Grocery for One: Budget Saving Strategies for the Solo Cook

By Linda M. Adams

If you're a solo cook, you know how challenging it is to shop for food each week. Grocery stores cater to families, solo cooks an afterthought. Websites recommend tips that aren't always realistic when you're the only one cooking, like meal planning or batch cooking every meal.

 

Add inflation and supply shortages…what's a solo cook got to do?

 

Grocery For One: Budget Saving Strategies for the Solo Cook provides strategies for saving money when you shop, including:

• How inflation may affect what you buy
• Demystify the grocery list
• Products to stop buying now

No gimmicks! No tricks! Just commonsense methods that work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bad Gnome Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201788971

Book preview

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Introduction

As a solo cook, grocery shopping has always been a challenge for me. No one teaches you how to buy food and save money, especially when you’re buying it for one person.

Most stores sell bulk food on the assumption everyone is shopping for families. Sometimes that works well for solo cooks, such as buying an expensive item like meat. Sometimes it’s a waste of money because we’ll never go through that item before it expires.

Cookbooks assume you’re serving a family of four or six. There are cookbooks now for solo and couples, but with so few, you’re at the mercy of the author’s preferences for ingredients. You know the type of ingredients. Required for the recipe, expensive, and you never use it again.

Add the supply chain issues and inflation, and it’s amazingly easy for a solo cook to overspend when buying the grocery store!

About me

I’m a home solo cook. Mostly self-taught as an adult. I grew up in a household where the primary cook didn’t enjoy it and struggled with grocery shopping. She’d take cash to feed a family of four, then either take an item off at checkout or write a check for the difference. Both were more normal than staying under the budget.

Once I started out on my own, I did my shopping by making a list of ingredients from recipes and shopping for them. It was astounding how much that cost. I even made the rounds on buying the unusual ingredient or a special pan that I never used again.

I struggled with the recipes. Common advice for solo cooks is to make a family-sized recipe and freeze the rest to eat later. Other recommendations include doing