talk to me about meal planning

luciagdelopez

For some reason I just cant get into a rythm with this.  Do you try new things or stick to stuff you are good at?

Where do you get ideas for new recepies from?  

I would love to be able to freeze meals as well but I am so clueless on what containers to buy.

TCsbride

I actually had a friend ask me about this a couple weeks ago so I wrote a really detailed blog post about it. I'd link you directly to it, but I can't get to my blog from work. It's about four or five posts back though and the link to my bloggy is in siggy. HTH!

penguinem

TCsbride:

I actually had a friend ask me about this a couple weeks ago so I wrote a really detailed blog post about it. I'd link you directly to it, but I can't get to my blog from work. It's about four or five posts back though and the link to my bloggy is in siggy. HTH!

Cool blog, and helpful too! Thanks  

heleneau

i'm not super good at it but i'll give you some examples...

 

the other day i bought bananas and in the heat they got really ripe before we could eat them all...so i popped them in the freezer knowing that i could make banana bread with them...i made the banana bread and a few days later it was feeling a little stale...so last night i turned it into banana bread pudding!

if i cook something with an ingredient i make sure to use the rest another night.

i made lasagna rolls and had left over ricotta so i made a cold "salad" with ricotta and pepperoni and mozz and tomatoes and olives

i used the same olives and made grilled chicken flatbread with yogurt sauce the next night

the remainder of the yogurt is for my weeks lunches

i keep wraps on hand because they are really quick to use leftover meats and cheese you may have and also veggies.  almost any veggie is yummy sauteed with leftover meat

Wubster042109

i try to stretch my meals and i also try to minimize the amount of cooking i need to do mon-fri.

so once a month a spend a saturday & sunday morning in the kitchen cooking up a bunch of freezer friendly stuff.....pesto, meat sauce, chili, meatballs, etc. for a good 2-3 weeks afterwards, i can pull from the freezer in the mornings mon-fri, by the time i get home from work its all defrosted and i just need to heat it up for dinner.

another tip:  take chicken breasts, for example.  i buy them in bulk and put individual servings into a freezer bag, toss in some marinade and put it in the freezer.  when we decide to grill chicken for dinner, i'll pull a couple bags out of the freezer in the morning.  as its defrosting, its also marinading.  by the time i get home from work, its ready to go on the grill.

i'm also a huge fan of cooking up a few whole chickens on the grill.  the 1st night we'll have roasted chicken, then i'll use the carcass to make stock & chicken soup, which i'll freeze for dinner on a cooler weather day. w/ the leftover chicken meat i can make chicken burritos, chicken salad, chicken chili.  roasted whole chickens go a longgggg way.  and if you don't have time to cook a couple whole chickens yourself?  pick some rotisserie ones up at the local grocery store when they're on sale.  considering how many meals you can get out of 2 birds, i find even the precooked ones are really affordable.

as for finding new recipes, over time i've come to trust certain sources.  DH has loved every martha stewart recipe i've ever made.  emeril recipes have also gotten a thumbs up in our house.  i never go wrong w/ cookinglight.com either.  i try 1-2 new recipes/month and if it turns out to be a hit, i keep a copy in my personal recipe binder.