#135: How to Waste Less Food at Every Stage - Planning, Shopping, and Cooking

This week, we're talking about the full lifecycle of food in our homes, from the moment it's planned all the way to the moment it's eaten (or thrown away). 

We talk through the most common breakdown points in the planning, cooking, and shopping, and why every ingredient needs a clear purpose. We also cover how to shop your fridge and pantry before you head to the store, how to build flexibility into your meal plan, and what it looks like to treat your leftovers with the same intention as a planned meal. Enjoy!

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Transcript

food lifecycle
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[00:00:00] I'm Riley and I'm Roni. And this is the plan to eat podcast, where we have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you answer the question what's for dinner. 

Roni: Do you have a favorite, like, dish or utensil that you use?

Riley: In my h- yeah, like when I'm cooking

Roni: Well, or like eating. Like, I have like a favorite spoon and a favorite fork and a favorite

Riley: All of ours match. I have a favorite coffee cup. Uh, we have like 40 coffee cups, and I will wade through them to get to the one I wanna drink out

Roni: Yeah. I have a lot of coffee cups 'cause people know that I like coffee cups, and so they give me coffee cups, which is great. But then it's like, well, then the, then the last favorite one gets replaced with the new favorite

Riley: Exactly. Yes. Yeah

Roni: But I was thinking about that today when I was eating lunch, and I was like, "Do other people have favorite kitchen things?"

Riley: When I did not live here and we had all matching, and I lived, like, with roommates and we had eclectic stuff, I [00:01:00] really liked, like, I'd dig for the one I wanted.

Roni: Yeah. Okay. I'm glad I'm not the only weirdo

Riley: I'm like, I like the mouth feel of certain spoons Spoons in particular I'll pay, may pay more. Like, I'll be really annoyed if I get a bad spoon. 

Roni: I had 

Riley: spoon that's too deep, I do not like that

Roni: We had a spoon one time, 'cause we have eclectic spoons and

Riley: Yeah, I like that. Yeah

Roni: and we had a spoon that was like, had like this really weird handle. It was like pinched on the sides, so it made it like thick up and down. I didn't like it. I ended up throwing it away.

Riley: Definitely. That's funny. There's, yeah, and I also am weird about the lip of the cup I'm drinking out of. It has to be the right lip.

Roni: Yeah

Riley: Like, I'd ra- if I went and got a coffee from a coffee shop and they gave me a paper cup with a lid, I'd prefer to drink it without the lid.

Roni: Oh yeah, me too

Riley: Yeah, like the mouth feel of, like, the border of the white paper

Roni: Yeah. I also don't like the [00:02:00] taste of the, like, heated up plastic

Riley: Yeah. 

Roni: of a coffee cup, of a disposable coffee cup

Riley: This is the kind of stuff we need to do at the end of every show.

Roni: What we're doing at the beginning of the show.

Riley: Yeah.

Roni: And on that note, welcome back to the Plan to Eat podcast.

Riley: Uh, today we are talking about the life cycle of food in our house. So from planned, purchased, eaten, or wasted

Roni: Yeah. Yeah, we wanna talk through the different stages of the food in our house, kind of where things tend to break down, where we tend to have more waste in some places versus others, and what we can do to, you know, make it work a little bit better

Riley: Yeah. I really hate throwing away food. But also sometimes it just gets to that point, right? We all have to do it sometimes. I just really don't like to do it

Roni: I agree. I- we've talked about this [00:03:00] before. We talked about this on our food waste episode that we did a couple months ago now, uh, where, you know, wasted food is just like wasted money. It's like putting your dollar bills in the refrigerator and letting them sit there for a week, and then you just throw them in the trash afterwards.

Riley: Oh, that's terrible. Yeah, just taking your cold dollar bills and throwing them away. Oh, I 

Roni: if you actually did that, you'd probably think about what you're doing a little bit more

Riley: yeah, it's a good life le- it's a good, like, a tactile lesson, you know? Yeah, I, I was just talking to my sister-in-law on the phone the other day and she said something about, like, "Oh, we really wanted to eat this, but, like, I already ha- I already...

