Meal plan!
DH Breakfast- Hash Brown Salami Frittata
My Breakfast- Eggs w/ Pickled Peppers + Pickled Carrots
Lunch- Tacos w/ Tomato Ground Beef, Peppers, Taco Rice, Lettuce, Enchilada Sauce
Dinner #1- Drumsticks + Air Fry Cauliflower + Baked Whole Sweet Potato
Dinner # 2- Pad Thai (Tofu for DH, Shrimp for Me) + Garlic Fish Sauce Green Beans + Shishito Peppers
Dinner #3- Honey Ham (freeze most) + Roasted Leftover Veg
Friday- pancakes, fruit
Trail mix and smoothies
Lunchables: Hummus, cold cuts, crackers, broccoli, grapes
Homemade pizza pockets (pizza omelette for g)
Saturday
-oatmeal and eggs and toast
-lunchables
-lunch out
Breakfasts
Pancakes, oatmeal, fruit, smoothies, eggs and toast
Lunches (2 per day)
Leftovers, Kraft dinner, pasta salad, lunchables, hotdogs, trail mix, sandwiches, roast potatoes and mushrooms
Dinners
Burgers
Fajitas
Dhal and rice
BBQ steak and mushrooms
Need to buy: chicken, steak, bell peppers, avocado or guac
Have no idea what dinner will be. Nothing is ready in the garden and I’ll be gone all day, so it has to all but be prefab. Because of the heat, I’ve been doing quick meals for some time.
Yesterday I made a corn casserole and we had that with canned pintos and Zhoug sauce. Odd combo, but it worked. The beans completed the protein with the corn. There’s 2 eggs in the casserole and butter, but most of it’s corn: creamed corn, corn muffin mix, and a package of frozen.
I think (?) I tossed a 1/2 lb container of ground beef in the fridge. So that’s hamburgers, meat balls, or ground beef ____ . Meatballs generate the least waste but are the most work of course. If I didn’t thaw beef, I should. I have no idea about dinner.
Salad sounds good. Frozen melon. Nachos. Dunno.
We have leftover casserole and we’ll eat it for breakfast, snack, lunch. It will probably be long-gone before dinner prep time.
We had rain yesterday. For a while it was pouring with lots of thunder.
When I was a kid, the way the wind/topograpy worked was that all the thunder/lightning happened over the ocean nearby, so I was rarely right under it. Not true here. DH, midwest bred, just deals with all of us when it thunders: the cats don’t like it any more than I do…
This stuff is so delicious! Good on just about everything! If you do make burgers, I’ve had it as a burger topping before too.
I’m confused by this. How do burgers and such generate waste?
I read USDA charts. Waste is cooked off weight: water and fat. One thing that startled me when I found data comparing different types of meat waste was the fact that meatballs had the smallest amount, as compared to burgers or a meatloaf.
That’ll depend on how you use them. Ignoring the water because it’s a non issue, let’s focus on the fat- meatballs have less waste because there’s something absorbing the fats. You can easily replicate this with ground, by adding spices like taco seasoning (with corn starch or similar if it’s a very fatty pack), or otherwise deglazing pans. Sure, burgers on a grill you lose that fat, but I think overall it’s seems like an overly simplistic approach?
Might be.
Not sure if this is where I got that or not. But I do things like read documents like this to find ways to save money…
We were trying to make it 2 weeks with no grocery shopping, and we almost made it! 2 weeks would’ve been Sunday and we went last night. Spent a hair over $200 but this also included restocking in-case-we-get-covid meds as we had no cold/cough/congestion meds whatsoever in the house, having purged all the expired stuff pre-move. And also a few more things that I read we should have in a hurricane prep kit, like bleach to clean mold after a flood, paper towels, some canned beans and veg because somehow I missed getting those before.
I tried to make good decisions cost-wise but basically just bought what we needed and thought, it is what it is? I am still so grossed out by these high food prices though! Do you guys know what ICE CREAM costs lately? Holy shit. I am just going to get snoballs instead, they are cheaper!
Outsiders perspective but I think this is exactly what you need to do for a bit and see how it feels for you. That’s pretty much exactly what my last therapist told me too 
Some variety of ice cream is on sale every week, and that’s what we buy. I will say that Wisconsin is a wonderland of ice cream, though.
We used to buy HagenDaaz, but it got to be too expensive and I started looking around. We hit on Tillamook, which is cheaper by unit, even when the HD smaller packages are on sale. It’s still expensive.
Our local (expensive) market’s “sale price” for Tillamook is the same as the regular price at our (cheap) market.
We are planning meals for when the term starts back in a couple weeks and we’re gone all day. I think we’ve identified a rotation of four recipes that can each make two days’ suppers and can be cooked on the weekend. That gets us Mon-Thurs and we have no Friday classes so one or both of us should generally be WFH.
Now, when to do grocery pickup? I resent the idea of it being on the weekend, but we have a long drive during the week and pickup would just add to it. Still debating that one, but I will make sure we get on a two-week schedule at least. Could probably make it monthly and then it seems less onerous. But that means no fresh produce except apples, carrots, potatoes, onions.* What else will keep for a month?
*plus what the garden produces until it stops in ~November. Oh, and I should be able to grow greens all winter in the greenhouse.
Squash, I’ve had good luck with eggplant in the fridge, peppers, grapefruit/other citrus. Any interest in frozen fruit for smoothies/sauces?
Underripe peaches and avocados can take long enough to ripen that you can get those to last 2+ weeks before they’re ready. Easy to stagger ripeness.
Apparently bananas too! I bought ripe bananas + green ones 2.5 weeks ago and the green ones are still green! They are like magic, never ripe bananas.
Coupled with the Debby Meyer green bags for sure you could get a month from a green banana I bet!
I bet you mean winter squash? Good idea. And citrus; I forget about it in the summer but that’s a big part of our fruit in winter. We generally buy frozen peppers because much cheaper (and grow fresh ones). I don’t think Husband will eat eggplant. ETA I do keep some frozen fruit on hand but I don’t seem to use it much at all. I do use frozen veggies a lot.
We live in/close enough to peach country that neither of us will eat peaches that haven’t ripened on the tree - they’re a seasonal treat for us. 
I should try that with avocado (he won’t eat them because he is determined to miss out on the best parts of life).
Sorry to hear about your bananas - they may have been picked too soon. Bananas are one of the reasons I’m thinking of going weekly. But I could buy lots and freeze for smoothies.
Or this. I think maybe I should try these bags. Do they really work?
They really do. I didn’t ever believe it or try until our CSA farmers told us they swear by them. I haven’t tried with bananas yet, but they even make a huge difference for our greens. And they’re reusable for ages. They make the biggest difference for ethylene producing ripeners, so bananas would be a prime cantidate.
How big are the sizes - they just say M, L, XL? Like, say, roughly how many apples would fit in each size? Or whatever equivalent makes sense to you? I’m trying to figure out what I should order.