The thing that got me to make meal plans and shopping lists was a job as a personal chef. Before that I would wing it, buying ingredients for a meal or two, then making whatever else I could from what was in the pantry. I would stop by the store a few times a week for essential ingredients I had forgotten, and this time added up.

So, I got a notebook just for menus and sat down with my cookbooks once a week to pick which recipes I would use. As I chose my recipes I wrote down which ingredients I would need, and how much, sometimes checking back to see if I already had an item. This created a flow where one week’s extra ingredient would fold over into the next week’s recipes; I soon had the contents of my fridge and pantry memorized so I didn’t overbuy any particular thing. Except coconut milk, for some reason I would buy a can every single time I went to the store...

I began to adapt and skill built upon skill; I would finding sale items and remember which recipes I could use them in, decide on the fly whether or not to change the plan or save the find for next week. I suddenly knew what everything cost, and jumped on sales, stocking up for the future. What follows are all the little things I’ve learned along the way about how to find organic and local food at it’s freshest, cheapest, and greenest. Shoot me an e-mail with any tips you want to share and I’ll add them to the site!