Grocery shopping.

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boymommy3x
boymommy3x Posts: 36 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I do not have the time nor energy to sit down and come up with healthy meals and create grocery lists for them so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. Between work and kids, I find is much easier to just grab a frozen pizza and some boxed Mac n cheese. How do you all find the time/motivation to come up with a grocery list and recipes and everything and stick to them?
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  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Do you have any savings in the bank? How did you ever do it? Typically people find a little savings and tuck it away. Or they get a little every paycheque put away for them so they never miss it. Slowly the account grows.

    It is the same with time and energy. Making one bulk meal and putting it away saves you time down the road so your have more time to plan, more home cooking, more time.

    Bulk cook so that you have several meals made in the time it takes you to make one.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    So start with a single slow cooker meal. Family friendly meals might include a chili, pulled pork or sloppy joes.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    I still have Kraft dinner in my cupboard and an emergency pizza in the freezer.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
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    I don't normally use recipes, just combine things I like to eat, or use old recipes I have in my head. I keep a running inventory of pantry/fridge/freezer. When I plan my meals, I write down which ingredients I don't have for the meals I want to eat, and bring that list to the store. Some meals take some initial prepping, but it's usually low labour intensive, like taking meat out of the freezer the night before to thaw, and soaking beans or grains.

    After I stopped following the low-fat fad and buying foods I didn't really want to eat, I began to love to cook, and started to love my own food. When I meal plan and cook, I can eat everything I like, save money, shop effectively, reduce waste, reduce stress, have fun in the kitchen, and stay slim and healthy. If that isn't motivating, I don't know what would be ;)
  • ValerieMartini2Olives
    ValerieMartini2Olives Posts: 3,041 Member
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    I make tons of homemade food that requires very little cooking or effort. If you can wait 10 minutes to preheat the oven, then 15-20 minutes to make a pizza... that's a half hour. You have a half hour to do that, so you can make easy meals. Mac and cheese? Same deal. 10 minutes for water to boil. 10 minutes for mac to cook. In that same amount of time, you can make a pasta with a light sauce that is a fraction of the calories and sodium.

    Eggs cook very quick. I regularly have "breakfast for dinner."
    Sandwiches/wraps with veggies. To change it up, throw it on a George Foreman and have a hot ham and cheese or similar.
    Pastas.
    Cook a bunch of chicken on a Sunday night and you have a ready-cooked protein to make effortless meals for several days.

    I am a single mother with a demanding job and a 2 1/2 year old. Yet, I find time to make shopping lists, go grocery shopping, and cook real food and pack real lunches nearly every day.
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    By the way, I know about energy, time and all that. I was a single parent where all of this was a premium. I'm still very organized because otherwise, I would have been snowed under.

    For a while there was a billboard by my home that sported a giant mouth-watering pizza. I found a home-made pizza recipe that I could make and put on the table in thirty minutes. Home-made because I was poor, not for any health reasons.

    http://www.cbc.ca/parents/food/view/cooking-with-kids-no-rise-pizza-crust
  • scolaris
    scolaris Posts: 2,145 Member
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    Yes. I don't see how it's THAT hard... Start small with one night of the week.
    You'll quickly learn what you like. I just flew home from vaca & bought simple ingredients for 16 healthy packed lunches for my daughter & I on jet lagged autopilot without a list: 8 kinds of nitrate free deli meats in increments of 8oz so I can just cut the package in half & know it is a 4 oz serving; 2 tubs of my favorite mixed greens; a package of sprouts; a package of broccoli slaw; a few condiments; and 2 8-count packages of low carb tortillas to make everything into wraps. A week of healthy lunches, done. Right now you buy the same starchy processed things over & over. You can just as easily buy the same fresh & minimally processed things over and over!
  • DeguelloTex
    DeguelloTex Posts: 6,652 Member
    edited October 2015
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    It doesn't take much more effort to put a chicken in the oven to roast than to put a frozen pizza in the oven to bake.

    Almost everyone is busy. That's almost always a cop out answer to rationalize laziness.
  • jemhh
    jemhh Posts: 14,261 Member
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    It takes very little time/energy to make most of the meals that my family eats. Most of our dinners are some sort of meat, a starchy side, and 1-2 veggies/fruits. Nothing fancy--throw chicken in a zipper bag with marinade the night before, grill it while rice cooks, chop up some fruit/veggies. That kind of thing. Stick a roast in the crockpot in the morning or make it on a Saturday/Sunday and reheat it during the week. This is an extremely easy way to make chicken (prepare it the night before, put it in a pyrex dish in the fridge and take it out the next afternoon/evening to cook.) Brown some ground beef, throw it into a pot with jarred spaghetti sauce. Boil pasta. Make a salad while the noodles boil. This stuff takes minutes and even young kids can help with it.

  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
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    mamarissy wrote: »
    I do not have the time nor energy to sit down and come up with healthy meals and create grocery lists for them so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. Between work and kids, I find is much easier to just grab a frozen pizza and some boxed Mac n cheese. How do you all find the time/motivation to come up with a grocery list and recipes and everything and stick to them?

    Take an honest look at how much time you spend watching TV, playing computer games, surfing the Internet, etc and then decide if you have time to come up with meals to keep you and the most important people in your life healthy.
  • maidentl
    maidentl Posts: 3,203 Member
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    Meal "templates." One night is soup night, I can make soup without a recipe. Pasta night, no recipe needed, grab a pasta, a sauce, salad, bread. Crockpot night, sandwich night, you get the idea. You can even plan on one night off to have a frozen pizza or some other no brainer.
  • scolaris
    scolaris Posts: 2,145 Member
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    Oh, and 4 avocados... Don't forget the avocados!!
    Seriously - lunch used to flummox me. Like rocket science or something. Now it's easy peasy. My daughter doesn't even eat wraps! She takes the meats with carrot sticks & a piece of fruit to school and when she gets home she makes herself an after school quesadilla with her tortilla. Just put the healthy choices in your fridge & everyone will decide how they like to eat them.
  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,426 Member
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    I plan 28 different dinners at a time so I don't have to do it every week. I could reuse this plan for a couple of months if I wanted. I plan meals because it helps me stick to our tight budget.

