Keeping Your Meal Costs Checked

When it comes to gourmet cooking, one of the very first tenants learned is mise en place, a French phrase meaning “everything in place”, or that before doing everything, you should have all your ingredients on the counter ready to be used. This also has wonderful meaning when applied to shopping for food, where you should have your recipe, or shopping list, which will ensure that every ingredient finds its place in your cart – and then your pantry.

It’s super easy to go over budget in the supermarket while grocery shopping, it is also easy to forget essential items costing you time and gas to return to the store just to get the diapers you forgot or an essential ingredient to a recipe you had planned that night.

While it is easy to forget an item, it is also easy to over buy groceries, especially when you shop on an empty stomach leaving you tempted to buy all sorts of junk food. Make sure to shop after having a meal, or the very least after a light snack.

Of course, a good way to save time and money in the grocery is to go in with a plan, a shopping list and a budget in mind and hand will get you in and out without tears, and will help keep you on a diet if you are on one as it’s easier to stick to your diet while making plans (and going in with a plan cuts back on impulse buys).

The fuel grocery notepad will help you remember your meal budget from week to week, and encourages you to write in the cost of each shopping track so you can keep track of how much you are over or under your food budget so that you can cut back (or reward yourself) the next week.