Grocery Lists Gone Wild: Tales from the Kitchen Trenches
- epons03
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read

Picture your average grocery list. Is it for the week? Just a couple of days? A special dinner? Maybe you’re whipping up one dish, or going full-on meal prep mode (props to you, by the way!). Now multiply that by ten… maybe twenty. Welcome to my life for a weeklong cookbook photoshoot: shopping, storing, and prepping ingredients for roughly 45 recipes I’ve probably never encountered before.
Finding a system took a fair share of trial and error, but now I’ve got it dialed in: an Excel sheet broken down by grocery store and aisle, plus a master document with every recipe for the week. From that chaos emerges something beautiful – glorious, organized lists that actually make sense (most of the time).
Then the patterns start to reveal themselves and the fun begins. A cookbook with zero avocados – what? It can totally happen. A baking-heavy cookbook? Prepare for four dozen eggs and eleven pounds of butter. An Italian-themed one? You better believe there will be a dozen kinds of pasta and at least three types of rice for risotto.
Shopping itself is its own adventure: two to five grocery stores, a few mail orders, farmers’ markets, and sometimes a quick farm visit (thankfully, I’ve got that option). Because I work with cookbook authors from all over the country, I’m often cooking out of season and hunting for ingredients that aren’t on my usual shopping route. While I may wrestle with an elusive ingredient, rest assured, it doesn’t mean that the reader will, at least not year-round.
By the time all the shopping is done, my car resembles a mobile walk-in fridge with coolers stacked in every available space, layered grocery bags, and the occasional rogue baguette sticking out for dramatic effect. Inside the stores, I’ve built a bit of camaraderie with butchers and cheesemongers, who good-naturedly entertain my oddly specific requests. These exchanges have become as much a part of the process as the ingredients themselves and all part of the delightful commotion behind each shoot.
It’s messy. It’s ridiculous. It’s gloriously chaotic. And by the time everything is prepped, stored, and ready for the shoot, I can’t help but smile because while the final photos might look effortless, they come wrapped in hours of adventure, a little bit of mayhem, and a whole lot of love for the food (and the story) behind it.
