[superic]

For years, I've been behind the 'stop at the grocery store every day on the way home' way of not wasting food. My wife and I have a routine that is IM around 4pm, decide on dinner, one of us stops for ingredients on our way home. At first, it seems like a pain to go every day but when you realize how little you throw away, it's fantastic. (Granted, we live in a city where hopping off of public transit to stop at the store is no big deal.)

Something else I discovered very late in life: when buying fancy cheeses, you can select a pre-cut/pre-priced piece that is bigger than you need and ask to have it cut in half, a third, whatever and the store will open the cheese, cut it, re-weigh it and re-price it. Then you don't end up with too much five-year Gouda.

[hessenwolf]

For years, I've been a stop at the grocery store every day person, and it is a disaster for me! I spend way more money, and waste more, because I buy for that meal in small quantities, and don't necessarily re-use the tail-end of the ingredients.

Back when I was poor, I used to plan 3 meals a day for 7 days plus snacks, optimising re-use of ingredients that I would purchase for that week.

This is likely just a case of penny wise, pound foolish.

[superic]

You make a great point of: penny wise, pound foolish. At first, shopping for the day can be like that. However, buying things like spices, oils, rice, etc, in bulk that do not go bad is a part of it. Ingredients you buy daily are exactly enough tomatoes, exactly enough ground turkey, just one small onion, etc, items that are priced per pound rather than cheaper in bulk.

I think that buying your perishables daily (if you can) can save you a lot of money and wasted food.

[wonnage]

I do the same thing (sans the wife part) - it's a great way to always have fresh ingredients! Plus you never get stuck cooking something because it's about to go bad.

Only downside is shopping on an empty stomach...