Sunday has always been food shopping day in my household. I’ll put the list together in the morning — I focus on what we need for breakfast and lunch during the week, any household items we’re running low on like toilet paper and paper towels (haha!) and I will also list if we have any usable leftovers from the past week, like we have two hamburger buns and half a bag of potatoes.
My husband does the actual grocery shopping — he’ll tell you that he’s forced to do it because I take too long reading labels, but don’t believe him. He’s the cook in our relationship, so he likes to do the grocery shopping so he can pick out what he wants to make that week. And he’ll use my list of usable items to come up with a plan for that week’s dinners.
Now while he’s at the grocery store, I’ll clean out our refrigerator, throw out all the crap that we can no longer use, wash out all the recycling and get our kitchen ready for the coming week. You know like when we actually had to pack lunches and leave the house to go to work…
Once he is back from the grocery store, I unpack all the items and put them away. And recently try not to obsessively scrub down every package… And because I put everything away, I usually have a pretty good idea what we are going to eat for dinner during the week.
Tonight as we were making our Sunday evening grilled pizza (we like routine in this house, folks!), I asked my husband what he had going on this week and he mentioned he had a later appointment on Tuesday and he would probably smoke the short ribs that day. Now I didn’t remember putting short ribs in the fridge today, there were a couple packages of chicken breast and we had some sausage leftover from last night. I mentioned that I didn’t see any short ribs. He mumbled something, grabbed his car keys and headed put to his truck. He came back a few seconds later — with the short ribs. I guess they fell out of the bag in the back seat and had been laying on the floor for the past 4 hours… Who’s looking forward to short ribs now on Tuesday?!?
I felt bad he was a little annoyed that they fell out of the bag. Should I start asking him about all the grocery purchases after I put them away? He didn’t really like that idea…but maybe he’d like it better than having to purchase more short ribs tomorrow!
Hope that this isn’t how the rest of the week will pan out!
Notes from a Self Quarantine 