This is free food because I've already paid for it and, like, we have food at home," and, like, that whole idea. Um, and I was like, "Yes, exactly." Like, it's, it's not free, but it is prepaid for.

Roni: Right.

Riley: Yeah, so food can end up in, uh, one of these many stages: bought and never planned, planned and never cooked, or cooked and never eaten.[00:04:00] 

Cooked and never eaten feels painful 'cause it's like you paid for it, then you did the effort, and then you threw it away. It is actually why I hate throwing away leftovers.

Roni: Well, it's like a double negative 'cause it's like wasted money, but then it's also the wasted effort.

Riley: Yes. Yeah

Roni: And in this case, the doug- double negative doesn't make a positive.

Riley: No. Uh, planned and never cooked is unfortunately where my food goes to die. It just, what- for whatever reason, I buy this head of lettuce, and I'm gonna do this thing with it, and then something pivots or changes or I don't make a salad or I don't use it for something, and it goes, goes away too fast. It also happens to me sometimes with food that I buy, and it's like goes bad too quickly, and, like, I couldn't use it in time, uh, which is also very frustrating, which doesn't really feel like a me problem.

It's just like, "Oh, that food just went bad too fast

Roni: Right. Yeah, I think that I often get stuck in the, like, random purchases but that [00:05:00] were never planned for situation, which is fine when it's something like pasta, you know, something that's like a non-perishable. I do this a lot with non-perishables when there's like a buy... Obviously, if it's a buy one get one free, you're gonna grab two boxes of the thing, or if it's just on like a really good sale.

But I tend to do the thing where I'm like, I don't know, in the dairy section and I'm like, "Ooh, ricotta. I'm gonna buy some ricotta and maybe I'll make some lemon ricotta pancakes this weekend." And then the thing of ricotta just like sits in my refrigerator, and I'm like, "What was I gonna do with this? I don't...

Why is this here?" And then it's moldy

Riley: Yes. I hate that too. The bought and never planned is really what plan to eat is out to, uh, mitigate overall, you know? Bought and never planned is kind of like what you just said, right? Like, you, you literally just said you bought it on a whim and then you never planned it. I had the same thing happen recently.

I bought some buttermilk to [00:06:00] make fried chicken. I bought some buttermilk to make fried chicken, but there was leftover buttermilk. And while I used the majority of it, uh, I didn't use all of it, and I just kept thinking, "I'm gonna make buttermilk pancakes," or, "I'm gonna make buttermilk biscuits." Did I? No, because I never planned them.

Roni: Right

Riley: Yes, it's very frustrating, but it, it does have to move from idea to action. It... Otherwise, it will just go bad, and then you are throwing that money away. 

Roni: Yeah, so Riley, tell me where in general where food kind of tends to get stuck in your house. Is it one of these categories more than the other?

Riley: Yeah, I, I think that... Okay, I have kids, and there is a struggle sometimes with, like, one week... I, and I know this is, like, a joke around the internet, but it is very real. You know, like, a lot of jokes come out of reality, right? One week my kids will eat 99 blueberries each every day, and I'm like, "We can't even keep [00:07:00] blueberries in this house."

Okay, and then the next week I'm like, "Okay, we had a lot of blueberries," and then they eat no blueberries. And then I'm like, you know, and then my husband is like, "Okay, I'm gonna pick out all the good ones and eat them 'cause we..." You know, or whatever, you know? Like, there have been days where I'm like, "I'm gonna eat a yogurt bowl for breakfast because I am going to eat these blueberries 'cause I paid for them."

so I would say overbuying is where I get stuck. Uh, or it'll happen to me, like I, I think I said this on last week's episode, I just have such a hard time cooking for the amount, number of people I'm cooking for. I just kinda, like, go wild. Like, and we had c- we had, uh, hot wings and, like, cella- carrots and celery and ranch the other day.

And I cut, like, an entire head of celery and all these carrots, and, and we didn't finish them. Thankfully that doesn't go bad very quickly. But, like, I'm just like there's only four of us. Like, what was I... W- who was I cooking this for? Who... Like, what army of people was coming to my house to eat here? I think I just tend to overbuy 'cause...