    I have a running grocery list in my kitchen. As we run out of something, I immediately add it to the list. I keep some basics on hand all the time like rice, dry beans, onions, chicken breasts, carrots, eggs, milk, bread, canned tomato, pasta, pasta sauce. Towards the end of the week, I just add any stuff I need for the coming week's meal plan. I keep a saved grocery list on my computer and just alter it each week and print it out. We get a lot of the same stuff every week so that saves time.

    Breakfast, lunches, snacks are simple stuff like leftovers, sandwiches, yogurt, cereal, fruit so I don't bother actually planning those meals.

    Some dinners I make are very quick and some are not. I like to cook and eat tasty things so I am willing to spend time on it.
    Cook double when you do cook and freeze the extra for another meal. I almost always have leftover soup in my freezer that I can pull out and reheat pretty quickly.
    Making tacos, spaghetti or throwing something in the slow cooker is not much more effort than cooking a frozen pizza or boxed macaroni and cheese. A frozen pizza or boxed mac & cheese is food but not really amazing to me. I wouldn't want to eat that every day.
  • Optimistical1
    Optimistical1 Posts: 210 Member
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    mamarissy wrote: »
    I do not have the time nor energy to sit down and come up with healthy meals and create grocery lists for them so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. Between work and kids, I find is much easier to just grab a frozen pizza and some boxed Mac n cheese. How do you all find the time/motivation to come up with a grocery list and recipes and everything and stick to them?

    Pick one day a week or every other week to dedicate to meal planning. I do my meal plan/grocery list every Saturday afternoon with grocery shopping/food prep Sunday. As a personal preference, I do my meals plans for a two week period. It may seem slow going at first, but one you get in the habit, it becomes so much easier. Thinking in terms of Meatless Monday's, Taco Tuesday, leftover Wednesday, Crockpot Thursday, etc....really helped me out when I first started. I keep my family's favorite meals on the dinner rotation every other week, just changing up the sides.

    Pinterest is absolutely awesome! Just do a simple search for quick healthy meal plans and a wealth of ideas will pop up. If you go to the grocery store with a list you will save tons of money. I was able to cut my grocery bill down by $400+ a month just by never going to the grocery store without a list.
  • amgreenwell
    amgreenwell Posts: 1,268 Member
    edited October 2015
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    I do it on my breaks at work. I come up with the menu then make the list. I double check what we have at home before heading to the store. I ALWAYS TAKE A LIST!!
    I absolutely love to plan meals and cook so I might be a bit different.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,973 Member
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    Packerjohn wrote: »
    mamarissy wrote: »
    I do not have the time nor energy to sit down and come up with healthy meals and create grocery lists for them so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. Between work and kids, I find is much easier to just grab a frozen pizza and some boxed Mac n cheese. How do you all find the time/motivation to come up with a grocery list and recipes and everything and stick to them?

    Take an honest look at how much time you spend watching TV, playing computer games, surfing the Internet, etc and then decide if you have time to come up with meals to keep you and the most important people in your life healthy.

    7ac.jpg
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,973 Member
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    mamarissy wrote: »
    I do not have the time nor energy to sit down and come up with healthy meals and create grocery lists for them so I know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. Between work and kids, I find is much easier to just grab a frozen pizza and some boxed Mac n cheese. How do you all find the time/motivation to come up with a grocery list and recipes and everything and stick to them?

    It helps now that I love to cook. But I didn't always, and I had to learn how to cook. My mother didn't teach me. I learned from The Joy of Cooking, the book Julia Child called “a fundamental resource for any American cook” - now in a revised and updated 75th Anniversary edition.

    I have a well stocked pantry, frig, and freezer. Except for perishables, I wouldn't need to go grocery shopping for some time.

    As I run low on staples, I write them on the white board on the frig and use this to start my shopping list. As I have inspirations for meals, I write their ingredients on the white board as well.

    I have go-to meals for when I don't want to put too much thinking into cooking - baked chicken, potatoes, veg, American Chop Suey, etc. If I roast a whole chicken, I will follow that up with chicken soup.

    You can do this!
  • mbaker566
    mbaker566 Posts: 11,233 Member
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    it works because i want to be healthy and to do so takes some work

    $27 dollar budget for a week (2 people)
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
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    I don't plan meals. I check the flyers, see what's on sale, and that's what my list is... basically stocking up on staples when they are on sale - frozen veggies (steam in bag, I'm lazy), fresh cut veggies when they are $1 a bag, rice, pasta sauce, pasta, tortillas, taco shells, Greek yogurt, bacon, spices, onions, eggs, frozen chicken nuggets and other kid snacks etc...

    Then I go to the store, stock up on what's on the list, buy 3-4 proteins (fish, ground turkey, chicken sausage, lean ground beef, chicken breast/legs/drumsticks, pork, steak), bread/milk/fruit if we need it, and that's pretty much it.

    Then at dinner time I put a protein on the grill/oven, microwave veggies, sometimes add rice/pasta/potatoes, and that's done in less than 10 minutes, typically. Sure, sometimes I feel like making something fancier, but then I just add a couple things on my list (tomato paste, some spices we don't have, buns if we want burgers, whatever) and make it one night when I have more time.

    It doesn't have to be complicated.
  • scolaris
    scolaris Posts: 2,145 Member
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    Very true all this. Eat simply & it will all come together!

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