I have, slowly but inescapably, been coming to the conclusion that I am rather weird. The latest evidence for this came while reading the introduction to one of my new cookbooks, in which Tom Kerridge made a comment about most people "going to the supermarket once a week to pick up some essentials" - the upshot being that each day they then look in their fridge/pantry and try to decide what they can make, and what they would like to make, with what they have in stock.
Conversely, my shopping list starts by making a list of the main meals we're going to have, looking up the required ingredients, and then getting those. There aren't very many days when we don't know exactly what we're having for dinner. (Although on some occasions the board says "takeaway" - but that doesn't really count.)
I must admit that I find the other approach really quite strange. Firstly because it must surely lead to times where there really isn't much, if anything, that the person is both able to make and would like to eat. Secondly, because it must surely lead to greater food waste - once bought, a lot of these 'essentials' start to go off, which means either a race to get them used up, or a failure to do so. (Then again, we have our own battles with food waste, largely because dairy, in particular, comes in certain sizes and our recipes call for certain other sizes.)
But I guess that's the point: people think in different ways. And, crucially, it's not that people have different opinions, where they analyse the facts and come to a different conclusion. Rather, people think in completely different patterns, meaning that even if they come to the same conclusion there is no guarantee that they could explain their thinking to one another.
Of course, that's not a new conclusion - diversity has been a big thing, especially in tech, for at least a decade now, largely because of exactly that same reasoning.
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