Ya never know what is in your freezer...

[SSquirrel]

So my wife and I will buy several pounds of meat and separate it into 1lb packages and toss it in the deep freeze and bags of frozen veggies from kroger.  We sometimes forget exactly how much we have tho, so we will snag a few to be on the safe side.  Last night we decided we needed to clean out the 2 freezers (the little one on the fridge and the medium size chest freezer).  Unbeknowst to us, including the new 3 lbs of ground beef I picked up cheap, we have 10 pounds of the stuff heh.  Here was our total.  I think I'm ok on beef and veggies for awhile, especially since we also picked up some fresh veggies of other sorts at Trader Joe's and the asian grocery today.

 

Veggies and such:

1 pack frozen burritos

1 pack falafel

1 pack chicken burgers

2 tater tots

5 stir fry vegetables

3 cajun mirepoix

1 regular mirepoix

6 green peas

2 sweet corn

5 spinach

2 veggie soup veggie mix

1 sliced okra

1 leeks

5 broccoli

2 pepper/onion mix

1 cheese pizza

1 lima beans

 

Meat and associated:

10 ground beef

2 packs hebrew national hot dogs

4lbs frozen chicken

3.75lb fresh chicken in fridge

2 packs andouille sausage

1 pack beef & bacon dogs

1 kielbasa

3 packs bacon

 

 

Plenty of stuff to work with and this doesn't even include all the fresh veggies we bought today heh.  Now to make sure we come up w/recipes our kids will eat.  Starting Monday I'm cutting out bread and pop and limiting myself to potatoes once a week and 1c of rice 3 times a week max.  Plus my workout plan of course.  Hoping things start moving in a positive direction very soon.  I've been paying more attention to what I eat the last couple of weeks and I notice my Utilikilt fits a bit easier today than last weekend heh.

 

Oh and target had boneless pork chops 15oz for $2.50, so I picked up 3 of those heh.

[Elastigirl]

Ha, ha! One time someone on NF (I think it was Spezzy) posted her meal plan and along with that she posted how her fridge was basically empty before she went shopping. SInce then, I've been trying to use up almost all the food before we buy new. I used to be super bad at having to throw stuff away (veggies+freezer burn=blah)but now I'm finding less surprises

[SSquirrel]

I may try and institute a dry erase board so we can track this stuff and be more clear when we need things.  I have a few of them around heh

 

EDIT: Board setup.  Should help with planning

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

My wife does this with the pantry.  When we went to move we had like 9 cans of garbonzo beans and 5 kidney beans.  Whenever she made chili she would grab them just in case she didn't already have them.

 

There was this cool system someone did for a design project in enggineering school where you would scan food you brought in from the grocerie store as you put it away, like you do when buying it, and it would keep track of your at home inventory.  You would then have a database of recipes and would do the recipe plan for the week and it would spit out a list of all ingredients minus what you had already in stock.

 

That was increment 1.  The second increment was to, if the first took off, link up with local grocerie stores that would electronically send the list of everything you bought to your home inventory when you checked out so you didn't have to scan twice as well as an automated system that would send that list the was generated in inc 1 to the local store and they would have those groceries ready for pickup after you snagged anything else you wanted on top of them.

[FyreFlies]

Lol - I've got:

 

Turkey Bacon

Ground Beef (95% lean/5% fat)

Steam Fresh broccoli

Fish - some white stuff - filet only

Peas - not mine

Hot Dogs - for corn dogs when my nephews come over, they love that stuff

Pepperoni - again for the boys

Henna cones

Dates

Boneless/Skinless Chicken Breast

 

The end.

[Burizado]

My wife does this with the pantry.  When we went to move we had like 9 cans of garbonzo beans and 5 kidney beans.  Whenever she made chili she would grab them just in case she didn't already have them.

 

There was this cool system someone did for a design project in enggineering school where you would scan food you brought in from the grocerie store as you put it away, like you do when buying it, and it would keep track of your at home inventory.  You would then have a database of recipes and would do the recipe plan for the week and it would spit out a list of all ingredients minus what you had already in stock.

 

That was increment 1.  The second increment was to, if the first took off, link up with local grocerie stores that would electronically send the list of everything you bought to your home inventory when you checked out so you didn't have to scan twice as well as an automated system that would send that list the was generated in inc 1 to the local store and they would have those groceries ready for pickup after you snagged anything else you wanted on top of them.

 

 

That sounds awesome!  I am assuming there was a manual entry for produce or anything without a barcode?  I am thinking like the database they have at the store when you type in the numbers that is on the little stickers.

[mrRed]

We always keep some basics around the basement and in our chest freezer.

 

Must haves, pantry:

 

Kidney Beans

Black Beans

Refried Beans

Cannellini Beans

Green Beans

Diced Tomatoes

Whole Tomatoes

White Rice

Canned soup

Bottled Water

Seltzer

Hot Sauce

Salsa

 

Freezer:

Broccoli

Mixed veggies.

Corn

Peas

Kale

Okra

"Greens" (mix of kale, mustard and surprise)

Chicken carcasses - for soups.

Ribs

Salmon Fillets

Homemade bacon

Butter

 

Everything else we get fresh on a weekly basis. Sometimes we freeze some meat, but we're really bad about remembering to thaw stuff out in time so we prefer to just buy what we need at the beginning of the week.

[NicoleCanoes]

I try to make my shopping list at home and then walk through the kitchen and cross off anything that is already there. My mom always did it and it generally saves money. I will buy the surprise bulk sales but then plan meals around them for the next couple weeks. Also, new stuff goes in the back. No waste.