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What dinner do you make the day before you do your grocery shopping?


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We do weekly meal planning, but it always seems that the last night before the day I go grocery shopping is always a scramble. We've either eaten all the fresh food or we're almost out of milk or the mushroom I was planning to use were put into a meal earlier in the week. Anyway, I wondered if you have some tried and true meals that would be good for the day before grocery shopping. Maybe pantry meals? If we don't plug this gap in our meal planning, then we will continue to occasionally buy pizza or chinese (which is fine for when we choose to eat pizza or chinese, but not when we have to because there is nothing much left to eat).

 

Please include recipes where necessary. Thanks! Ann

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Yep, pasta can be bought ahead and sit on the shelf, so we never run out of it. It's easy to do a quick tomato sauce or just a bit of olive oil and seasoning. We also like pasta with cream of chicken soup, or tossed with sour cream and black olives (much better than it sounds, really).

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Pasta would be my choice as well, but I think the better solution would be to stick to your meal plan, and if necessary plan 8 meals for the week.

 

I plan a week ahead, buy everything I need for the week, and cook what I've planned. Sometimes we switch meals or skip a planned meal if we go out, but sticking to that schedule really helps with planning and budgeting for food.

 

I also buy up staples when they're on sale, so we have them in the house if I need them.

 

Freezer cooking might be a good alternative, too. If you're not familiar, you can either spend one day cooking several meals for the freezer, or just cook two of something (lasagna, casseroles, etc) and stick the extra in the freezer. Then on your last day before shopping you pull one out in the morning and you're set!

 

Hope that helps!

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We usually eat leftovers. I prepare extra for most meals so that we've got leftovers for lunches and leftover night.

 

But I keep supplies on hand for a quick last-minute meal. I keep ingredients for bean soup (canned tomatoes, canned beans, potatoes, onions, with sausage and chicken broth from the freezer) and baked pasta (a larger tube pasta tossed with sauteed onions, tomatoes, whatever veg and cheese are left in the fridge--top with parm and bake).

 

I do not incorporate these meals into our weekly plan and I make sure the ingredients are always in the pantry. If we run out of something, I can toss together a quick last-minute meal.

 

Bean Soup

 

Olive oil

Onion

3-4 yellow potatoes

2 cans diced tomatoes

Chicken broth

2 cans white beans

Sausage (We use Aidell's, but a ground sausage, cooked before added, would be delicious too.)

Parmesan

 

Saute chopped onion in olive oil until soft. Add diced potatoes (1/2" dice) and cook until the bottom of the pot is brown. Stir enough that the potatoes do not stick, but not so often that the bottom of the pot doesn't get that carmelized coating, as it adds depth to the flavor of the soup. Add 2 cans diced tomatoes, heat, add chicken broth (~1 qt.) and bring to a boil. Turn down heat and simmer 15-20 min until potatoes are soft. Add 2 cans white beans (rinsed and drained), sliced or ground pre-cooked sausage and 1/4 c. grated fresh parmesan.

 

This is really good with some roughly chopped kale added, too, but if the problem is that you've run out of groceries, you probably won't have any! :)

 

I think it's hard to pre-plan meals if you like to toss in a little of this and a little of that. My mushrooms tend to disappear that way too. I'm trying to plan ahead a little more and make sure to plan the toss-together meals toward the end of the week when I'll have a little of this and a little of that sitting in the fridge to be used.

 

Cat

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We plan a week's worth of meals, to be eaten in the most logical order--iow, if something requires a fresh ingredient that may not last or can't be frozen, we eat it earlier in the week.

For example, this week's menu is

 

Fajitas

orange chicken

chicken soup

pizza

spaghetti

ham

egg, ham and cheese burritos

 

We have to eat the fajitas before the avocado goes bad, but not right away, as it isn't fully ripe yet! LOL

Spag and pizza can wait, but we are having salad with the spag, so probably earlier in the week would be best. Ham and green beans will also be eaten sooner in the week, b/c the beans are fresh. The rest is either frozen or can wait.

