Almost unconsciously, we adjust habits to the rhythm of the times. In hard times, groceries are purchased ¾ of the time using a shopping list and food is cooked at home. In good times, just 30% of us use a shopping list and meals are more often deli-prepared, or “takeout.” We all know which is healthier—the home-cooked meals. So good times or bad, if you want to look better, live longer, and enjoy better health, stick with home cooking. But there is more to home cooking.
Dan Buettner wrote a book on longevity titled The Blue Zones based on his study of communities where people lived longer than 100 years. (In a later post, we’ll discuss their secrets to longevity, but yes, they’re a lot like Word of Wisdom Living.) One group was in Okinawa so Buettner sought the help of Sayoko Ogata, who he remembered as a hard-working, well-paid Tokyo business executive. She had disappeared from Tokyo—he finally found her far from the fast lane, in a small village on a green island, now married to a humble schoolteacher, with two small children. What had happened to Ogata? Perspective. An interview with a centenarian had brought her face-to-face with the wisdom of the ages and her busy career, by comparison, seemed both barren and bereft of meaning. In her new life, she explained to Buettner, she was a mother, a wife, a person who cooked to “put love into my food. . . . I take time each night to think about the people around me . . . to reflect. I’m not chasing the carrot anymore.”
There is a lesson here that every homemaker—whether you work or are able to stay-at-home—knows. But the lesson is often lost in the hustle bustle of life. We don’t cook at home because it’s cheaper, or even just because it’s healthier. We cook because it shows love, and because eating food endowed with that love is what binds families together and helps give meaning to life.
With Ogata’s epiphany in mind, we can better discuss the prelude to cooking—planning and shopping. Here are three keys:
1. Plan—write a weekly menu and use it to prepare a shopping list like the one shown above, available here. The first year’s menus are hardest; in the following years you can merely refine the saved menus.
2. Shop—to reduce costs, eat natural foods in season and follow sales (most stores now post online), and consider coupons. Coupons are a preference item—if you like collecting coupons do that, but limit yourself to things you normally use.
3. Cook—it’s cheaper and healthier to do your own cooking. Preparation reduces hassle (during busy weeks focus on meals prepared in 30 minutes) and experience builds competence. Training children to help provides a double benefit—with experience they become truly helpful plus they learn good habits.
Digital apps for menu planning and shopping are on the horizon, but for now a well-designed shopping list and a #2 wooden pencil seem to work best. Your grandmother likely used this method and perhaps your mother, though in the faux-prosperity of the ‘80s and ‘90s many abandoned the practice in favor of processed or prepared foods. People used to get everything at the local supermarket, but now usually shop at three types of stores, which we've included on our shopping list:
1. A warehouse store like Costco, with rock-bottom prices on bulk items.
2. A health food store with local produce plus bins of grains and other affordable dry goods. (There are also outdoor Farmer’s Markets.)
3. The supermarket, which now seems more a large convenience store.
When I do the weekly shopping, I go to my warehouse store first (where I can usually get the best prices), then my local health food store (where we buy produce and bulk items not available at the warehouse store), and then to the supermarket (for items we couldn't find elsewhere).
Please comment with any changes or suggestions for the shopping list; we’ll incorporate as many as we can so that this can be the best shopping list ever! If you prefer, a combined menu and shopping list is available here.
And may I ask a favor? Try leaving your shopping list in the grocery store cart when done, for others to discover. We'll spread the word, one shopping cart at a time.