While we were out of town for spring break, I realized that our cabinets are bringing me down. Overstuffed, food going bad, but yet nothing to eat. You’ve been there, right? I have to think it isn’t just me …. I seem to come back to trying new ideas in meal planning ever year or two ….
So while we were away, I used my “free” time to come up with plans …
- Subscribe to a meal service which delivers meals (more on that later). I had tried a Meal planning service in the past, but was left with unusable ingredients and using more processed food than I liked.
- To clean out the cabinets — we’ve been through this before, but it was time to attack once again.
Our first week back (meal service takes a week to begin), I started in on the easiest ingredients. I bought a few “accessory” ingredients in order to make nice meals, but the goal was to have a net decrease in food on hand. In that time, the cabinet has moved from over-stuffed to half-full. I still have a ways to go, but now that the meal service started, I only make a couple “additional” meals a week.
I made a barley “risotto” dish with greens, enchiladas, pasta with asparagus, tofu egg salad, cabbage soup, and more using mostly ingredients on hand. I’ve worked through food in the freezer, food in the fridge, and food in the cabinets.
I still have couscous, quinoa, barley, chick pea flour, grits, cans of soup, and other random ingredients to use up, but we’ll get there …
