Meal Planning

I am absolutely loving my pantry list that I created, yesterday I decided to finish it by going through my fridge. I wish I had gotten a before and after picture, but to be honest I started to go through the items in my freezer and the next thing I knew my entire refrigerator was clean. I just want to point out that the entire thing was filled to the gills with guck and spilled stuff everywhere and now it looks like this:



The bottom shelf of my fridge only had two things on it. I was absolutely amazed at how little edible food was actually in there, ESP my freezer. I felt so horrible throwing away that much food, it encouraged me to never make that mistake again. Getting the fridge clean really helped me figure out exactly what food needed to be eaten and helped me create recipes for the rest of the week based on this, saving me money and helping me not waste any more food!


I also discovered an awesome recipe site in the process of all this. http://www.skinnytaste.com/ I am absolutely obsessed. She has so many wonderful recipes, I wasn't even aware but I've already used two of them! She has a skinny version of every single recipe you can imagine and so far the ones I have tried are fantastic.


Also I've started slightly couponing again. I used to clip them out of the newspaper, but I wasn't a huge fan unless you're super into it it's kind of hard to save any actual money. http://www.coupons.com/ is a great alternative to the standard clipping. They have tons and tons of coupons online that are actually useful. Most of their coupons are certain amounts off of ONE item, which I love because I hate buying more than one I almost always throw the second one away. They also have tons of coupons on items you actually want to buy such as garnier shampoos and yoplait yogurts. I already have some saved for my next grocery list and it's going to save me $15 and I needed everything on the list!

I'm getting super excited to continue on my meal planning roll. Now that Jack and I are really getting into our budget and diet I find it more than necessary. Our goal is to spend less than $100 on groceries next week, let's see if we can do it!