Planning. Planning. Planning.
In this “new normal” being prepared seems more important than every. Not quite as easy or safe to zip out the the supermarket and get that thing you forgot about for dinner. We are shopping bigger with the hopes that it lasts longer. But how to know if it will?
I think it is really useful to make a menu for the week… or two weeks between shopping. That way you can be mindful about spreading out certain item. For example, I generally do pasta twice a week, but don’t like to do it two days in a row. I can mix in once in a while dishes, like hamburgers, stir fry, tacos, and stroganoff. I can also plot when to use my veggies, ensuring that those that have to get used first do get used first. That way nothing goes bad.
When I’m not doing pasta or special meals, I generally think in terms of Protein, Veggie, and Starch. I think of it like one of those character flip books from when we were kids. (Below is the only pic I could find in short order online.) Remember those things where you could flip 1/3 of the page to end up with character with a cowboy head, ballerina body, and astronaut boots? You don’t have to plan the meal down to the smallest detail. Just have some potatoes, some rice, some bean, some fries. Have three of four veggies. And, have a bunch of different proteins in the freezer. Of course some things will go better with others. But there is no real disaster when you have a starch, a protein, and a veggie.
If you have salmon, sausage, chicken breasts, and ground beef in the freezer; brussel sprouts, asparagus, delicata squash, cauliflower in the fridge; and baking potatoes, roasting potatoes, good crusty bread, and some rice in the cupboard, then you have 16 different possibilities… if my math is right. So, you can plan but still have a bit of spontaneity. Happy cooking.
Standard Disclaimer: In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts muh, if at all. Please excuse typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is infinitely better than a perfect post that goes unfinished.
![](http://theinplace.net/images/flip-book.jpg")