A price book might help you figure out what is the better reliable source for things you typically buy -- don't get why you are double buying salad mix and cucumbers at two different places. Figure out what the best price is and buy what you need at that location (switching sources only for loss leaders).
Those little yogurt cups are ridiculously expensive. Understand why they are convenient for snacks (my kids like them that way, too), but no need to waste them on smoothies. Costco has great yogurt in large tubs. Or make your own with Costco organic milk. Costco should also have cream cheese (though stuff on sale at regular grocery stores might be cheaper)
If you like to bake you might try making crackers or muffins or something every week that your DH could take to work for backup snacks. I get the Wasa thing, though -- I keep a pack in my desk, too!
You guys are making me think a lot, which is exactly what I was hoping for! I will try to address some of the comments, and outline my plan at this point.
I bought salad stuff last week at costco because it is cheaper there, but this week I just went to kroger and paid more for less lettuce. (costco is a hike so I don't go weekly).
I know I should stop buying the tomatoes. The kids love them :( They eat gallons of cherry tomatoes all summer long, and I feel bad being a scrooge all winter long. I don't eat winter tomatoes at all (gag! no flavor!).
The crackers for DH will sometimes sit for months, and he doesn't have much fridge space (daily lunchbox only, can't store stuff long term) so he needs shelf stable stuff. He also keeps a can of soup and some dried fruit at work, and maybe rice cakes.
I ended up only using one yogurt cup for smoothies tonight. Will save the rest for kids' snacks. I hate buying the big tub of yogurt because we aren't huge yogurt eaters, unless it is the sugary delicious kind that we try to avoid. Has anyone ever bought a big tub of plain yogurt and froze it in smaller chunks for smoothies? Than I wouldn't worry about it going bad before we finished it.
I realllllllly need to do a price book, its like I have a mental block about it. For rice/quinoa/dry beans/etc I randomly buy them at either costco or a local wholesale store, and I don't really know which is cheaper, I do it based on habit. I feel good about it either way since I am saving a fortune over tiny boxes at Kroger, but I need to do better.
For canned beans, reading the comments here reminded me that I froze a few jars of cooked beans the last time that I made too many. Head meet desk. I just need to remember to thaw them and not reach for a can! I do almost always soak and cook my own dry beans, but there are always the occasional poor planning times that come up and I didn't soak them, or didn't make enough.
We buy unsweetened oat milk. We probably use a quart a week on average, and buying a half gallon of cow milk would be more and we would end up throwing it away before it was finished.
I think overall we waste very little except in cases of me over-serving the kids a lot of something they LOVED the week before, or in the case of trying a new recipe that ends up tasting awful. One thing I do need help with in the not wasting food arena, is what to do with frozen beets? I love them fresh, so I froze a bunch from the garden. They are so mushy and gross, DH and the kids won't touch them, and I am sick of choking them down. Can anyone think of recipes that I could incorporate them into that wouldn't be as noticeable? Or can you add them to any kinds of baked goods, etc?
For veggies, we buy fresh salad stuff, fresh onions, fresh potatoes and sweet potatoes, carrots. I did buy the brussels sprouts fresh but that is a rare treat. Everything else we get frozen veggies from costco (broccoli, green beans, corn, peas, mixed veggies). In the summer we just eat garden veggies. For fruit, we buy bananas and usually one or 2 other fruits a week. I try to keep that as minimal as possible, but get major revolt from the H if we run out of fruit, and then he stops at the expensive market on the way home from work and buys a 9$ bag of grapes. Wee supplement the fresh fruit with frozen blueberries from costco (I agree the price is still high for frozen, I try to ration them) and I canned tons of applesauce, sliced apples, sliced peaches, and I dried apples. The kids typically get 2 servings of (free from a farmer friend) apples a day and one or 2 fresh fruit servings a day. I am trying to work on cutting their fruit, as 4 servings a day seems ridiculous.
My plan going forward is to work on:
1. pricing our most common dinners out per serving, and eventually doing the same for breakfast and lunch
2. working on a price book for common purchases
3. Trying to cut some of the frivolous purchases (diet coke, snap pea crisps, individual yogurts) without feeling deprived, which I have a feeling will be impossible, as this is already a pretty big decrease from where we have been. But I will try to work on it more.