I do my grocery shopping on Saturday for a week. I usually spend 10-15 minutes looking at the ad for my local grocery store to see what’s a good buy. Between that and meats already in my freezer, I come up with meals for a week. If I want to cook something that has ingredients that will spoil quickly, I cook those early in the week. If not, I usually just have a list on the fridge of meals for the week that I have ingredients on hand. On an average week, I cook about 50% of what was on the list. The rest, I use the ingredients and throw something together.

In the fall/winter, every month or so, I’ll do a batch of chili and freeze in containers. Since I do use stock every once in a while but can’t go through an entire container before it expires, I freeze the leftovers in ice trays and use as I need. The key to my freezer: a white board on magnets on my fridge that has a list of what’s in it, and for cooked food, when I put it in there.

Because I shop a week at a time, and only stock up on things that were good buys, I don’t have a ton of food in the pantry and less goes to waste. Some weeks, I’m only getting fresh veggies and such. It works out well for me, and I still get to try new recipes, and I have leftovers in the freezer when I don’t want to actually cook.

I don’t like to marathon cook, and often times food just doesn’t taste the same after it has been frozen for a month. I also try to do one soup on the weekend because those tend to get better with age and can be as easy or complex as I want. It’s also really easy just to add another container or quart of broth to ensure extra portions for lunch.