 

 

If one of the ingredients gets eaten (like, I could see the tortillas getting eaten...), we just run out and replace it.

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We also do pasta when that happens, which, incidently, happens pretty much every week!

 

I usually have a frozen pizza on hand, too, for those moments. I figure it's cheaper than going out for it!

 

We also like nachos. I always have tortilla chips on hand and will dice whatever veggies I have in the fridge for toppings (onion, grated carrot, tomatoes, etc.), along with salsa, canned beans and cheese. If I have diced ham, or cooked ground beef, I'll add that. I just nuke a plate of them in the microwave for 30 seconds!

 

I've also been known to offer smoothies (milk kefir, frozen berries, banana, spinach, juice, wheat germ, flax seed) with lightly buttered and salted popcorn for a meal...but my kids are young and so it fills them up!

 

I'm interested in hearing others' responses, too, because I also always have to invent dinner before I go grocery shopping!

 

:)

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Something that involves canned/dried pantry staples, usually.

 

White sauce with tuna/vegetables over rice.

Toad-in-the-hole (yorkshire pudding with sausages in it).

Pancakes and eggs (almost never run out of eggs).

Pasta with butter, vegetables and parmesan.

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I have this really great dish I always make. We have it at least 6 times a week. It has lots of good stuff in it, like whole grains, vitamins, and minerals. We make ours with raw milk, but you don't have to - although it tastes even better that way. It even has a fancy, foreign-derived name - CEREAL!

 

:)

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I grocery shop on Tuesdays. I fix some kind of soup on Sunday which we have leftover on Monday night for dinner. Ds has Scouts, so we never get to eat altogether on that night. Soup works well when folks are eating at different times. So, I just plan on leftover soup the night before I grocery shop.

 

If things were bare bones in the house, I would make breakfast for dinner, though.

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We do weekly meal planning, but it always seems that the last night before the day I go grocery shopping is always a scramble. We've either eaten all the fresh food or we're almost out of milk or the mushroom I was planning to use were put into a meal earlier in the week. Anyway, I wondered if you have some tried and true meals that would be good for the day before grocery shopping. Maybe pantry meals? If we don't plug this gap in our meal planning, then we will continue to occasionally buy pizza or chinese (which is fine for when we choose to eat pizza or chinese, but not when we have to because there is nothing much left to eat).

 

Please include recipes where necessary. Thanks! Ann

 

 

Soup in the crockpot in always good in those situations. Pasta is also a good pantry stand-by.

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Some kind of one pot wonder, lol. We have a stash of dried goods, and there are always some root veggies left over.

 

Rosie

 

:iagree:I've made some very interesting casseroles & soups out of whatever is in my pantry and/or freezer. Sometimes it's a hit and sometimes we decide that particular combo doesn't work, LOL!

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Spaghetti, French toast, pancakes, or burgers. I generally have ground beef in the freezer, and eggs and milk in the fridge (I get those separately from regular groceries, so they're not always on the same "rotation" as everything else). I also currently have lamb cubes and turkey bits in the freezer, and usually have a good selection of frozen veggies, so I could whip up a lamb curry-type dish or a turkey pot pie or some such.

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It even has a fancy, foreign-derived name - CEREAL!

 

:)

Good one.

 

 

I am realizing that I am using two of the possible "dinner the night before grocery store" meals in my normal rotation. We only eat meat about 2 a week. So we often have a pasta dish or a breakfast for dinner in our normal weekly meal plan. So maybe I need to keep one of those meals just for that need.

 

Thanks! And keep the ideas/recipe coming.

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Some kind of soup, like tomato, creamy broccoli, or veggie soup ( I've even done ramen noodles with frozen veggies) and a fresh loaf of bread from the bread machine. I always have those ingredients on hand.

 

If I have extra potatoes, I bake or boil those and scrape together some toppings. salsa, bacon bits, sour cream, cheese sauce or some left over meat.

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