Frankly, we’ve always relied on our parents to buy us groceries, and we’re tired of hot pockets for dinner.

Senior Staff Writers (and roommates) Elena and Yuki reached out to other Bwoggers over a serious dilemma they were having: how to shop for groceries. The two of us seem to buy food, and not particularly a lot of food at that, but never manage to eat all this food before it goes bad. Don’t be fooled: we eat lunch and dinner every single day. And it never feels like we’re overspending on groceries, yet when the weekly (ok, let’s be honest maybe not weekly) fridge clean-out occurs, we are astonished as to where all this spoiled food came from. So, we took it to Bwog Staff to help us with our problems.

The first series of tips were types of food that don’t spoil quickly:

  • Dried lentils
  • Frozen vegetables
  • Legumes
  • Squash
  • Sweet potato/potatoes – but keep them in the dark otherwise they sprout!!
  • Rice
  • Carrots (bonus: roast them for a side dish!! CWB to come?)
  • Sriracha
  • Grits
  • Pasta
  • Tea
  • Ingredients for baking (flour, sugar, etc.)
  • Pasta sauce (and then you can save the jars for drinking glasses! A two-in-one!)
  • Chicken/beef stock
  • Milk alternatives spoil less quickly than real cow milk (side note: if any of you like skim milk, I don’t trust you.)

Another series of advice came in: how to keep food from going bad. The tips are as follows:

  • Hard-boil leftover eggs so they don’t go bad. You then have an easy snack on hand!
  • Put leftovers in Tupperware. “Don’t leave them in metal cans/containers you lazy fucks” was the take away from this piece of advice. I’m all about money baby but my food tasting metallic is not it.
  • Keep the fastest spoiling food at the front of your fridge. Ironic, because with how small our fridge is basically everything is at the front, but anyways.
  • Only wash produce right before you are going to use it.
  • Freeze everything! Tofu, bread products, etc. Or better yet, just buy frozen meals.

And then just some general advice, because clearly Elena and Yuki’s ability to buy groceries and cook for themselves was quite the concern for Bwog Staff:

  • Meal plan you lazy idiots.
  • Make one big meal every other day and then have the leftovers from cooking days on non-cooking days.

Will we be better shoppers because of this advice? Absolutely. Will we still end up somehow throwing away five different kinds of lettuce no one remembers buying? Probably.

Image of Westside via Bwog Archives