-cooked. I like them as a veggie side, but also in salads.
Some veggies, like dried-type beans, are good from cans. So are some fruits, such as pineapple in juice or applesauce.
Consider sprouting at home. You can rinse-sprout lots of kinds of seeds, but be careful about regular rinsing and hygiene. If you have windows with good light, or a grow light, growing micro-greens in a small tray is also viable.
I don't do all of these things now (lazy, remember), but they're all things I have done in real life.
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Not single.. but my grocery buying habits haven't changed much since being a couple. I get a lot delivered.
I only but as much fresh food as I need to last a few days.. I guess it depends on where you live and how close to markets .I’m surrounded by a ton of markets, shops, butchers.. etc. what’s the shopping like by you?
If I want salmon for dinner.. I buy fresh and eat that night.
My Mom got me veggie saver bags.. that help with air tight storage. That may help.
Frozen food may be an option.. buy frozen veggies and use when you need. So no waste.
I also stopped buying bags of lemons, etc and buy one off.. not as economical- but neither is throwing out sad spoiled food.
I hate wasting food too..
Ps - if you have a blender.. put leftover fruit in blender and freeze it for use in a smoothie. Same with celery - purée, freeze use in soup. Juicer? - juice it and take it on the go. Maybe plan out the week of food and meal prep?1 -
history_grrrl wrote: »Not single exactly, but I live alone and find myself wasting too many groceries. I started getting delivery during COVID and want to keep doing that - so much easier - but now that I’m eating less, more food is going bad. Obviously I need to get smaller amounts of things like deli meats, but I can’t even use veggies quickly enough. A single cucumber or avocado goes uneaten, and those aren’t things I can blanch and freeze (my freezer isn’t very big anyway). I’ve got a basket of peaches and a bunch of bananas that I need to deal with asap. Don’t even get me started with celery.
I realize this is a “good” problem to have, but help! Have others dealt with this? How do you handle it?
When I was single and shared a frig with a housemate, I bought less variety to save space. For example, I would only have one cabbage family vegetable at a time, and plan to eat that all week. As a bonus, this definitely helped with food waste.
I generally shopped once per week, so prioritized long lasting veggies like broccoli, cabbage, heads of romaine, carrots, potatoes, etc. (These all last longer than a week.) There was one supermarket that sold single stalks of celery. I would not buy a whole bunch of bananas; I'd rip off what I needed and buy that.
I used to live near a BJs and couldn't buy a lot of produce there because the quantities were simply to large to eat before they spoiled. If your supermarket only sells fruit in a predetermined amount, consider shopping elsewhere. Or, if you buy a large quantity of peaches, plan to eat them three times per day. I did this the one time I went peach picking. After that, I just bought a few peaches at a time. From a local orchard. Here in MA, supermarket peaches are yuck.
I always have peas, corn, and berries in the freezer. When blueberries were in season and on sale, I bought fresh, and froze what I couldn't eat within a few days.
My half & half always goes bad before I can finish it...I keep meaning to try freezing this.1 -
There's one thing that helps me: I have a pantry app that I use exclusively for the freezer (or freezers, I have small one in the kitchen, and another small one in the basement, 4 floors down). This way I always know what I have and can plan to cook with this. Big surprise: I have a massive amount of salmon. No idea why actually. I have 3 100gr servings of something undefined that might very well be beef mince. And I have 8 loaves of bread from a neighbouring country in the basement freezer because I don't really like local bread. Well, I knew but kind of forgot.
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I put my celery in a glass of water and place it in the frig. If I want a mid day snack I grab those, put a small amount of light cream cheese and everything seasoning on them and eat away. Avacados can be frozen. I eat a lot of cottage cheese, which is high in protein. I make cottage cheese taco bowls and add avacado for my healthy fat. Having a salad throw in a avacado. Peaches can be frozen as well. Wash them and dice them, seal in bags and freeze. Take out a few at a time to put in oatmeal or make sugar free cheesecake pudding and drizzle the top with some blended peaches. Or blend a vanilla protein shake and frozen peaches or you could do chocolate peanut butter protein shake with the
bananas. These could be your breakfast.1 -
@history_grrrl , I have a different solution for you - can you share your delivery with a friend, neighbour, colleague?
