Fasteryoufool

A Brita filter is cheaper and lighter. Dunno about marine fish, but I always gave my freshwater fish filtered water with some chlorine conditioner and they did fine.

I guess I'm an anomaly here. I built a big cargo trailer and do a monthly shopping trip on my bike for the staples. I've had as much as 300 lbs. in/bungeed on top of my trailer. I was moving slow coming home (5-7 mph) and I did trash a set of bearings doing that much weight, but I always do one big trip. I do as somebody else suggested, and I get my meat/frozen veggies/frozen juice etc. last, and pack it all together to increase mass and slow down the thawing process.

Roody

To me, a giant internet food warehouse that delivers my food is the worst possible nightmare when it comes to getting food. I like to know who grew my food, I like to examine it carefully before I buy it, and I like to carry it home on my own back. I am hoping for a more decentralized food system for a lot of political, economic and environmental reasons. None of that would be possible with a computerized home delivery system.

Robert Foster

Once again I sort of understand for a tactile person it would be hard to take but look at how adapted you have become to computer communication? No more late nights at the coffee shop discussing these issues with like minded people at a small table in the corner. But for much of society it would be better than 1000s of people driving to the store when a truck or other delivery system could be used to deliver the food to your door.

The internet has hammered big box stores in clothes sales, books, even you local video store is being done away with by self service Red boxes and home delivery net flicks. Most of the video stores in our area hav closed their doors.

What we are talking about is shopping stratagies that limit our use of a car and the internet could be one. I am like you when it comes to shoes, I could never buy bike shoes online because no two seem to fit the same way same with street shoes. But with name brand packaged foods I could easily see having them delivered. After all I have ordered Pizza for delivery. Some people don't like delivery Pizza or Chinese food either.

memnoch_proxy

I'd agree that having a list and sticking to it allows me to speed thru the supermarket. Eating a diet packed with veggies, getting a CSA, swinging by the farmers market--I'm constantly stopping by places to get veggies. But our family organizes a food calender often a month into the future. We find a lot of organic bulk food on Azure and order it over the Internet, too. Frequent shopping comes with constant cooking and living (relatively) free from preprocessed foods.

I also feel that the time spent shopping is like a little vacation and also a way to demonstrate engaged living. I vote with my dollar. I look forward to seeing which checkers at the supermarket I can enroll into a Bike Conversation. I look forward to chatting with other enthusiastic cyclists at the bike rack at the store. (More fun than changing diapers, right?)

Newspaperguy

I recently connected with a program called Healthy Harvest Box. This program supplies me with an assortment of fresh, locally-grown fruits and vegetables every two weeks. (I could set it up to be weekly or monthly or every three weeks, depending on my needs.) The cost is around 25 per cent less than buying at the grocery store and I know the food was grown in this region and not trucked over long distances. If I want to customize the order or add free-range eggs or honey, I can easily do that too.

Despite this program, I'm still at the store every few days for those items not supplied in the Healthy Harvest Box. Meat, dairy, dried beans and lentils, vegetables not included in the list and any other grocery items are still needed.

robi

Harvest Box, then seems to be the same as CSA, Community Supported Agriculture. We did that for a while and loved it. It was fun meeting the veggie guy at the weekely pick ups - to save on gas for the delivery, we all had our boxes dropped off at our kids' school... hte farmer would set up a little stand too! so there was a chance to buy even more from him and talking to him was great.

Here in Hungary there are still buthcer's shops everywhere. We do not go there often because the wife likes the grocery store for several reasons, but I personally prefer buying meat form meat guys....

I have bought fresh meat way off in downtown and stopped to run errands on teh way home with it... meaning getting the meat back to the fridge sg like 2 hours after buying... in summer! There has never been a problem doing this!

