It feels like I am constantly running to the grocery store. If I’m lucky, I only go a couple of times during the week. But more often it ends up being three or four times that I visit.
Now that it’s gotten colder and I am thinking ahead to the winter months, my goal is to eliminate unnecessary trips to the store. The only way I can really do that is to improve my meal planning skills.
Last year I had this great idea of trying three new recipes every week. I was tired of cooking the same things over and over again.
Many of these were crockpot recipes, which was perfect for the winter months. Although I didn’t succeed in doing this every single week, I acquired enough new recipes that my recipe collection has grown.
So now my goal is winter meal planning. This weekend I will be sitting down with my recipe binder and cookbooks to not only figure out what I am going to do for Thanksgiving, my holiday baking and Christmas, but I am going to attempt to plan the next two months meals.
I should have enough recipes to make something different each meal (allowing for a couple of days where we have leftovers). And instead of striving for three new recipes each week, I am cutting it down to one.
Planning ahead allows you to be better prepared when you head to the grocery store. Instead of trying to figure out, “What should I make tonight?” you have a list in hand and are ready to purchase at least a week’s worth of groceries. If I can manage to cut my trips to the store down to once-a-week, I will be a very happy camper.
What tips or ideas do you have on meal planning? In particular, how do you implement winter meal planning?
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Photo by ja_macd in Flickr