The suggestions above are all very good but many of the are suggesting freezing - and you have told us you don't have much freezer space - and others are simply suggesting that you shop more frequently/smaller quantities.
I'm guessing that the store you want to buy from has a minimum spend for home delivery? Can you find an alternative that has a lower minimum?
Our upmarket store - Waitrose - has a minimum spend of £50 whereas the store I used had £30 minimum for home delivery.
I also used home delivery quite a bit during COVID - but I was able to share my order with my mum (she lives near me and at 90+ she was very reluctant to go out, and I was calling in on her several times a week so dropping off groceries was easy).
I have reverted to frequent small shopping trips now - I'm retired, have plenty of time and live in a small town with 3 supermarkets within
1 mile from my home.
I agree it is a "First World problem" but you obviously want to avoid waste.2 -
With apologies to OP for the digression . . .kshama2001 wrote: »
My half & half always goes bad before I can finish it...I keep meaning to try freezing this.
I know for sure that freezing skim milk works great. I started doing that during the pandemic to minimize shopping trips, still do it for convenience. I can't see why half and half would differ, though it might separate. If you don't want to use the whole remainder at one time, freezing in ice cube trays might relieve that, as I assumed it'd re-mix if it does separate.0 -
I have this same issue too, and it kills me every time when I end up having to toss out spoiled food. For me, it's often an issue of forgetting what food I have in the fridge, so making a list or inventory of what I have can help so I can look at it quickly and decide what I want to make using ingredients from off the list. I've always struggled with "out of sight, out of mind", so this definitely helps me out.
If your issue is more of just, buying more than you can eat, the obvious solution I suppose is to cut back on the amount you buy, or otherwise try to transition to foods that freeze better so you can avoid wastage.
That being said, I don't have much freezer space either so for now I'm just trying my best to purchase smaller amounts of produce and proteins (once a week), and doing my best to eat it all or prepare foods that freeze well (stews are my go-to) and won't take up all the freezer space. Stews and soups are good because you can freeze them flat in ziploc bags so they don't take up much room.
Anyway, if I had too many bananas, peaches, and avocados, I'd be making a smoothie, a parfait, or maybe cutting them up to add to plain yogurt, oatmeal, cereal, etc.. even just a fruit bowl could be great. You could also let the bananas over-ripen and make some delicious banana bread. As for the peaches, if you're sick of eating them by themselves, you could bake or roast them to use as a topping for ice cream. Mmmm...0 -
1) Buy less.
2) Keep a list of "eat me first" foods (mentally, on paper, on your phone, whatever works for you).
3) Have backup plans for fast-spoiling foods. Maybe you bought the bananas to slice on your breakfast cereal, but they're getting riper than you like, slice a couple in a big fruit salad or put them in a PBJ sandwich. Freeze for smoothies, banana bread, waffles.0 -
don’t get “all” the fruits and veggies each trip. for fruit you can decide “this week will be strawberries and grapes” and skip the bananas, etc until the next trip. same goes for veggies. buy a head of broccoli and a zucchini and let them last 4 dinners. the following week, switch to asparagus. it’s repetitive, but that’s ok!1
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What great suggestions; thank you so much! Some things I already do, like buy frozen vegetables in some cases, but I can definitely do a lot better job of preserving produce and thinking ahead about how I’ll use items that aren’t “designated” for particular meals I plan to make.
I sometimes do offer extra stuff to my neighbours. I can also reserve grocery delivery for canned goods and other non-perishables and big stuff (I don’t drive) but stop by my neighborhood grocery for produce so I can get smaller amounts (like two bananas instead of a bunch). I also have to remember that, since I’m being super-careful about desserts now, I can’t just turn extra fruit into banana bread or peach cobbler or pie as I normally would. I’m also going to beef up my storage container supply.
These ideas have really helped me see that I need to have a more strategic approach to perishables. You guys are awesome.
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Interesting to see all the different approaches - just a couple of additional thoughts. It is not just celery that can last longer by sitting in water, I often do the same for my lettuces too (change the water regularly!) and carrots that need reviving. And if you find buying smaller amounts tricky, try buying a weekly veg box for one from an organic or ‘wonky veg’ company?. Ready portioned, fabulous flavour, environmentally friendly - though pricey.0
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