The problem with grocery shopping…

… is that it realistically doesn't get all that exciting the more that you do it. I know that since leaving Save-On-Foods, I've chosen to grocery shop a lot more sporadically and at a lot of different places (eg. Shoppers Drugmart, Farmers markets etc.) though Save-On remains my favourite place to buy staple foods etc. I've been told by at least one of my former co-workers that she misses seeing me in the store more regularly. And that's fine. But I guess I'm just not as motivated to spend money on groceries these days. I have SOME food in the house and buy more when there's something I want to make or something I need for a recipe or something, but I guess I regard shopping for groceries as more of a chore than anything else.

Making a list helps. Knowing what I need helps. Having coupons, deal apps etc. helps. But it still doesn't make the necessary chore all that exciting. I mean I know that grocery shopping is a huge part of adulting (or being an adult) but sometimes it feels rather ineffective. As an adult living alone it's rather easy to buy too much of something and have it spoil, but it's also easy to get into a cooking rut. Sometimes I feel my most adventurous when I actually haven't gone grocery shopping for a while and all that is in my house is odds and ends. This means I often make more varied recipes (yesterday I made soup from soup stock, frozen veggies and some noodles). But it also means I get cranky more frequently because it takes a while to cook after I've already gotten hungry — the less food I have in the house the more indecisive I get about what to make with what I have. And that's no fun.

So grocery shopping is pretty crucial insofar as how tasks go. But it's a balancing act between buying staples that one always uses/needs and buying new and different items that one might find useful for a particular recipe or use-case or something. And I hate wasting money on food that spoils or doesn't get eaten, but I also crave variety. Maybe it's partly that I get stuck in a rut when it comes to what to buy for groceries — I go in phases where I want to cook all the time and phases where all I want to eat is one item or another. Similarly I sometimes like eating the same thing for multiple meals and at other times I get bored of a particular food way way too fast.

Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself to buy groceries? Regardless, it's a chore that varies in difficulty depending on what makes of it, I suppose.