Living in the countryside can be very relaxing, but also can bring some problems people in bigger villages and cities don’t think about. One of the problems is grocery shopping. Most people buy their groceries when they need them or do their shopping weekly. 
Since we don’t own a car and we live on a big hill going shopping weekly isn’t really an option for me. I can carry up to 4kg of groceries up the hill and let’s face it many small packages come up to 4kg in a second. This is the reason why I do my shopping once a month. Luckily one of our stores has a home delivery so I order all my things online and they deliver them to the house, we can pay any way we want, and 90% of the times groceries are better than the ones in the store itself.

I order everything I need. Food, drinks, dog food, toiletries…basically everything except clothes, shoes, and make-up. Our monthly cost for all this is around €340 which is around half of the Croatian average wage. Usually, when I say how much I spend on my monthly groceries people look at me in shock saying that it’s too much, mostly because I can’t explain to them that I don’t buy any groceries during the week. The only thing I buy extra sometimes is lettuce and that is only while the garden is out of season. 
I usually get the question: “But you buy bread every day?” 
No, I don’t. I don’t buy bread at all. I bake my own bread every 2 days, and I love to eat toast so I buy packs of Bruschette with spicy vegetables and cover the bread category.  

Today was the monthly shopping day so this is how it looks:
I order my things a couple of days earlier so I could get the early delivery which usually gets here around 8:30. Before the delivery, I take Srećko for a walk, put the washing in the washing machine, prepare the boxes that I need to return to the seller, remove everything from the counters, make room in the refrigerator, and the freezer and wait for the delivery.

The process of delivery usually takes around 15-20 minutes due to the amount of boxes. All the stuff comes in cardboard boxes which we sort around the yard and after paying take to the second floor. 
I usually order on Saturdays morning because usually, that is the day my hubby is home and can help me carry the boxes to the house, if he has to work Saturdays then I order on Friday morning because he usually works 2nd and 3rd shifts. 

Once I empty the boxes I store them in the basement and return them next month. We get money for each returned box, but they are so good and strong I leave a bunch of boxes at home. They are used for everything, from storing to carrying wood to the house. 

Groceries are packed into categories and it’s easy to store them. Freezer food is in bags that are taken out of the cooler completely frozen and are stored in the freezer first. 
I buy lots of dairy products: 12 liters of milk, yogurts, sour cream, cheese, milk spreads, and cheese spreads. I also get flour for bread, pasta( only one pack this month I have 3 packs at home), quickly made soups, and pickled jars. This time I bought cucumbers because I have homemade peppers, chili peppers, beets, and pattypans. The cucumber season was very bad so I save the pickled cucumbers for salads because they taste better than the bought ones.

When it comes to vegetables I buy lots in January because we eat lots of vegetables. We eat them every single day. I cook every day and most meals are vegetable-based. The only “meat day” is usually Sunday when I bake meat or make some “junk food” like homemade pizza or hamburgers.
Our garden would have to be 3 times bigger to have enough vegetables the entire year, also I would need to buy a freezer the size of the room to store everything. 
I still have kale, beans, carrots, garlic, and a bunch of mushrooms that we stored from the garden and woods but I had to buy onions, potatoes which I don’t grow, zucchinis, peas, spinach, sour cabbages, champignons for pizza, lettuce and some green beans for soup. I also bought a big amount of leek because it was on 60% sale and I bought a big cabbage head for cabbage pasta. Of course, I also buy fruits because bananas, tangerines, and pears don’t grow in my orchard(yes pears refuse to grow on this side of the hill). 

3rd part of my monthly shopping is deli foods and meat. My hubby takes sandwiches to work so I need a good amount of salami and sausages to make them throughout the month. Also in Croatia, most people eat cooked lunch and sandwiches for dinner so this is also our dinner if there are no leftovers from lunch for dinner. I get some cooking sausages which I use in vegetable stews instead of meat and also some pork and beef dices that can be used in stews and gravy 

When it comes to drinks I buy few bottles of fizzy drinks which we have on Sunday, beer for my hubby, and lots of vitamin fizzy tablets. Then there is also vinegar, salt, rice, spices, other cooking ingredients if I need them( I didn’t get any this time), toiletries, freezing bags, trash bags, cleaning supplies, and food for Srećko. This time he didn’t need any food but you can see the number of different treats he gets on the left of the photo.

This is pretty much everything I buy. 
When I get everything out of the bags I store things that can be stored immediately, unpack the ones that take too much space, and start storing vegetables and meat. 
I don’t cook meals but rather store ingredients separately because I don’t have room for many small boxes. I have to unpack the meat and move it in the freezing bags to have more room. I also slice all the mushrooms and zucchinis and store them raw. When it comes to vegetables I boil all my vegetables for a minute, cool them, and store them in the freezer. 

I have to do all this because my freezer is too small to do it anyway other than that. My kitchen is in the attic space so I could buy the only a freezer up to 160cm tall. This size was the biggest one we could find and after the shopping, it is completely full. 
The first two shelves contain opened packages of vegetables and groceries.

The third box is for meat, 5th for the deli.

4th for vegetables and the last one for already cooked leftovers that I use when I don’t feel like cooking. Which as you can see isn’t often because the box is completely full.

It usually takes me up to 2 hours to sort out and store everything that can be stored as it is. Then I run out with Srećko again, take the laundry to dry, and return to the kitchen to slice and cook the vegetables. I usually finish around 2pm.

Of course, somewhere in between, I have to make lunch depending on my hubby’s schedule. If he’s home then lunch will be around 1pm, if he’s working morning or night then around 3pm and if he works in the afternoon then everything waits in boxes until I make lunch or I get up at 4am to cook it before the delivery.

I try to plan my meals so that I can cook something quick. Today it was spinach pasta, which is done in roughly 30 minutes(pasta cooking time + time to cook spinach bechamel).

When everything is cooked, cooled, and stored I empty the trash which fills up with bags and containers, wash everything that was used to cook vegetables, clean all the counters, walk Srećko another 3 times in between, and then I’m roughly done with everything. This is usually in the evening when it’s just the perfect time to fold laundry, take Srećko for another walk(yes Srećko has at least 6 pee walks a day), and have dinner. 

Doing monthly shopping certainly takes lots of planning, storing and cleaning after but for now, it seems like the best option. Each time of the month I have everything I need and with planned meals I don’t have problems with the lack of ingredients which is perfect, especially in winter, when due to the snow we can be stuck in snow for days and sometimes even a whole week.