Friday, August 07, 2009

Frugal Friday

My tip this week is simple. Eat what you have.

Despite the fact, I feel the need to go grocery shopping each week, we actually have enough food in our house for more than a week.

Before you shop, take a serious look at your cabinets, pantry, and freezer.
First, clean out anything that is expired or past its prime. And although I hate to throw anything away, if there is no way will will ever eat it, toss it or donate to a food pantry.

*Pick 5 items out and plan 5 meals around them (1 for each weeknight).

*Limit your shopping to milk, bread, and fresh produce for two weeks.

*Eat your leftovers (or tranform them into a new meal).

*Make an omelet! Breakfast, lunch, or dinner....scramble three eggs and fold in any leftovers or ANYTHING in your freezer (shrimp, chicken, sausage, veggies).

*Spend a day cooking and freeze. We have a lot of items that we buy for a recipe and then never get to. Spend a weekend day cooking 3 full meals. Put 1 in the fridge and two in the freezer.

2 comments:

Tracy said...

Love the idea! I have a fridge full of leftovers right now, and declared last night that I was done cooking for a while. It's leftovers for the weekend.

Another idea that you might like, we have started doing mega grilling. We'll marinate our chicken, chops and fish in different sauces. Then grill everything (it doesn't take much longer to grill 8 chicken breasts than 4). We let things cool, wrap in foil, place in freezer bags, and we're ready for easy meals during the week. We can just take them out and pop them into the oven to reheat them.

Jason said...

This is the greatest idea that most people (including me) forget about all the time. When I'm honest with myself and look around, I have SO MUCH in my freezer & pantry, but always go shop for new stuff.