I always write "cat fud"

"Lists tell us a lot about our neighbors, our friends, our ancestors, our species and ourselves. First, lists remind us that us we are obsessive. Or maybe we are forgetful, I forget. Regardless, lists — especially lists of things we want and need, such as groceries — provide tiny glimpses into private lives. They're usually honest reflections of a person. Simple needs, amusing quirks and sundry cures for infirmities listed and checked off.

"Most found lists are anonymous; just scribbled words on a page. But we can relate. I need toilet paper just like you. You need banannas. Bannanas. Banananas. Bnanans? Bannas. Bananas. Hmmm. More on that later."

-- "How Do You Spell Bananana?" St. Louis Post Dispatch, June 11, 07

I will be sure to flip through Bill Keaggy's new book, Milk Eggs Vodka, when I see it. I am always fascinated by other people's grocery lists and their grocery cart contents.

My own lists tend to be short and boring. And, given the Schmichaels family habit of buying all our fresh produce at the farmers' market, I suspect that other grocery cart snoops look at our conveyor belt full of cat food, Gordon Biersch marzen, Three Thieves cabernet, Bolla pinot grigio, parmesan cheese and turkey bacon, and they think we're courting rickets or scurvy -- when we're not staving off the DTs.

What do your grocery lists look like? Do you have different lists for different places? Do you dork out at holidays (as I do) and end up spreadsheeting your sundries by recipe (as I do)? Or do you prefer to just let items find their way into your basket?

Comments

[Alice]

I only use lists when I'm making a particular recipe - otherwise I will be sure to forget what I need. I tend to improvise at the grocery store - I walk home, so only buy what can fit in a basket, and buy what I feel inspired by. And it rarely fails - I'll get home and think "Damn! I forgot to get toilet paper!" or dish soap, or shampoo and I'll have to go out again.

[molly]

we don't use lists unless we are having a party. we shop daily for meals so the belt during the week would typically contain: a meat product for grilling, a veggie/salad stuff, fruit, a box of ceral for breakfast. (tangent: apparently ceral is no longer convenient for breakfast according to a story on CNN?!?!) we joined the ranks of the bulk shoppers and do the costco thing for paper products and soap. we also hit the farmers' market for fruits/veggies on the weekends. we rarely buy processed foods or bread.

as for our wine collection, we pick up bottles here and there. my husband usually goes to california once a year and will pick up a couple of bottles. we also hit the dean and deluca when we are in georgetown for wine. our recent purchase was some silver oak (napa, not alexandria valley), which is our fave wine!

as for holidays, we have our holiday standards that do not require lists. we just have to go to a special seafood store to get octopus, shrimp, and scallops for the paella.

a spreadsheet, lisa?! wow, i want to come to your holiday get togethers. sounds like quite a spread!

[Ellen]

It took me years - YEARS! - to be able to interpret that cartoon as "cat food." I always saw it as "cat fuhd," and I didn't get it. Then I decided it must mean "cat fun." But there's fun for cats in the dryer? That doesn't seem right.

My grocery lists would really provide a good window into my life. They're on grid paper. On the left is the meal plan for the week, with notes by each day that say what we have going on each night (dog park, baseball game, book club, etc.). Meats are often accompanied by the popular dish "some sort of ricey thing." The actual list is on the right. I don't have any weird abbreviations, though.

Sadly, Minnesota doesn't sell wine in grocery stores, so you have to go to the liquor store. Coming out with a bottle in a brown paper bag (and nothing else) never fails to make me feel like a lush.

My holiday shopping cart is pretty much a solid block of cheese, chocolate, butter, and nuts. I usually can't fit everything into the kitchen properly, so there are bags of flour on the dining room table for weeks.

[Kerry]

My lists (when I make them, I have to get back in the habit) are divided by location on 1 page of notebook paper: Target, Trader Joe's, West Side Market, Grocery, etc. Then I follow the route from west to east. My meals are very loosey-goosey, especially since I'm working weird hours now. Plus I have a lot of things in the house that I'm trying to use up, I don't like making the same thing twice, and I'm single. Yeah, nightmare.

