Week long food preparation

So the most common problem I have had as a working person was that so much food went to waste in my refrigerator. Kevin and I remarked when we got up to Elizabethtown that we had never eaten so many meals at home in a row. (Partly that was due to busyness and partly it was due to the fact that Athens had so many great restaurants. We are now not nearly as busy--especially me) and have no where near the good restaurant options).

If I am honest, my problem is two-fold. I come from a long line of stuffed fridges and freezers. I have purposefully not gotten a deep freezer because I knew I would freeze it. Unlike my mother and grandmother though, who know just about everything they have in their cooling containers, I am very much out of site, out of mind. Knowing that, I am trying to figure out the best strategy for planning a weekly menu.

I want to do this so that I don't waste food primarily. There are too many good and fresh foods up here. But I don't want to load up my freezer and then not use items either. But there are health reasons too--if I plan ahead, I won't be persuaded to make a pimento-cheese sandwich every day of the week because it is easy or I am craving it. Having a plan will force me to use the groceries I have and use them well.

So today, because I had bought an abundance of spinach (thinking the in-laws were staying an extra day), I decided to make a spinach salad for 1 day. Day 2, pasta, spinach, smoked sausage and low-fat mozzarella mix (so easy and so good). Tomorrow, spinach stuffed and pecan-crusted pork chops(and that should finish me off if I have a spinach salad for lunch. Each of these leave the spinach with a different enough taste to eat it every day.

So now, what to do for Wed-Friday. And pre-planning for Labor Day weekend.

I bought some apples to make applesauce today, as well as some eggplant and sweet corn (PA has some of the best corn I have ever tasted! It's fabulous--and possibly the only thing I would consider freezing other than blueberries). I don't feel as though I have enough room to start canning things; half of my pantry has to disappear out for that (plus I need a bigger kitchen). So the journey begins of trying to figure out what to do, what to buy and how (and when) to use it.