No. It's sensible. This is a supermarket we're talking about here when I say I make a list.
For other kinds of shopping, I'm elderly, so more in the divestment stage except maybe books, which in my family we swap around like they're hot potatoes. Giving one to a nextgen usually guarantees it lands with a friend and so exits the local circuit. I still love keeping up with Apple gear offerings; outside of that and the periodic need for nailing down another "clunker" to park in the driveway, I'm mostly an ex-consumer save for replacement of utility items, and kind of like it that way.
First, even if you stuck to your grocery list 100% of the time, how did you arrive at choosing which brands or products you were going to choose?
Trial and error. More than 60 years of learning to keep a pantry of staple goods from way back when I was a kid. Barley, dried lentils etc. I regard as generic foods, so brand doesn't matter to me. I cook from scratch, mostly using vegetables and grains; how many varieties of kale or quinoa do I need? There are often more than four kinds of most veggies arrayed in the market anyway. There are some South and East Asians living in the area so there are more kinds of rice there used to be. Because I'm old and remember days when one ate what was in season, I remain delighted at the cornucopia of stuff the produce aisles in a supermarket stock now all year round.
Do you buy the exact same things and only those things ever?
Yes pretty much, although clearly not all at once. I know when the sales are on staple and household items, and aside from that it's pretty much produce, dairy, and either chicken, fish or lamb. If I want some lamb or some cheese, and canned tomatoes are on sale, I'll defer the tomatoes because I keep roughly a case on hand. It's rare I mess up and actually run out of something. Avoidance of that means opening the one before the spare and immediately putting the item on "the list". I have to do this because of the bad roads in winter anyway. In the early fall, I go through everything on hand vs a list of what I expect to be in the pantry and start topping it off for winter when I shop even less often than monthly.
Do you never try anything new?
In the supermarket? New stuff is usually new processed stuff. So, no, not usually. I try new recipes, definitely, but again, the ingredients are basic. Once in a great while I might have to add something different to a regular order from Penzey's where I get spices and herbs. That would be from encountering the ingredient in a recipe I haven't made before.
If I see some new little hot peppers or salad greens they don't usually stock I might take them instead of some deferrable item that was on the list. I don't always buy organic but will look for it in certain vegetables. They can be pricey so I'll forget about restocking paper towels that week or make some similar adjustment (hence my tendency to consider "a spare" as two spares, not one).
Do you not watch videos on YouTube?
Not very often. I sometimes click on video links in these forums. Otherwise I avoid news video clips since I'm usually listening to music and can read faster than i can watch soundbite videos. I will occasionally look up a music video to illustrate something I want to post about in these forums. As I've said often before, I'm in the last generation that learned to read before laying eyes on "moving pictures" and that early influence has informed much of my entertainment and newsgathering choices.
