ou Got This In The Bag!
Well you made it. You’re living out on your own. You are still human and need to eat. Now the responsibility lies upon you to plan on your own meals, or perhaps you have found yourself living with a friend or family member. Either way, you came here looking for tips on prepping and planning for your next big meals.
You probably are not here for a lecture on the food pyramid. You already know about needing a balance of vegetables, starch, protein, and so on since that lesson has been ingrained into us ever since early childhood. As such, we will instead focus on things such as planning the meals and the ingredients needed for them as well as a few tips for things like storage. So once again, the Adultist proudly begins its list of tips with tips for forming the list.
Planning Meals/Recipes
Before going to the grocery store to get your meals, you need to go in knowing what you want and/or need to buy. Firstly, a good hint for selecting upcoming meals is to simply look around for recipes in cookbooks and on social media. Picking the meals themselves requires quite a bit of forethought. Depending on what you choose you will need ingredients for the list. (i.e. for burger night you will need sides, hamburger patties, buns, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, etc.)
Another hint is that you can plan meals on a week by week basis. That way when you get back from the grocery store, you will have ingredients for each of the major meals and can rearrange them depending on complexity and how long it will take to make them. In other words, think of a situation where you have a busy night on Thursday, but a more open schedule on Friday.
(Whether you plan for weekend meals or not is entirely up to you, as it may depend on plans you make with friends or family.) On another note, it could also help to diversify your meals for the week in every possible sense of the word. You likely would not want to have pizza and pasta in the same week followed by a week with tacos, nachos, and burritos, but having a week where you have pizza and burritos and the next with tacos and pasta makes more sense.
Going To The Grocery Store
Well done! You have successfully compiled a nice list of ingredients for dinner and whatever else you need. Once you have your list of ingredients and the meals you will be preparing, it will now be time to go to the grocery store. Some folks may think that it will always be as easy as walking into the store and blindly grabbing whatever they wrote on their list. The truth is that there are actually a lot of things that you should keep your eyes open for in order to save money on what you need. Here are a few helpful tips for your quest wandering the aisles.
Watching for Demand
Be aware that certain items are in higher demand such as milk and eggs. Lots of people tend to go to the grocery store during the weekend and work during the week, so unless you arrive at the store in the earlyish morning, these items will be gone until they restock. If possible, go to the store during the week. Some stores even have promotional sales to watch for during the week.
Sales and Stickers
Be sure to look around the store for any sort of deals that can help get you more bang for your buck. However, don’t just go by the sticker price. In most grocery stores, there is a small number that indicates the pricing per unit (i.e. $1.95 per ounce). Look for the product with the lower unit price, that way you might find yourself getting more than you expect. In other words, it may be cheaper to buy a pair of small bottles instead of one bigger one or the other way around.
Meal Planning Opportunities
Despite what we already addressed with the list, you do not have to strictly follow it as if it were gospel. If you are walking through the store and happen to come across something that is at an incredibly low price due to a sale but does not align with the current meals you have planned and instead is a key ingredient to a different meal entirely, (such as a pack of frozen chicken tenders that can go with a number of sides,) you can go ahead and get it.
Spreading Your Horizons
You may have one or two local grocery stores you go to frequently due to proximity. There is nothing wrong with going to certain stores out of habit, but it also does not hurt to visit other stores for more variety. Some stores have products and brands exclusive to the store itself. Another note is that it can also be helpful in regards to finding a better price because some establishments increase or lower the price as the distributor sees fit. (A good example of this would be a place like Trader Joe’s.)
Let’s Get Cooking!
With your grocery bags now set on either the counter or table, all that’s left is storing the food and eventually cooking the meals when the time comes. However, this is far from the end of your journey. You have the recipes and you have the ingredients. Surely there’s no more room for any sort of helpful tips or tricks, right? Wrong. There’s still a lot that can be accounted for.
Freezer Storage
Chances are pretty good that you came back home with food specifically stored in the freezer like ice cream, hamburgers, and more. However, if you find yourself with food items that can go bad quickly like refrigerated meats or bread, you can store them in the freezer to make them last longer. However, discretion is advised because there are foods you should not freeze.
Experimentation
Cooking is an art. Like any art, there are rules to follow and room between those rules to play with. Spices, sauces, marinades, diced vegetables, and much more can all act as your paint with utensils as your brushes and the plates as your canvas. Spice up your meat by sauteeing it with minced garlic, or marinating it in a sauce fitting the palette of the dish.
Leftovers
Be not afraid of leftovers. Typically, leftover dishes can last about a week or so after being made. Not only that, but you can also turn some leftovers into another meal. If you finish off your tortillas and taco shells but still have leftover meat, cheese, salsa, guacamole, and other assorted toppings. Congratulations! You are one bag of tortilla chips away from a nice lunch of nachos.
Some Fun Meal Ideas
Last but certainly not least, let us have a little fun and list some meal ideas that you can start with.
Pasta
All kinds of pasta to pick from. Spaghetti, ravioli, tortellini, rigatoni, and more, all able to be boiled for a sufficient amount of time and checked frequently for completion. While the pasta boils, simmer some pasta sauce with any combination of vegetables and meats. Mushrooms, ground beef, pepperoni, sausage, scallions, onions, and more are all waiting to join your favorite pasta.
Hamburgers
Nothing says USA like some nice juicy hamburgers. Slap them on the grill or even sautee them with onions and garlic. Get some juicy tomatoes to slice, some cheese, sauces, pickles, lettuce, and other toppings. Make sure you also remember to get some sides to go with them like potato salad, baked beans, and/or fries.
Breakfast
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so who says you can only have it once? You can make all kinds of breakfast meals. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, sunnyside eggs, waffles, hard boiled eggs, bacon, and of course omelettes with whatever you like including cheese, spinach, onions, scallions, mushrooms, really whatever floats your boat.
Salads
If you want something on the healthier side, this ought to be the meal for you. With some nice leafy greens, the salad bowl can be a place you can add whatever additional toppings you want. Hard boiled eggs, diced grilled chicken, shredded carrots, dried beets, croutons, bacon bits, dressings—the salad bowl is now your playground.
Feel free to conduct your own research to find more in-depth recipes for these and other dishes you may want to make.
Soup’s on!
Congratulations! Now you have a nice toolbelt of tricks for meal prep and planning. These tips are not necessarily gospel. They are just that; tips. However by following these suggestions, you may find yourself saving a lot more money and having more flexibility when it comes to what meals you can make.
