A tip from our Nutrition Coach!
If you don’t grow most of your foods, you may have been one of those people that are very stressed about getting food or figuring out what to do with the food you have. There is a simple process to use, and that is doing a stock take of what is currently in your pantry, fridge, and freezer. Essentially, writing an order of what you currently have in your house. For recipe developers for magazines and restaurants, this is a very common practice and can help you with not overbuying food because you have no plan. This is also a great opportunity to clean your food storing areas.
Step 1: Empty your fridge, freezer, and cupboards and make a list of your food with a division of some type. I usually use have a fridge list, freezer and opened items in the pantry list, and a long-lasting list of unopened pantry items. Don’t forget to take this opportunity to clean all these areas. Because there are usually items there, we don’t clean out shelves as often as our counters and such.
Step 2: Start thinking of potential meals, mainly using the items that are going to go bad first. As you think of these meals, cross of the items that you will be using and have a separate sheet on hand to write down what you will need to pick up.
Side tip! If you have herbs or fresh fruits and veg that you don’t want to go bad and you have room in the freezer, prep them to help them last longer. If you have broccoli or cauliflower, you can blitz it into a rice texture if you can, put them into a reusable baggie (or reuse the plastic baggie) to keep it flat, label it, and stack it.
Step 3: During this meal prep, write on sticky notes or stick the list of meals on the fridge and take the note or cross off meals as you make them. You don’t have to know what days you are going to make the meals.
Ideas: If you have spaghetti, tomatoes, zucchini and onions you could make a satisfying pasta. If you have a frozen dough sitting in your freezer, make a pizza. If you have chick peas, black beans, some left over lettuce, and salsa you could make a tex-mex style salad. Maybe with the chickpeas you could make a homemade falafel. If you have a bunch of red lentils, you could make a big batch of dahl. The possibilities are endless!
Step 4: Pick up the items you need. Hopefully it is a lot shorter than what it may have been and your trip to the grocery store isn’t as stressful as it may have been.