How Menu Planning Saved Us!

Every Sunday night or Monday morning I select which recipes I want to make for dinner that week. Lucky for me, I only cook 3 times/week and we eat leftovers. I prefer to go to the grocery store in the morning, which is ideal and low stress. No more weekend shopping and fighting the crowds!


When selecting recipes try to:

Make your meat dishes early in the week and transition to vegetarian or pasta dishes later in the week. This ensures that you use up the most perishable stuff first. I also like to have one "oh crap" meal on hand like a frozen meal in a bag in case a recipe goes awry or I don't feel like cooking.

Both Rachel Ray and Realsimple.com have week's worth of recipes and shopping lists on their websites.

Also begin to plan ahead for snacking and lunches. I always keep soup and sandwich stuff on hand for my lunches and I started buying fruit by quantity. 1 apple and 1 banana per day etc so I never have extras that spoil.
What has changed:

Less waste: Our fridge and cupboards are no longer cluttered with random leftovers, ingredientes that we forgot to eat or weird snacks that we don't like.
More organic fruits: I can purchase organic more (I've noticed they don't last as long as their waxed cousins) It has helped me not snack so much b/c I've only purchased a specific quantity of snack foods for each week.
Less stress, cuter waist!:  We are eating out A LOT less which is great for our wallets, health and we have more time b/c we're not driving around in search of dinner! You'll be able to hit the gym with the time saved!

If you find any great recipes, please share!  I like http://www.recipezaar.com/ with recipes filtered by highest rating.