Two food shopping trips a week?

[Coffee234]

Hi. I know this isn't a big issue.
Just wanted to see what people thought and what you will be doing.
I usually do one big click and collect shop and then a small (fruit and milk) shop a few days later. No chance of getting a click and collect slot and I'm thinking it should go to the more needy anyway.

So do you think one big shop and one little shop is ok with the current lockdown.
How are you going to plan you essential food shop now?
?

Do the best you can within the means you have. It is not an even playing field with everyone in identical circumstances. There's no point in being sanctimonious about best practice with people with limited budgets/ storage/ transport who aren't in a resilient position.

The social changes of the last week mean the goalposts on what a household is consuming have changed with pretty much all meals now being consumed in the home, not at school/ work/ on the go/ restaurants etc. Many don't intuitively know how much the rare of consumption has changed and how best to accomodate that. Normally I'd have a tin of soup and toast for lunch. That's not practical to scale up x4 as others have a higher need to stock up on any tin that lasts longer than the first 15 minutes of opening time.

Hopefully the panic buying is fading off and the shops will be able to get stock back onto the shelves. I have to shop across two supermarkets for intolerance friendly bread and "milk" that aren't stocked in one store. (A big improvement on the days of multiple family allergies requiring 4 supermarkets per fortnight) Each supermarket I went to last week was ravaged nearly bare by lunchtime, and it took two supermarkets to get a basket of goods to get us through the weekend.

I’m going to say it, on behalf of all the people who spent time and effort building the ark whilst the rest of the world jeered and scoffed:

This is why prepping is sensible.

(Thats not a smug ‘told you so’ - just seems a prudent time to make the point that really, we would all benefit from maintaining at least a couple of weeks of buffer, if at all feasible).

Ninkanink there are many people for whom prepping is not at all possible.

I’ve been in dire straits, with two young children as a lone parent. I still had a small stock of pasta/rice/tins/non perishables, and enough food in the freezer to last us a couple of weeks if we were desperate.

It’s not easy, but it can be done. And it doesn’t have to be expensive either. Yes I accept there are some circumstances that make it unfeasible, but for a lot of people it is perfectly possible. And if those people who are able to all had better stores, then those who aren’t in a position to prep would have access to more food during crises like this.

But I come from a hippy family and prepping was second nature to me. So I accept that others might find it difficult to navigate, or unable see the point.

I always freeze milk. If you're organised enough, you can defrost it in the fridge – so the cold from the frozen milk helps with cooling the fridge. (Basically you reuse the energy you spent freezing it in the first place.)

I stand mine in a plastic container in the fridge door, to collect the puddle of condensation and melting ice.

If you're caught short, you can defrost it faster by standing the carton in a jug of water on the draining board.

Also, DON'T DEFROST ON ITS SIDE! Occasionally freezing has burst the plastic seal under the cap.

Ask me how I learned this...

I always freeze milk. If you're organised enough, you can defrost it in the fridge – so the cold from the frozen milk helps with cooling the fridge.

Also, not to be too “readers tips” about this, but if you freeze it in an ice cube tray then tip out in to a storage box, you can use one cube per coffee. The portion size is about right and stops me burning mouth. Good for smaller households where you might not get through big bottles of milk.

There is not enough room in the freezer or to store fruit/veg without it going off mid week I don’t understand this. Is it a tiny fridge top freezer? If it’s a normal freezer, surely the fact that there’s no room means you have plenty of food?

What fruit & veg are people buying that takes up so much room and goes off after a few days??

I’m aiming for once a fortnight once I’m out of self isolation (we have coughs atm) and making do as best we can. Luckily I managed to get online orders placed before it all went crazy so I’m covered until we out out of isolation (all be it with lots of missing items)

Nicola Sturgeon said no more than once a day

Grapes, apples and pears last a week. Tinned fruit if desperate. It's not an essential item really though.

A family of 5 or 6 would be much harder but for 2 people once a fortnight should be enough I'd imagine

I put some grapes in the freezer the other day. They’re oddly nice when dead cold (good for sore throat too)

Fresh fruit and veg lasts more than 3-4 days as long as it's not the prepared stuff in a bag. Most lasts way after the best before dates also. Potatoes last ages.

I do understand for a family of 5 it will be harder but we haven't shopped for a week and only thing we will be short of will be bread in a few days but essentially we don't really need bread, we can eat other stuff. There are 4 of us, the DSs are 14 and 11.

Someone mentioned soup. Buy a couple of packet stock things and make it. You can freeze some too. Its really easy and I'm definitely not a good cook.

It's generally getting a bit daft now. Yes people may have to go twice a week, especially with bigger families but also you will and should have to adapt how you eat. We are so entitled as a nation it is awful to be honest. My DS2 moaned as DH bought some digestives as an extra when he did the essential shopping at the corner shop. He said why didnt you get something nicer, DH told him that he was lucky to get them and enjoy them as he wont be buying stuff like that for a while!

I (thankfully) had a pre-booked ocado order which arrived on Monday. I finished my shopping on Sunday night, but by the time I'd got through the online queue and then tried to find replacements for things that weren't available, I didn't have enough time left before I had to finish the order.

I had mistakenly thought that when they opened up the website again, people with existing orders wouldn't need to join the online queue.

Anyway, I ended up with lots of things missing so will need to go out again before the week is out. I will make sure I shop very wisely.

I'm also going to increase my milk delivery - that's the sort of thing I would just pop out to get.

I'm in France and I went shopping once last week. I'd not really appreciated how much potential there is to catch it there is in supermarkets. Give it a week and no one will want to go more than once at the most.

I will be shopping for 4 households as I have 2 sets of elderly neighbours plus my parents so I will be going out twice per week. If we were all doing our own it would mean 4 trips so I'm cutting it in half anyway plus it means there are 6 people in the vulnerable category who don't need to have contact with the outside world. I think we all just have to try our best to look after each other and ride this storm out.

I think some people do not have enough storage space for a week's shopping particularly fridge space.

There is very limited supply of the things to make soup atm.

I think some people do not have enough storage space for a week's shopping particularly fridge space

Unlikely. We all seem to manage at Christmas, ie when it suits us.

I shop daily, I will reduce but I can only carry so much. I will go as part of exercise and pay with contactless (which I cannot if I go less often!)

@Alsohuman I don't spend Christmas in my houseshare, I go home to my parents. As do most people who houseshare...

It's not about "when it suits", it's about the day-to-day space we have now.

In some places online shopping (guessing this is what you mean by click and collect?) slots are booked up for weeks, but if you ask at the tills home delivery services are still running. So you might be able to do a big shop and get it delivered. Might be worth asking in your local supermarket?

It still wouldn't solve the problem of quotas though. Maybe your best solution there is to branch out a bit with your meals. Have cheese with crackers instead of in a sandwich, put peanut butter on rice cakes instead of toast. Get juice instead of fresh fruit. That kind of thing