My miso pasta and beef stew — $127 at Whole Foods/butcher shop
Hey, it's Kevin. Yeah I'm doing one myself now. What's up.
Figured I’d take a moment to introduce myself in the same format that you all are! I’m writing this, as my stew is simmering. But this week, give it a go and submit your own grocery run here. Happy shopping!
Kevin, 31, designer
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, NY
Shopping for 3, cooks for 5 nights/week
Grocery budget: ~$150/week
I have been amazed at how much grocery shopping takes. Figuring out what nights you’re home. Finding inspo and recipes, favoriting TikToks. Arguing with your partner when you both find you weren’t prepared for the week. Running out of baby yogurt. Shopping for specific stuff at specific stores because this store has cheap produce but bad protein, but this store has bad produce but better sales, and the better fish market is closer to the mid supermarket, etc. Instacart-ing for an emergency anyway. And evidently you gotta eat every night. So you gotta go buy food every few days. And that’s what this whole thing is about.1
I’m Cantonese, my wife is Greek, and we are millennial parents in Brooklyn. We have a 1½ year old girl who knock on wood usually eats what we eat. And in those few factors, it wouldn’t be too hard to guess what we cook. Over the years, we can whip out something of our own home comforts from growing up, or other simple things that’ve stuck. When we need an idea, we tend to quickly peruse the genre-less blend of one-pan harissa-miso-garlicky-lemony major media weeknight meals.
We mostly buy grass-fed beef, and organic produce, even though in the back of my head I know it’s a fraud. We try to mostly shop Whole Foods sales, and get our proteins from our neighborhood fish markets/butcher store.
I do have the sense that most all food is just increasingly more expensive right now. I feel it in bodega sandwiches, date night, cocktails, rice, snacks, beef, fruit, spices, ice cream. Maybe chicken, aromatics, and sauce feel more static.
Monday, Dec 9 @ Whole Foods + butcher shop = $104.36 + $22.78
Walk through what you were shopping for: Re-upped some things for the baby, like yogurt and fruit, which would be her entire diet, if she were in charge (she’s not). I also always need to have some fun beverages around.
In an ideal week, we cover 4 nights with 2 recipes. We pick 2 big things we wanna make for dinner and extend those leftovers to a few more lunches and dinners. Then end up ordering/eating out, for the rest.2
At Paisano’s Butcher Shop, I needed beef chuck for stew. What they had was angus “grass-fed/grain-finished”, which allegedly is a common trick to get most grass-fed benefits but then the grainy full moo americana taste.
What were you making?
NYT’s Japanese-style beef stew. Trying to use up some delicata squash we’ve had for a bit.
Also trying to use up this pint of white miso, with this pasta that sounds good
And gonna add some sage-buttery turkey meatballs on the side
Was anything particularly cheap, or expensive? Did you buy anything just because you saw it was on sale? List some key purchases:
It was 8:30am and I bought this tiny chocolate milk. Because it bangs, and the yellow sale sticker called to me. I crushed it on the way home. Nothing like cracking open a cold one in the morning ($2.30 → $1.70)
At any given moment, we have blueberries stocked for Zoe because she craves them deeply and perpetually. But berries are expensive. Cuties were on sale and she needs to boost her immunity against sniffle szn ($6.99 →$4.99)
I chose a 4pk of mixed berry Siggi’s yogurt because it was cheaper than picking separate flavors ($1.99ea → $6.59/4)
I thought the chuck was gonna be a lot more, because I’m still just getting used to Paisano’s pricing, but it was $10.99/lb. I just price-checked Whole Foods and it’s $2 more there. W.
Dude you wanna see what Twenty Dollars of Cheese looks like…
Store brand mascarpone (8oz. = $5.49)
Kinda nice Ricotta, smallest volume I could find was twice what I needed - woof (8 oz. = $6.99)
Store deli parmesan. I appreciate how long parmesan can last you (.31lb @ $23.99/lb = $7.44)
As we go, I’d like to use this concluding space for cross-checking, price comps, and observations. Hope to hear from you soon. Submit your own grocery run here.
And that’s just on the side of a home cook’s to-do list and regular coming and going. As you dig in to all that connects us through supply chain, trade, and food injustice, that’s quite a few more future posts.
Thus, my thought behind Amex Gold for us, was that’s 4x points for most of our expenses: the food/dining category.