[Jecca]

I pick 4-6 meals (dinners) for the week, usually from Everyday Food (Fud!) these days. I fold a piece of paper into quarters, then unfold and use each quadrant for a different category of food/part of the grocery store: upper left = produce, lower left = meat, upper right = pantry, lower right = dairy/freezer. Then I go through the recipes and check my cabinets and fridge and make my list accordingly. I always put how much of something I need -- "cheddar (1/2 C grated)" or "black beans (1-15 oz. can)" -- because I used to get wildly wrong amounts of stuff. Oddness might come in with some side dish items: "salad (2 meals)" or "fruit." That's about as unstructured as my list gets.

Holidays? I bake quite a bit throughout the year, and even when I'm not in a baking phase, I've realized that much the same way that a friend of mine doesn't feel like the kitchen is stocked and her home is in order unless she has milk in the fridge, I just don't feel right unless I have dry-good baking supplies on hand at all times. For me that means flour, sugar, brown sugar, molasses, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, cinnamon, cocoa, nutmeg. So shopping for holiday cooking, which equals baking to me, usually just means some extra cans of pumpkin and a slew of different kinds of baking chocolate.

[verucaamish]

Since we've joined a CSA our grocery shopping changed radically. The only produce we buy are onions. Like molly, we only do a list for parties but we do have an innate sense of staples like bread, milk, tortillas, cheese, flour, sugar and olive oil.

[QASteph]

I make semi-lists for grocery shopping. If there is a particular meal I plan to make, I'll add the ingredients for that to a list. I will write down staples like milk or yogurt if I'm out. But I live alone so I don't do a ton of menu planning.

Mostly I go to The Milk Pail (http://www.milkpail.com/) and buy whatever looks good when I'm there; it varies a lot based on what is in season. This week strawberries and blueberries looked fabulous. I also grabbed some polenta from the bulk bins because I've never made it and want to try. Then I head to Trader Joe's for non-produce, non-dairy stuff like bread, hummus, soup-in-a-box, wheat pasta, etc. On the rare occasions I head to Safeway, I'm sure my cart would lead the casual observer to believe I have never seen a diagram of the food pyramid. I don't cook with meat often, but tend to buy that at Costco and freeze it in portions.

Twice a year I cook for lots of people (Christmas cookies, Easter breakfast). For that I drag out all of the recipes I am going to make and add up how much I'll need of the various ingredients on one central list. Then I make a note next to each ingredient about where I plan to buy it.

[Jane]

I love peering (covertly) into other people's carts too. It's almost as much fun as eavesdropping in restaurants.

I do usually make a list. I have three children ages 16 to 20, a husband and a fair number of the offspring's hangers-on to feed.

I try and plan meals and if I am in a very organized mood I put the menus on one side of the page and the list on the other.

I do keep master lists for all the major stores we frequent. That way I can just edit the list for the items I need, print it off and go. This was especially helpful when my children were small - it sort helps you keep all the staples in stock. I also keep an ongoing list on the fridge and encourage the rest of the family to write down things we need. This isn't always as successful as the rest of the clan doesn't share my enthusiasm for lists.

We rarely travel - but when we do, I lather myself into a list making frenzy. (I keep master lists for this too!)

I find the actual making of the list very soothing; it gives me a sense of having some control. I think either you have this need or you don't, it's very much a personality thing.

Yes, I love lists.

[Meghan]

I have been obsessed with lists since the fourth grade or so when I glimpsed my Sunday school teacher's grocery list in her Bible. At the end of her list — which included all the standards: milk, eggs, bananas — she had scrawled "Cigs." I never quite looked at my Sunday school teacher the same way again. No. From then on I could only imagine her with a Misty 120 hanging from her lip.

[molly]

Meghan, that is the funniest story! Haha, LOVE the Misty 120 image!

