Men-You!

I only go to the grocery store every 7-10 days, and it absolutely kills me to have to make a special trip for some ridiculous forgotten item. Those weekly trips are usually limited to perishables and quickly-consumed items, like dairy, produce, and bread. We raise our own beef, so thankfully I don't have to buy that. I only buy other poultry or meat if it's on sale. Then I buy it in bulk and freeze it. If you don't have a Food Saver or other brand vacuum sealer, I highly recommend investing in one.

There are a few things that we use A LOT, and I've found these items are way cheaper to buy at Sam's Club. These items include tomato sauce, green chiles, and pork. I will explain how we can make a $15 pork loin stretch for at least 10 meals in a later post. Other "staples" that I always keep on hand are canned mushrooms, crushed pineapple, bacon (I always keep at least 2 lbs in the freezer and one in the fridge), and as I mentioned in a previous post, a fresh bell pepper.

I know for a fact that 3 things would occur if I didn't make a weekly menu:
1. I would waste a ton of food
2. My family would probably starve, because we don't do much canned or boxed food, and my husband refuses to eat anything that was bought frozen (if I make it and freeze it, he'll eat it...usually).
3. We'd eat meat and bread for every meal.

I'll get into couponing in a later post, but first I want to talk about menus. It never fails that at about 5 pm, I'll hear someone say that they just don't know what to make for dinner that night. I very rarely, if ever, have that problem. And I have the grocery store's weekly flyer to thank for that! All of the answers to your weekly menu dilemma are right there in that little flyer!

Every Friday morning I sit down at the table with the Safeway flyer (our only grocery store), a pen, two pieces of paper, and two or three cookbooks that I have pre-selected based on a quick preview of the grocery flyer. I flip through it, see what's on sale, and pull out a couple books based on what sounds good. (I have most of my 50 or so cookbooks memorized and still only use about 10.) If you just don't feel like reading through cookbooks, you can go to http://www.allrecipes.com/ and use their recipe finder based on ingredients that you want to use.

Based on ingredients that are on sale, I choose recipes that have those ingredients in common. On one piece of paper, I make my grocery list (in order of aisle in the store of course). My menu, complete with page numbers and cookbook names, is on the other piece of paper. The menu goes on the fridge for the week.

Next, I take out anything from the freezer that is necessary in that week's menu. Don't wait to get something out of the freezer, or you will forget until you need it and then you won't have a meal. If you get everything out at once, it will not go bad within a week.

If you plan your meals right, you really don't get tired of eating the same common ingredients all week long. You can use one item as the main ingredient one night, and the next night use it in a side dish. Another way to change it up is to do meals from different world regions (i.e. Mexican, Italian, etc.).

You also won't waste nearly as much food as you would if you bought a whole jar of something for one meal, when you only needed a tablespoon.

I hope this helps those of you searching for an easier way to plan your meals so that you're next left hanging at dinner time with no dinner! On this note, guess I better go see what's cooking tonight!