How I Shop for Groceries – I Don’t Go to Town!

How often do you go food shopping for your family? Once a week? Do you stop by the store a few times a week? Here’s how we get our groceries for the week (or two or three) here in our Valley.

Come on along with me and see how I shop for groceries without going to town! And I do it all by canning and preserving our own food.

How to Shop for Groceries without Leaving Home

I have to remember to grab the green reusable bags. They are really strong and can hold a lot of weight.

 

 

And I can’t forget to bring back the recyclable glass containers from the kitchen pantry. I like to do this on a weekly basis. I’ll just exchange the jars.

 

Instead of taking the car and driving to the grocery store, I’ll go down the stairs to the cold room. We’ve got all we need down here.

 

 

 

OK, we’ll definitely need some veggies so let’s get some beans for starters. And some carrots, we love carrots!

We keep them in a pail of dirt and we trim the greens off low. Every now and then, we mist the dirt to keep it a bit moist.

We could also use sand instead of dirt to store the carrots.

 

 

 

Look how nice they still look. They are firm and they taste fresh and very sweet.

We have even left some in the garden, dug them up in April and ate them – they were delicious. Super sweet after all that winter cold.

 

 

We definitely need a bucket of potatoes and also a bunch of onions. When I pulled the potatoes out of the garden,  I sorted them right there in the field.

All our potatoes to be used as seed next year are sitting in separate bags on shelves in the cold room.

 

Keep your onions in a different room – they don’t get along too well with some other veggies in storage. Onions like it a little warmer than cold room temperatures.

Now that my bags are full, it’s time to head back upstairs and put the groceries away.

 

 

A Week’s Worth of Groceries:

Check out what I’ve gathered. See the nice large chicken on the left? I pulled him out of the freezer.

We raise chickens in the summer – by raising meat birds bred for fast growing. It’s an 8 week time commitment for us and we get a lot of chicken in the freezer.

 

 

We’ve got some vegetables:

4 pints green beans

1 pint canned carrots to use in stew or soup

2 pints canned beets

about 5 lbs potatoes

 

 

We’ve got some fruit:

2 quarts applesauce

2 pints Saskatoon berries

1 small jar Zuccini Butter (for on toast)

 

To have some goodies when company comes over for beers or a glass of wine:

2 jars red salsa and 1 jar green salsa

1 jar pickled garlic scapes and 1 pint pickled beets

 

 

 

More food for meals for us:

2 pints tomato sauce

1 pint pizza sauce

1 jar smoked trout

1 jar salmon

1 dozen eggs

1 quart pea soup

 

1 more dozen eggs

a good whack of garlic

a bunch of onions

 

Add the fresh goat milk that we get from one of our Valley friends and that should do us for at least a week. There is no need to go to town.

And if I need to get more groceries, I’ll just go back downstairs to our cold room. This is the BEST way to shop for groceries!

The bonus for us is that, by Growing what we Eat, we Know what we Eat! Healthy, Nutritious, Organic and very inexpensive!

(By the way, I took these pictures the last week in December.)

 

Building Your Food Storage

Want to learn about canning, freezing and pickling food for your family? 

Here is Preserving Food – all about food storage along with links to every food storage article here on the website.