Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 284 | How to Grocery Shop

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Ep. 284 | How to Grocery Shop · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Now, during the COVID thing, I went completely the other direction and froze a ton of stuff and kind of brought it out. Yeah, same. I brought so much non-perishable food for the apocalypse. Yes.
• 0:14
  What's up guys, Jeff and Jeremy here. Another episode of five minute fatherhood. This is actually a question we got from our homeroom community. Steven, Stefan, Stefan, depends on what kind of flair you want to put on your name, which by the way, let us know how you actually pronounce that. Cause we love you. You're in the community. We see all the time. Uh, just give me a quick reminder. Cause we appreciate you being so active in homeroom and all that stuff. Um,
• 0:31
  and being a part of the tribe. But you asked a great question. I wanted to bring it to the podcast too. And there was also a second version of this question on like budgeting with groceries that happened, I think a couple of days ago too. But how does your family grocery shop, i.e. go to one big shop with a monthly meal plan or smaller shops getting all the different things?
• 0:47
  COVID appears to have taught us that we tend to spend more the more shops we do. Yeah, I'd love to hear how you guys do it as just a way more complex organism with different households and size and ages. Yeah, for us, you know, and everyone you have to kind of back, I would say go backwards from your value system too, first of all, right? Like are you, if you really hold certain foods and organics and all that stuff really high, well then you're probably going to work backwards from that. We're not going to probably be able to get all that in one place, right?
• 1:10
  So I would say, yeah, based on some of our values and stuff like that, we probably try to piece everything together two or three places, right? Costco for really big stuff. Target for really random stuff. And then like farmer's markets or Whole Foods or a health store for kind of some of our main like health stuff because we're a little crunchy as the phrase grows, goes, you know, which means I could be with some of our stuff. So.
• 1:32
  So I would say, yeah, that's how we do it. One thing I would say, and I do think you have to have a philosophy of grocery shopping and a philosophy of like even budgeting with grocery shopping. So for us, we went back and forth on this one because this one was really hard for us where like we tried groceries is always like the first place people attack with budgeting.
• 1:47
  And there's some people that I think have dominated that, you know, very specific. They've saved a ton of money. They have a certain amount. And if they make the food stretch and work and all that, that's totally wise. For us, though, we get really tight on other things and we do the opposite with groceries. We just have felt we host way too much. We do so many events, so many people in our house, all these different things. We just let off the break and we just said, like, we have no budget on groceries, right? Now, sometimes that means the bill can get huge, but that means we have to try to pull it from other places where we are really tight and are really specific and are really shrewd and are really frugal. And we're going to have a lot of money.
• 2:17
  um, with things we don't have that a lot of people have. But I think we just realized that like, yeah, that was just, it's kind of related and not related, but I would say like, you know, I think it's sometimes okay. I feel like everyone never gave us permission that that was okay. And I just feel like four years ago and we were like, eh, we just don't have a budget. Do we need it? Are we having a party this week? Do we have the money? Then we're going to get it, you know, uh, specifically like we just make so much stuff for our neighbors. We do have so many people over stuff like that, but I don't know what you'd say.
• 2:40
  Yeah, that's huge. I do want to make one comment to what you're saying about letting off the budget in this area. You sort of preface that by saying, because you guys host so much, because this is an area where you want to give extravagantly. Yeah, it's almost our way of using it for other people. We're not just letting off the brakes so that we can eat more stuff and have more stuff. It's like, it was just too hard to track a budget. We thought, here's another way to put it. Our budget started to hinder our ability to use hospitality and food for how we
• 3:10
  Yeah, and we had the same experience. And what a lot of people don't realize is maybe the longest passage in the Bible on tithing, in Deuteronomy 14, is actually commanding families, households, to use their tithe for their festival budget. Like, if you go and read it, it's a shocking passage. When I first read it, I couldn't believe it. I've never heard anyone teach on this idea. But it's even more critical now than ever, to your point,
• 3:39
  People's primary experience of the kingdom of God is in the home and around food and good drink and all of that. And that's really what Deuteronomy 14 is articulating, the critical nature of making sure that you have money for these kinds of festival events or your Sabbath days. And so if you have special days that you really celebrate, this is a huge expression of the kingdom of God coming in and through your household.
• 4:06
  And I don't think it's inappropriate to think about setting aside some giving resources to make sure that you have what it takes to really help people taste and see that the kingdom of God is good. And so that's just a comment I want to make. But, Stephan, to your larger question, we're very similar to what the Bethkies described. We do a Costco run.
• 4:32
  um, probably twice a month. We do, uh, you know, grocery run. Usually I usually go get, you know, meats and stuff, um, on the fly. I do a lot of the cooking. And so, um, so I'll, I go to the grocery probably three or four times a week very quickly. That's kind of what I prefer is just to in and out. I like really fresh meat. Yeah, exactly. I don't like stuff, you know, rotting in my fridge. Now during the COVID thing, I went,
• 4:56
  completely other direction and froze a ton of stuff and, you know, kind of brought it out. I brought so much non-perishable food for like the apocalypse. Yes, I know. Uh, so we're kind of thrown off and then on the, our, our crunchy stuff now we're, we're growing. So we've got our, you know, Sprout house going crazy. So stuff now. Yeah. Our micro greens and stuff, by the way, that's, uh, Aaron and, um,
• 5:19
  Liz Menke, who was part of our homeroom community, they came and visited us and told us all about microgreens and gave us the skinny. So we've been eating a lot more healthy, these epic salads ever since then. I would say one more thing too, Steph. One of the things I like about grocery shopping that we've used as a family is it's a great time to train your kids about money, about budgeting, or about like, you know, how to just do math. I mean,
• 5:44
  Um, how to think about, um, quality. I mean, there's so many teachable moments. And so one of the things that we, we did, and this is where our kids turned like eight or nine, somewhere around there is most, most these big grocery stores have like a, you know, coffee area or sitting area. So me and April would go and do, sometimes we do a meeting inside the coffee shop and send our kids in groups of two with a list. Um,
• 6:06
  And they just went through the coffee, or sorry, the grocery store and just started to, and then they would bring their basket back to us. We'd kind of review, they'd say, I can't find that. It was like a scavenger hunt. I mean, it was like, there's so many cool things that happened. They were a team, they had to learn all kinds of things about food, about how to order from a meat counter, all that stuff. And me and April, it took them forever. It took them like 30 to 60 minutes. And so instead of being frustrated, we just did a meeting and really enjoyed the time.
• 6:35
  together. And so it was sort of a win-win. But that was one of the hacks that was really, really helpful for us.