Over the weekend, I continued to clean out my kitchen cabinets. The task is finally complete. I didn’t have to throw out too much, but I was very disappointed in all the things that I inadvertently let go bad (or at least were past the expiration date – and I’m not that adventurous of an eater). One easy solution to this is better organized cabinets. I’m pretty good about that, but while sharing space with my roommate, things got a little crazy. There isn’t a pantry in my kitchen, so food is in the cabinets, which is good and bad. Unfortunately, it meant some things got shoved to the back and I wasn’t sure they were there.
So now everything is completely organized. Foods are grouped together and everything is organized in the cabinets in date order so the oldest stuff gets used first. I am going to have to try to plan meals around some of those items.
I really want to get better about meal planning. I see all these great printable planners and I think “Hey, I should do that.” And then I never do. Meal planning is such a great idea, but it’s pretty hard to meal plan for one. So many recipes make way too much. Or they’re just too much work. I don’t mind a lot of work if I’m cooking for someone else, but if it’s just for me, I just want to cook and be done.
What are your meal planning tips? I think even planning two or three meals a week would be great.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
I try to cook a good meal on Saturday and Sunday and make enough for leftovers for the week. I prepare my leftover containers immediately after the food has cooled and usually by the end of my weekend cooking I’ll have four or five bowls of leftovers. I’ll eat those as the week rolls on and usually by the end of the week it has all been used between taking lunch to work and eating it at night. If I had to rely on cooking during the week for my leftovers, I’d likely be buying quite a bit of take out.
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.
I agree! Cooking for one sucks. I think that’s why I avoid meal planning also.
I’m also single, and cooking for one is kind of challenging. But I love to cook, and can’t afford to eat out for dinners (I get to do that for lunch on my office tab several times a week), so I get to cook. But I’m not fond of leftovers, so I do a lot of freezing of leftovers.
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.