Before we get into the nitty gritty of meal planning, there are some other things that you ought to do, all of which will make it easier on you when we get into the “hard stuff.”
Item the first: Completely inventory your pantry, refrigerator(s), and freezer(s). There are bazillions of printables available on Pinterest to help you with this. My favorite is the Shop Your Stock worksheet, which can be found Here. Make plenty of copies, and be detailed, e.g. Petite diced tomatoes, 14.5 oz can, and how many. Pay close attention to best by and expiration dates. Use This website to help you decide if they’ve been sitting around too long and need to go, or if you can still use them.
Unless, like me, you have a FoodSaver, you’re probably going to discover a lot of freezer burn when you get into those freezers. It won’t hurt you to to eat freezer burned things, but the taste and texture may not be what you like. You DO date your frozen items when you plop them in the freezer, don’t you? You don’t?!?!?!!! You’d better start. The average American household wastes more than $2500.00 worth of food every year. That’s a good chunk of a nice vacation for a family of four. Time to start taking actions that will cut down on that wastage. That FoodSaver, at $130.00, may have been some of the best money we ever spent.
I go grocery shopping every seven days, and buy what I need for meals for the NEXT seven days, based on my meal plan. As soon as I get home, I portion out the perishables and vacuum seal them. This is after I do any prep work necessary, such dicing, chopping, or cutting meat as directed by recipes. That way, I have less to do on cooking day. Of course, life happens, and the best laid plans of mice and humans get derailed sometimes, and you have to change the meal plan. I try not to change by more than a day or so, so that my ingredients will still be fresh.
Item the second: Planning meals based on what you have on hand. Pillsbury.com, MyRecipes.com and TasteofHome.com all have a feature that will let you enter ingredients that you have on hand, and they will suggest recipes that you can make with them. I try to shop my pantry once every two or three months to cut down on wastage and free up space for new items.
Item the third: time and effort savers for the rest of your journey. I can’t suggest strongly enough that you invest in an app or two to help you out in this process. I highly recommend Copy Me That for a first step. It is a “recipe box” (I have 3,000+ recipes in my database), a meal planner, and a grocery list generator all in one. The free version is all right, but I wanted more features, so I spent $25.00 for a lifetime subscription.
Here is my Recipe home page .
Meal plan page
Shopping List page This is the list that I shopped from today. The checked off items at the bottom of the list are those that I have in the pantry and don't need to purchase. I have a LOT to say about comparison shooping, to enable you to stay within your food budget (more on that, too), so I will leave you to think about this for a day or so.
Questions, please leave comments and I will get back to you.
Thanks for reading.
Item the first: Completely inventory your pantry, refrigerator(s), and freezer(s). There are bazillions of printables available on Pinterest to help you with this. My favorite is the Shop Your Stock worksheet, which can be found Here. Make plenty of copies, and be detailed, e.g. Petite diced tomatoes, 14.5 oz can, and how many. Pay close attention to best by and expiration dates. Use This website to help you decide if they’ve been sitting around too long and need to go, or if you can still use them.
Unless, like me, you have a FoodSaver, you’re probably going to discover a lot of freezer burn when you get into those freezers. It won’t hurt you to to eat freezer burned things, but the taste and texture may not be what you like. You DO date your frozen items when you plop them in the freezer, don’t you? You don’t?!?!?!!! You’d better start. The average American household wastes more than $2500.00 worth of food every year. That’s a good chunk of a nice vacation for a family of four. Time to start taking actions that will cut down on that wastage. That FoodSaver, at $130.00, may have been some of the best money we ever spent.
I go grocery shopping every seven days, and buy what I need for meals for the NEXT seven days, based on my meal plan. As soon as I get home, I portion out the perishables and vacuum seal them. This is after I do any prep work necessary, such dicing, chopping, or cutting meat as directed by recipes. That way, I have less to do on cooking day. Of course, life happens, and the best laid plans of mice and humans get derailed sometimes, and you have to change the meal plan. I try not to change by more than a day or so, so that my ingredients will still be fresh.
Item the second: Planning meals based on what you have on hand. Pillsbury.com, MyRecipes.com and TasteofHome.com all have a feature that will let you enter ingredients that you have on hand, and they will suggest recipes that you can make with them. I try to shop my pantry once every two or three months to cut down on wastage and free up space for new items.
Item the third: time and effort savers for the rest of your journey. I can’t suggest strongly enough that you invest in an app or two to help you out in this process. I highly recommend Copy Me That for a first step. It is a “recipe box” (I have 3,000+ recipes in my database), a meal planner, and a grocery list generator all in one. The free version is all right, but I wanted more features, so I spent $25.00 for a lifetime subscription.
Here is my Recipe home page .
Meal plan page
Shopping List page This is the list that I shopped from today. The checked off items at the bottom of the list are those that I have in the pantry and don't need to purchase. I have a LOT to say about comparison shooping, to enable you to stay within your food budget (more on that, too), so I will leave you to think about this for a day or so.
Questions, please leave comments and I will get back to you.
Thanks for reading.
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