So far I’ve talked about leftovers, including food safety aspects and some ideas for using recipes as a means of capturing and using up leftovers. Once you eliminate that source of food waste, what else can you do?
Well I am a recovering gourmet binge-er. What that means is that I have an irresistible urge to create lavish, iron-chef-style multi-course meals every time I walk through a grocery store. I pass a particular piece of produce, or a certain cut of meat on display, and it calls to me. What I’ve learned from that is that I tend to spend a lot more on groceries when I do this, and I also have a tendency to create things that my kids will not, in fact, eat. So this is a behavior that I have had to learn to cut way, way back on.
I’ve decided that a good place to start is simply to make a list of the things that the family do like to eat, and use that as a basis for planning. Armed with that list, I then have to go over my own schedule, as well as my wife’s and the kids’, to figure out who is going to cook what meal, and when. With this rough calendar in hand, I can match meal plans to days and people.
It’s nice to have the local store sale papers in-hand when you do this part. You can plan your meals around whatever is on-sale, saving even more. And, of course, I can indulge my gourmet tendencies just as easily with the sale paper as I can in the store!
From there it’s a simple process of just listing the ingredients needed for each planned meal, and then compiling that into a grocery list and go shopping. The goal, of course, is only to have to go shopping once a week. When we get better at this, I would like to go to once every two weeks since that’s how we get paid. Some people could go as far as once per month if that worked better for them. The process is the same however often you do it. Just cutting out the every-other-day trip to the store will save a good bit of money as well as time you could better spend doing something else.
Once you have The List, you want to try very, very hard to stick to it. Resist the temptation to pick up six or seven other items while you are at the store, on impulse. That’s another big way I’ve found that I waste money in the store. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten to the checkout stand with 10 items when all I came for was a dozen eggs.
But at the same time, budget in a little extra to be able to take advantage of those little “easter egg” bargains that aren’t always advertised in the sale papers. These will usually be things that you can buy and save for later. A great example of this is one I used in a previous post. Stores tend to stock up on hams and turkeys during the holiday season. You can almost always buy these the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas for way less than they were the previous week. And hams especially you can freeze almost forever, it seems. So it’s a good idea to budget in that little extra right after those holidays and stock the freezer up with several of these that you can pull out and use whenever you need to stretch the grocery budget. Like I demonstrated in a previous post, you can get three or even four meals out of a large turkey, and you can do the same thing with ham.
One last note: Fresh produce tends to be seasonal, and the price varies inversely with the appropriate season. Planning your meals around those vegetables that are locally in-season will save some more money. If you need an out-of-season vegetable, consider buying frozen or canned if possible.
That’s about all I have to say about Meal Planning. Hopefully, you’ve found something valuable to take away from all this. For my next round of posts I’m thinking of doing a series on what is, in my family at least, a sadly neglected meal – Breakfast. Until next time, stop reading and go cook something!
