Avoiding "Fresher's Panic" Part 2: Shopping solo

I’ve been back in my house for a week now, and the food I’ve eaten since then has been delightfully and almost disconcertingly healthy. I’m very lucky in that my new housemate doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, and she prioritises vegetables over meat. It’s remarkably easy to copy the eating habits of someone like that when you don’t want to be the only one leaving the house to do an “emergency chocolate run” or eating meat every single day.

It won’t stop me from baking, so don’t worry too much about me!

Since I moved in and waved goodbye to my parents, I’ve cooked Jamie Oliver’s amazing stew (recipe can be found here) for when my friend came over to keep me company and a return to an old favourite, ratatouille; and Cat has made an amazing bacon, leek and sweetcorn chowder as well as leek and potato soup that we had with Marmite and cheese on toast (the Marmite was purely because the cheese from the corner shop was offensively tasteless).

Today I decided that I really needed to do a food shop – I couldn’t keep on just expecting Cat to cook for me, it was probably my turn again! So two of my friends and I piled into my car and off we went to Asda to do the dreaded food shop.

I don’t know what impression people have of students (no, don’t answer that!) but when I went up to the till and started chatting with the lady about how busy it was, she rolled her eyes and laughed. “Oh, it’s all the students coming back and getting their parents to get the first shop in!” I smiled, amused, and said that I was coming back for my last year. She paused in scanning the smoked mackerel fillets (they’re going towards a firm favourite later this week, mackerel risotto) and looked at the pile of vegetables and distinct lack of ready meals – or, indeed, booze; and smiled.

Fresher’s Week starts up next week for us, so I’ve really been out of the student bubble for quite some time, but the one thing I never really forgot was the horror of finding how much food costs. I am aware that I am in the very lucky position of being able to choose to buy more expensive food rather than always having to settle for the cheapest possible version of things, but there are some things that I think can do a lot to ease the panic of doing that first solo food shop when you come to university.

Back all those many years ago when I was about to start university, my parents suggested I do something very sensible – it’s helped me work out budgets ever since. We sat down and drew up a hypothetical shopping list, including the kinds of things you’re unlikely to need to be buying every week or month, like coffee and pasta. By the end of it, I had a rough idea of how much money I’d be spending on an average month’s food; and now that I’m in my fourth and final year of university, there are some things about doing the Great Food Shop that have become clear to me. And, being the kind soul I am (stop laughing), I’m going to let you in on some of the things that kept me sane when I was doing these food shops.

Learn to prioritise what you save on and what you splurge on.

You probably don’t want to take the risk on value chicken fillets, and unless you know you’re going to wrap them up and freeze them immediately, I wouldn’t advise getting them when they’re yellow-stickered. Rice, on the other hand, is rice. Unless you want your grains of rice to be hand-picked and individually inspected, I can’t see any particular benefit to spending more on it.

The better quality it is, the less you’ll need

I’m thinking of cheese in particular here. You’ll need twice as much if you’ve bought it and it gave you change from a pound, so you’ll have to buy twice as much to get the same flavour as you’d get from something more expensive – where’s the real saving in that?

Look for deals…

Especially on things that tend to be very expensive or are particularly high-quality. Today in Asda, they were selling the Debbie & Andrew 97% pork sausages for £2. I bought three packs, wrapped them up in twos and put them into the freezer.  They’ll keep, and now I know that for quite some time I’ll have some there in case I suddenly have a yen for sausage and mash.

… but be sensible

If you’re being a bit brave and are trying something you’ve not had before, don’t buy six of them because they’re on offer. If you don’t like it, you’ll probably leave it languishing at the back of your fridge until it can walk out itself and throw itself into the bin.

Work out a menu for the week

It’s sounds incredibly OCD, and to a degree I suppose it is – but having a menu means that when you come to doing a shop, you have a basic idea of what you need to buy. Even if it’s a very general menu and you don’t stick to it entirely, it means that you will have things to make some form of a dinner. I sit down and make a menu on a weekly basis; and sometimes I don’t make what I’d had written down, but if I’ve bought, say, pasta sauce, lasagne sheets, mince and white sauce, even if I don’t want to make lasagne I could still make spaghetti Bolognese.

Always have these things in your cupboards

They are invaluable.

• Rice
• Pasta
• Couscous
• Dried herbs
• Stock cubes
• Chopped tomatoes

Other things might be on some people’s lists (baked beans for instance), but if you’ve got nothing but these things in your cupboard, you’d still be able to make pasta or rice with tomato sauce. Not particularly interesting, but it’s better than not eating anything.

Next up is how to make sharing a kitchen bearable – I’ll give you a hint, it’s all to do with a song by Aretha Franklin…