The virtual world of grocery shopping

I survived the big move last weekend, and have been busy playing catch up at work this week. Needless to say, my diet during the move was less than something to be proud of. Let me put it this way: I never want to eat a slice of pizza again...or at least for a long while. ;) With all the chaos around the move, my Nibbles entries and experiment have suffered, but I am committed to getting things going again for next week! In the meantime, I've discovered something really innovative that would seem to make meal planning so much easier.

How do you feel about grocery shopping? Perhaps you feel nostalgic about the bright lights and endless aisles, or perhaps you feel a bit like me: too busy and too tired to enjoy the chaos that surrounds the experience. I found the remedy to top all remedies for this problem, one that actually SAVES money and time. This magical remedy comes in the form of online grocery shopping.

I have never been aware that I could place my order online and have my groceries delivered the next day, and what's even better, it only costs me 4 bucks for delivery. (I do get an extra 3 dollar discount from my job, but the regular delivery fee would be about 6 bucks.) Depending on how far away you are from the store and how precious your time is, this could either be a steal of a deal, or not worth the extra few dollars spent. I test drove this new method of shopping a couple of days ago on Vons.com (fyi: for your first order you get free delivery), and determined that it is most definitely worth the extra 4 bucks.

The process was incredibly easy and effortless. I could either search for an item (i.e. cheese, milk, eggs, etc..) or I could shop by aisle if I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for. The online store has everything the store itself has, including the savings. A very useful function is the express shopping list. This is where you can create any number of shopping lists and save them for future uses. You could create a basic list that includes those weekly things you know you'll always need, like: milk, bread, eggs, cheese, lunch meat, etc.. You can also create special lists for specific meals....wait a second, isn't that just like meal planning? ;)

Update: One thing I forgot to mention, which is absolutely amazing, is that you can view the nutrition facts and ingredients list for the products! This is a great tool for those with special dietary needs and/or for people that are wanting to plan their meals with these things in mind.

The goal for my next use of this service would be to do my meal planning for the week using the express list function and see how it works. I predict that it will work wonderfully, but I'll let you know how it goes.

Check it out for yourself in the meantime!