Monthly grocery listમહિનાનું કરિયાણું

Why this page exists

Stocking a month of groceries usually means assembling the list in the shop from memory, and memory is selective. The oil runs out on the fifteenth, the sugar sits unopened for three months, and atta bought in bulk picks up weevils before the summer is over. In a new household, or one where the number of people has just changed, there is no feel for the quantities at all, only a vague sense of buying too much or too little. This page asks one question, how many people eat at home, and works out a month of eighteen staples as a starting list to adjust.

How to use it

• Treat the output as an average, not a verdict. A house with teenagers, one where lunch is eaten at work, or one that eats more rice than rotli will all land somewhere else. Run the list for one month before deciding it is wrong.
• At the end of that month write two lines: what ran out early and what was left over. Change only those items next time. After two or three rounds the list is yours rather than an average.
• Vegetables, milk and tomatoes here are monthly totals, not a single trip. Nine kilos of vegetables is not meant to come home at once; the figure is there so the monthly cost and the weekly shopping can be planned against something.
• Round to the pack sizes you can actually buy. If the ghee works out to 350 grams, buy the half-kilo tin and carry the rest into next month rather than trying to match every number exactly.
• Buy the wheat monthly but get it ground in two lots instead of one. In a Gujarati summer and through the monsoon, that single habit prevents more waste than anything else on this list.

Buying monthly without the waste

Waste usually comes from the order you do things in, not the amount you buy. Decide roughly what the month will be cooking, then write the list at home; a list built while standing in the shop fills up with whatever is in front of you. Empty out your containers and subtract what is already there, or you end up with three packets of coriander-cumin powder and no mustard seed. Never pour new stock on top of old: tip the container out, wipe it dry, and refill so the older stock sits on top and gets used first. And a large pack of something you use a hundred grams of a month is only cheap until you throw half of it away.

What to buy monthly, weekly and daily

Monthly: the things that keep. Rice, dals and pulses, oil, ghee, sugar, jaggery, salt, tea, rava and poha, and whole spices. Weekly: things that last eight or ten days. Onions, potatoes, garlic and ginger, lemons, firm vegetables like cabbage and dudhi, and ground flour. Daily or every second day: anything that wilts. Leafy greens, coriander, tomatoes, bhindi, milk and curd. The eighteen items here are monthly consumption figures, so for shopping purposes divide the vegetable, tomato and milk numbers by four to get a week's worth. Keeping a running note on the fridge of what is finishing beats reconstructing the whole list in the shop.

Storing through a Gujarati summer and monsoon

There are two enemies, humidity and heat. Flour, dals and spices belong in genuinely airtight containers, and the containers do not belong above the stove or beside the sink where steam reaches them. A wet spoon going into a jar does more damage in a second than a month of warm weather. The old habits still work: dried red chillies or neem leaves in the pulse tin, a lump of asafoetida or a couple of cloves in the flour. In the monsoon salt and ground masalas draw moisture and cake, so keep a small working jar and leave the main container sealed. When a dry sunny day comes, spread the pulses out in the sun and let them cool fully before storing.

Per-person figures do not scale in a straight line

A two-person household tends to use more per head than a six-person one, and the reason is in the cooking rather than the appetite. A tempering is a tempering whether it is for two people or six, so the oil and spices barely halve. Dal and sabzi are awkward to make in very small quantities, so small households either cook more than they need or throw a little away. Large households get the opposite benefit: one round of cooking feeds everyone. So if you are two, nudge the oil, ghee and spice figures up slightly from what the calculator gives, and if you are six or more, the grain figures will hold while the spices can come down a little.

Questions people ask