[Polly]

I always do a list (and I do amounts, too, Jecca, for the same reason). It's just a single list, though--no quadrants or anything. Of course, I do live by myself, which keeps things simple.

Right now what I usually do is look through my cookbooks for whatever sounds good, figure out what I have to buy to make it, and make the list accordingly. I kind of wish I was the sort of person who can go to the store, find a beautiful bunch of whatever-it-is on sale, and then take it home and make a fabulous meal out of it, but so far, I am not.

[Divaah46]

I use the flier from the supermarket as my list. When the newspaper comes with one, I save it and circle what I want on it, then take it with me. When my dad goes to CostCo, he writes out a list on the computer and takes it with him. Two different techniques, but equally useful, I suppose. I'd like to ask how many people here clip coupons even if they know they won't use them, just because they like using scissors.

[Brona]

We try to keep a list going of things we've run out of, and then, pre-shopping, we make The List. It's written to roughly reflect the layout of Loblaws and contains entries like "milks" (1% for us, organic whole for the kids) and "yogourts" (same deal).

Yesterday I added "good balsamic" to the list, which will end up with me dithering in front of the vinegars for half an hour when I'm in the store.

We go to the local Farmers Market for the best extra old cheddar and Empire Biscuits, but not so much for produce - the "farmer" in this case being the Ontario Food Terminal. You can buy strawberries there year-round for Pete's sake.

[Lisa S.]

a spreadsheet, lisa?! wow, i want to come to your holiday get togethers. sounds like quite a spread!

Next time we're spending the holidays in NoVa, you are MORE than welcome.

The spreadsheeting started because I noticed a lot of my recipes had shared ingredients, and shopping by recipe seemed inefficient. So ... a table of ingredients cross-referenced by recipe made sense; I ended up buying only what I needed. When I deviated from this (in 2006), I ended up with three extra pounds of butterscotch chips, which I had to unload via Freecycle.

*

I LOVE reading everyone's list-making practices. The ideas I'm getting here are great! Keep 'em coming.

[Jecca]

Lisa, that overlap is why I make my list in pencil and include amounts. "lime (1)" gets the number erased and upped to "limes (3)" or whatever if need be as I go through meals for the week. I have a couple of additional practices in place that other people reminded me of: list on the fridge for noting things as we run out of them or inspiration strikes during the week and a master list of staples to check (including things like detergent and other cleaning supplies). Both those sources get integrated into the "quadrant" list. I got that technique of folding the paper in quarters from somewhere . . . can't remember where . . .

[Jecca]

Damn. Forgot to say that I started using the quadrant/categorized method after I found out about it because I was spending an extra half hour to 45 min. (or more!) per grocery store running back and forth to different sections of the store and backtracking like crazy. Now I can move efficiently from one end to the other (usually).

[drunken monkey]

Before our recent move, I made a list. I bought one of those magnetic notepads at a dollar store, and kept it attached to my fridge; when I was noticed during the week that I was out of something, I'd write it down. Then on Friday night, I'd do a quick inventory of the cupboards and fridge, and with my boyfriend, and finish up the list. I'd go to two stores, and make tears along the sides of the paper to mark off an item when I'd picked it up. It was very organized.

Two things have now changed. We are getting produce delivery once a week, which means that I am not really buying much produce on my grocery trips. And we have a smaller fridge, with a considerably smaller freezer, so it no longer makes much sense to buy one big load of groceries once a week. So for the past couple of weeks, I've just been going to get stuff as I run out or realize I need it. I'm not quite used to it yet; I liked my anal-retentive grocery system. Also, I miss living near Whole Foods.

[Lady M]

Grocery geek, here. We keep a preprinted sheet on the fridge with our most commonly needed grocery items listed by aisle, as products are arranged in the Safeway nearest our house. When we're out of something, we circle it on the list, or write it in the column corresponding to the aisle, if it's an unusual item. That way, the shopping trip is really efficient, with no doubling-back.

I did have to do a big update to the master list when they did a remodel last year, but the system has worked pretty well for us.