Meal planning

I am a compulsive list maker. I often make the same lists two or three times in a twenty four hour period. The act of writing things down helps me remember more than referring to a list that I've made. When I'm in school, taking notes is more important than studying words on a page. And, like the majority of learners, I retain better from hearing rather than reading (especially if I'm writing down what I hear). But, I digress from my intended topic.

I have spent significant cycles this summer to cleaning and organizing my house. One area that has been sorely in need of such attention is our food storage areas. We are like squirrels, constantly accumulating things and stashing them away (not just food, but we DO excel at food accumulation and storage).

I decided to clean a cupboard this morning that had a sticky shelf, due to a syrup leak. Once I got started on that shelf, I realized how much stuff was in that particular cupboard. In our defense, the cupboard is one of those stupid corner cupboards where you really can't see what's in the back half of it. However, I have an idea how to improve that situation as well.

Seeing all the food on the counter after I cleaned out the cupboard reminded me of all the aging food in our freezer. So, I made a resolution to plan our meals for the week so that each meal would include at least one item from what was currently in our freezer or that problematic corner cupboard. I made a meal plan, and then I made the grocery list.

The grocery list only had two new main course items on it (hot dogs and ground turkey and macaroni - for a casserole I plan to make tomorrow while I'm working from home). The rest of our main courses would be from our stores. I figure we'll need to do this for about three weeks to turnover all the aging food from the freezer and cupboard.

We also have a large pantry at the top of our basement. This one gets turned over pretty well since we can see everything that's in it. I really LOVE this pantry. (Thank you, Goblin, for building it for me.)

I won't bore you with my meal plan for the week. It's not like they are supremely healthy or anything. It's oriented towards a different goal: getting our food storage under control.

Who knows, maybe our grocery bills will be a little smaller for a few weeks.