Cooking smaller portions:

Growing up in a large family we bought food by the bushel.  Seriously! We literally bought everything in bulk. When we took our trips to Walmart we filled two baskets: a couple gallons of milk, two dozen eggs, multiple kinds of cereal (which maybe we were allowed to choose), boxes of noodles, cheese (always the largest - the small might have lasted for one meal of quesadilla)...and still more.  The list was forever long, and yet my mother was still the most frugal of all women.  Often our Mrs. Baird's just down the street would have a sale, and we would go pile up on pizza bread, white/wheat bread, roles, cinnamon roles, and any other treats...as long as they were on sale.  Then later came the trips to Sam's and still later Costco's (as a replacement for the previous...we were biased, plus the pizza was better!).  When shopping was a day long experience as a kid...how do you transition to smaller portions?  How do you buy food for as reasonable a price, but at a great price...?



I love to cook, but I am still experimenting with trying to buy only what I will need.  I hate to throw food out.  My heart lurches within me as the food goes down the drain, thrown outside (if it is biodegradable) and still yet in the trash. 
A work in progress....