Robi

Torrilin

Welp, there's only a couple places in town where 4000miles could be going to school. If he's at the University, the "best grocery" will depend on what his degree program is. If you're mostly at the hospital, there's a Copp's and a Whole Paycheck and Sentry foods out that way. Copp's is most bike accessible. If he's more towards the Union, TJs, Capital Center, the Willy St Co-op and the Copp's out back are easiest. Edgewood College is right across the street from TJs, so it is vaguely stupid to go elsewhere. MATC has a couple locations, but they're all pretty suburban, and you would end up with Issues if you tried to be car-free. (most of those issues would involve winter and lack of bus service tho, not the grocery situation)

But if he is used to doing a giant Woodman's stockup once a month... that's gonna suck by bike no matter where he goes to school. You end up with a choice of a 16 mile round trip or a 12 mile round trip. Wal-mart is even worse. Most of the time involved is going to be ride time tho... and you can do big stockups perfectly well without it. It just involves knowing which stores stock what.

So in his case, I don't think the issue is time. I suspect he'd do a lot better if he gave more detail so rockmom and I could figure out how he's managing to shoot himself in the foot. Better yet, post a flailing message on bikies (the Madison bike advocacy mailing list) or the Madison livejournal community.

RadSkrimz

My roommate and I are vegan, and we typically shop for groceries every 2 days or so depending on who's coming over our house because we have friends that like to hang out and have meals with us. The both of us have messenger bags, he has a Chrome and I have a Timbuk2, and we also use those reusable grocery totes that we clip onto our messengers for the lighter stuff if we don't have room in our bags. Because of our diet we mostly buy veggies and fruits so we can fit a lot into our bags (provided our u-locks don't crush our food!) and if we're carrying heavier/bigger things we pack those into our bags first and everything else we just throw on top of it or into our totes and clip it onto our bags. So far this method has been working great for us (we don't have panniers but we should probably get some haha), we always do our grocery shopping together so we can carry a lot of stuff, discuss what we need and don't need for the next few days, split the bill, and it's a lot more fun biking around with a buddy. Oh, and we live 2 blocks away from a Trader Joe's and there's also another specialty grocery store near us. We could walk, but who wants to walk when you can bike? As for grocery lists, we don't really need them since we shop pretty often, but school is starting soon so that means we're going to be a lot more busy and we'll have to coordinate who will go and get what on whatever day.

gerv 

RadSkrimz, sounds like a real adventure. Hope your shopping trips are always fun. Sometime I wish I was going to school again.

bmclaughlin807

Time of day is really important in determining how long you wait... I shop mainly at Winco... I like to drop by there right after dropping the kids off at daycare... there's almost never a line at that time of day (7:30 or 8 AM... people going to day jobs are at work, stay at home people are still at home) ... zip in, grab a load of groceries, zip out. Takes about 20 minutes longer than the trip to drop the kids off would anyway. That will have to change once I have a job, but it works well for now. The WORST time is right after work... even with most or all checkouts open it can be a 10-15 minute wait to check out.

My fiancé likes to shop for the month... she makes up a huge shopping list, then I grab a big chunk of it each day. By the end of the week I have the vast majority of the shopping done for the month, then I just grab a few perishables. If one of our neighbors happens to be going to that store, they usually offer us a ride... then we can grab even more at once, making fewer bulk trips for me on the bike.

We've been trying a lot of the bulk items at the grocery store (pastas, spices, mixes, etc) and have only found one thing so far that wasn't as good as the packaged varieties... most of them have been not only considerably cheaper, but we liked the flavors better as well.

Robert Foster

We love Winco. The bulk section is the great. I even get my honey, rice, tea and coffee in the bulk section and they have bulk spices, dried fruit and nuts. My food bill dropped 20 to 35 percent just learning to shop in bulk.

Newspaperguy

For me, time of week is much more of an issue. Saturday mornings are generally crowded with families getting their supplies for the week. Thursdays during the day are also crowded since the stores offer a discount for seniors on Thursdays.

Cosmoline

Farmers markets are excellent. The BOB trailer with a rubbermade tote will carry this much: