Stop Throwing Away Groceries Plan Your Menus With Easy Dinner Recipes
Do you ever think about all of the food we waste each day in this country? Most of our families buy more groceries than they need, they don’t wind up cooking it, and they go out to dinner anyway. We get greasy takeout and fill up the landfill with pizza! If we do prepare the groceries, we usually throw away the leftovers.
With a little planning we can reduce the amount of groceries we waste.
Step one is to plan our menu planner to create your organized shopping list. Choose a variety of easy recipes to please your family, guests and your self. Next take stock of what you already have on hand. Is there something you can reuse to avoid throwing away groceries? Great, make a note of those things and in your meal planner adjust your shopping list to add the item to the list of groceries you have on hand. Be sure to plan easy recipes to easy to achieve your plan to stop wasting food.
Another good strategy to avoid wasting is to choose easy recipes that have the some repeating groceries that you can use in more than one menus. For example you can schedule a roast on one day that you could reuse in another easy recipe later in the week. This works for both proteins and flavoring like bacon or herbs. Try to schedule your easy recipes to work together.
Next print your shopping list and take it with you to the store. Try to shop the outermost aisles to avoid packaged groceries. Scan your pantry and shopping list again and make sure you have all the groceries on the list and there is no groceries that you need from the on hand list.
Great start. Now when you arrive home be sure to put your vegetables, wrap carefully and store in the correct area for the proper temperature for the groceries. Freeze any meats and poultry you won’t be using by the freeze by date on the packaging.
Now you can come home knowing what’s for dinner, you can make some easy recipes and you can stop wasting food. When there are leftovers, have them for lunch the next day. Or, make them into a different easy recipe. Try to recycle as much as you can.
Another great way to be more economical with food is to plant a garden. Grow your own groceries and cut out the middle man. Everything tastes better when it is fresher. And if you have extras, share them with your friends. Just don’t plant to much zucchini or your friends may start avoiding you.
Now don’t you feel better? You’ve stopped wasting food, you are being kind to mother nature and you have shared your extras with friends. Now it is time to start planning menus for next week!
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