Ok, tell me about planning, buying, and eating:

How does food/grocery shopping work at your house?

How often do you go grocery shopping?
Who does the grocery shopping?
How many people are you feeding?
Do you all eat meals together?
Is there a certain time you eat meals?
Where do you eat?
Do you plan weekly menus?
Do you eat out often?
What is the most important food for your family not to run out of?
Fresh baked cookies or store-bought?

I'll go first:

I have a general list of groceries I made years ago printed out. I go over that, and anything I know we need goes on my grocery list. Anything I'm not sure of goes on a '?' list. I ask everyone if there are any particular recipes they want ingredients for, then I get out my recipes and flip through for inspiration. Again, anything I know we need goes on the grocery list, anything I'm not sure of goes on '?'. As I go through the recipes I also make a list of the ones chosen, which we call our 'make' list, so anyone who feels like cooking or is hungry can check it and see what we have the ingredients for.

Ok - so we're at three lists: the grocery list, the '?' list, and the 'make' list. Jon takes the '?' list and goes through the pantry/fridge/freezer. We add whatever we don't have to the grocery list. Finally I ask everyone if there's anything in particular they want and if they think of anything not on the grocery list, I add it.

Most of the time, Jon does the grocery shopping.

We do one large shopping trip towards the beginning of the month and a medium-sized trip about halfway through the month, with smaller trips for things we forgot or decided we wanted in between if necessary. We have a number of farms nearby where we can get milk, fruits, and vegetables as needed.

We're generally feeding 5 people, but there's a very steady stream of visitors in and out of our kitchen. The fridge-full you saw in my other post will be feeding an extra four people this week.

We're all usually hungry at different times, and want different things. We do sometimes all eat together, but it's not a regular thing for us.

We eat all over the house, depending on what we're up to and whether we need a big flat surface (aka table).

We do plan what food we think we'll want to eat before we go shopping, but we don't plan what we'll eat on what day. We tend to look at cooking as something fun to do, so it's done whenever someone's in the mood, not necessarily at 'meal' times. We cook, tell everyone there's hot food, then store what's left to be heated up when it's wanted. I do pay attention to what we have available for different meals and the different tastes I know the kids have when I get the urge to cook, so that I'm not making a bunch of food no one will want to eat soon. And any of us is willing to cook if someone else is hungry for something in particular.

We very rarely eat out. A few times a year, mostly if we're on vacation.

It is very important not to run out of ice cream. You don't want to see most of us (I'm not naming any names) if we run out of ice cream.

We like packaged cookies just fine, but we usually have fresh cookies, with some extra cookie dough in the fridge.