The month I bought pre-chopped veggies and wondered why my grocery bill doubled

I was spending $80 a week on groceries for just me and my dog, and I couldn't figure out where the money went. Then I noticed I was paying $4 for a bag of chopped onions when whole onions cost $0.50 each and last twice as long. Has anyone else found a good way to break the habit of buying pre-prepped stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

parker_bell1mo ago

I mean, you say "pre chopped veggies doubled my bill" like that's a bad thing, but have you thought about what your time is worth? Standing there crying over a $0.50 onion for five minutes sounds like a bargain until you realize you could have used those five minutes to actually cook something decent instead. Plus, the pre chopped stuff keeps surprisingly long if you actually use it fast enough, and let's be honest, most of us are buying whole veggies and letting them rot in the crisper drawer anyway. So really, paying extra for convenient veggies just means you're paying for the guarantee that you'll actually eat them before they turn into science experiments.

troy9961mo ago

Man, I gotta push back on this whole "your time is worth it" thing. Not everyone's time is some high value commodity that needs to be optimized like we're running a Fortune 500 company in our kitchens. Sometimes chopping an onion is the only part of cooking that actually feels like cooking, you know? Plus, those pre chopped bags always have that weird watery texture and they never taste as fresh as what you cut yourself. I'd rather spend five minutes doing it myself and save the extra cash for actual good ingredients. And honestly, if you're letting whole veggies rot in your fridge, that's a planning problem not a time problem.