Shopping Habits

[intraining]

i always check every egg in the carton. i always shake food in boxes, like pasta, which should reveal leakages. i always turn drink cartons upside down and look for driping. yoghurts, well, i'm just buying la creme these days or pots of natural yoghurt which i open the lid and make sure the seal is on. i inspect everything. i taste grapes, i make remarks if produce is rubbish all the while, my two year old is with me, being a full time daddy, she is learning. i never put her in a shopping cart. we make all decisions together. she'll pick up some fruit or veg and everytime, i pick it out of the basket and inspect it. 9/10 it needs to be replaced, but not before i hand it to her to look for 'bad bits'. i then select a good one and give it to her to look at again. we share carrying the basket. she get's her own plastic bag to put stuff in. we smell all fresh produce together. she knows what makes fish bad to buy, and let's just say that because every single fish for the last year or so in my local is just plain disgusting. we might go for the salmon every once in a while, but it's terrible

if i could, i would unwrap two layer chocolate bars to find holes in the foil. in general, my local is pretty disgusting and they've attempted to make it better.

they have a butcher there which is pretty good, since i know when the delivery schedule is, but other than that i wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

btw emeril is on and i remember trying to make a star fish shaped poached egg which didn't work, but in fact, the starry bits were all very weary and mishapen, so i removed them from the egg and had the most perfect egg shaped poached egg i've ever seen. i have to try and reproduce it for the mrs now (she's giggling on port)

[Cusina]

This is what I wish MY grocery trips were like. How lovely. I want to be soul soothed in the supermarket.

Sometimes this serves a useful purpose, as with melons, but more often is it just a fruitless but pleasant exercise. Nice to give the chicken a couple of pats before you choose it, satisfying to pat a loaf of bread before picking it up.They all make different 'sounds'...very entertaining.

Sort of soul-satisfying in an odd way.

←

Unfortunately, they are usually more like this:

I teach my children how to shop by screaming at them at the top of my lungs that they are not to poke their fingers through the plastic and especially not the most expesive items in the store like $15 wedges of watermelon or $50 steaks. They are also not allowed to changes the prices by flipping numbers on those numbers that flip over and over price markers, they are also taught not to erase anything that has been written on a blackboard. And fruits liek grapes sitting in open packages are not there for sampling and then if there are free samples they are not allowed to stand there and proceed to eat all 20 pieces on the plate.

My kids are never going to learn to shop because I never take them anywhere anymore...

←

Ha. My 4 year old son is a horrific and yet exceptionally determined cart driver and impulse purchase negotiator. I expend most of my energy preventing him from crashing into end cap displays and elderly ladies and limiting the "treats" to one or two, preferably those that don't clog the arteries immediately on contact or require a valium dose to counteract the caffeine content. I come armed with a list and I do check stuff like the eggs and expiration dates. I once bought and returned a package of chicken sausage that was SIX WEEKS past it's expiration date. Yuck. (and I taste grapes too... bad me) My time and patience is mighty limited in there. Next year he is off to Kindergarten. THEN I can shop in peace. Honestly, these days, I am absolutely exhausted by the time I get home.

[Kapuliperson]

I squeeze and smell fruits, check for dents/blemishes

[Hest88]

Of course. If I'm paying money I want to get my money's worth! Naturally I pick over fruits and veggies, and make sure packaged meats look okay, but I've also learned the hard way to be sure cartons don't leak or dribble food. I've also learned that I have to take each egg out of the carton, since they break as much on the bottom as the top.

[eunny jang]

Wiggle the eggs. Do it. You know you want to.

[David94928]

I can drive my wife crazy at times by how much a picky shopper I am.

I always examine all of the eggs in a carton before I buy.

I look for later experation dates by reaching back behind the first two rows of dairy products.

I always check through the vegtables and fruit looking for what I consider to be the best ones. I always try and smell the fruit (except maybe apples). If it smells like the fruit then I know it's ripe. The problem at the supermarket is they keep most of the fruit refrigerated so any aroma is dampened to the point of being non-existent. The farmers market is a good place to smell the fruit. When I buy packaged berries (raspberries in particular) I peer through the bottom of the carton looking for any signs of mold.

I always look for the freshest bread products (the plastic ties are color coded by the day of the week the product was produced).

David

[arielle]

Really? I do turn the eggs around to make sure they aren't broken. Half of the eggs we get around here seem to have poo or feathers stuck to the shell, so they're not exactly hospital clean to begin with. Your mileage may vary.

loiosh: I don't know if you are in a rural area in Oz, but if you are, the eggs you're buying may be from local farmers or even from your local high school's Agricultural plot. Sounds crazy, but if there is a little dirt on the eggs, they're more likely to be free-range or organic because small producers don't have a big wash, dry, package assembly line!

I'm a real tester of everything: I check lids to ensure no-one has tried to open them; expiry dates; smell and handle all fresh produce; never buy meat or seafood from the supermarket (actually, I buy little more than toilet paper [recycled, of course] at the supermarket these days, thanks to living in a great area in TO); I read the nutritional info on everything that I buy - does it have trans fats, artificial anything etc? - I do take a long time to shop, but I really think that at the end of the day, the food that my husband and I have is always fresh and so much better for being of a high quality.

[helenjp]

Yeah, yeah, I check, I frown, I bargain...

My kids have (mostly) got past the age of random poking and "stick em up" approaches to commercial transactions, now instead, they check EVERYTHING, and argue with me about produce from politically incorrect countries, additives, freshness, etc.

When my younger son wants to get a little too physical, I remind him that if he pokes, his purse will be the one I'll be using at the checkout!

[ghostrider]

If you suspect that the corn is not fresh, and want to peel a little husk back to check, or peel back a little husk of an ear you selected, by all means go right ahead! The thing I can't stand is what I encountered a few weeks ago...a lady halfway shucking all the ears of corn and throwing them back. I'm not sure what she was looking for.

←

That's one of my pet peeves, seems like there's always some chowderhead at the farmers' market doing that with the corn.

I find it easy to tell whether the corm is fresh by looking at it (shade of husk, glisten of silk), & whether an ear is well developed by feeling the girth & heft of it. I never peel a husk back to look at it. I get a grand total of maybe 3 or 4 imperfect ears yearly, & I buy a dozen ears every week in season.

Works for me.