Or, like, fruits and vegetables in particular I tend to overbuy. And [00:08:00] it's fruits and vegetables. Like, we really don't... I don't do this with dairy really. I mean, I just had the buttermilk example, but that's really rare. I don't do it with meat typically. Also, those are kinds of... Uh, well, meat you can freeze, but I, I feel like this is just where I get...

Fruits and vegetables is where I get stuck in overbuying

Roni: Yeah, I would say that I have a, I have a similar problem, particularly with fruits and vegetables, and it's often because I go to the grocery store and I'm like, "Okay, last week I really wanted some bananas," and I didn't have any bananas, and so then I buy bananas, but then I'm also buying apples, and I'm also buying strawberries 'cause they're on sale, and I'm also buying oranges or whatever, and then we end up with, like, seven different kinds of fruit in the house, and I feel like I have to eat a fruit salad every single day in order to eat it all.

Riley: Yes.

Roni: So that's, uh, definitely a problem for me, too, but I would say I also... Well, so we talked about meal prep a lot last time, and I think that that is... So maybe kind of like the cooked but never eaten is also an area where I struggle a little bit, particularly when it comes to [00:09:00] stuff that we meal prep, so like, I guess kinda like your carrots and celery example.

But I've been... I think I talked about this last time. I've, uh, we've been smoking, uh, chicken for my husband's lunch, and the first couple times that I did it, I just took like a whole pack of turkey breasts and smoked all of them, and then we ate some of... Did I say turkey? I meant chicken. And,

and then we ate some of the chicken for different meals other than his salad throughout the week.

But then the last two weeks that we've done, that I've done that, I've been like, "Okay, this is way too much chicken," and like by the end of the week, I am at, I like... Like, last week I had to like throw some of the chicken away because I was like, "It's been seven days since I cooked this. I don't feel good about eating this anymore."

So yeah, I'm struggling to adjust there a little bit still and figure out, like, what's the right amount for lunch, but also maybe an additional dinner so I don't have to cook one of [00:10:00] those nights. Yeah, we're s- we're still testing the waters. We've only been doing this for like four weeks, so-

Riley: Yeah, it is hard to know. And, and some of it is just variability of, like, hunger, you know? Or, or desire, or, oh, I ended up eating out accidentally, and, this happened to us. I just... I ended up picking up pizza on the way home, 'cause it was gonna be really late when we got home, and, but I'd already thawed out the meat, and I was like, "Well, we have to cook that today," which pivots my entire meal plan.

And so it's a struggle to n- to, like, know what you're gonna end up doing, what your week's gonna look like. But I'd ra- I mean, I guess, yeah, I'd rather have... I don't know. It's so hard to know if you'd rather have more or less, 'cause, like, then what do you do? Then you ha- then you're forced into a hole of ha- if you have n- if you have less, you're forced into this hole of having to buy more, so, or cook more

Roni: Cook more or then he's just gonna like go out for lunch or something instead, which is way more expensive.

Riley: Yeah

Roni: But yeah, I think that was kind of the problem that happened this last week in particular is that, yeah, we ended up going out to eat a couple, a couple [00:11:00] different times. We had like some things happening, and so we went out to eat a couple different times, and so it was like those nights that we would have normally eaten the chicken,

Riley: Mm-hmm.

Roni: those didn't happen at home.

So yeah, it's... But like some- sometimes things are spontaneous. You don't realize that that's gonna happen. Or actually, this is what happened the week before, was that one of our other meals had le- had leftovers. And so then it was like we had a leftover night that was that other meal and not the chicken.

I don't know. It's complicated sometimes

Riley: sometimes. It really is. So you asked me about food getting stuck. Um, let's talk about all the ways food can get stuck in your house. You could overbuy, you could forget what you have, which is a real problem,

Roni: Oh yeah

Riley: maybe you're, maybe you shop, your spouse cooks, or people eat at home and you're not there to know what, like, what was eaten. That's one of the worst things, like every avocado [00:12:00] gets eaten. Well, I guess we're not having avocado toast for breakfast because there's no more avocados. Um, so you could forget what you have and/or people per- people eat it, right?

People eat it without you knowing it. And then over-planning. This is one you and I talk about quite a bit, over-planning, because we... It's why we tell people to start small because we want them to not over-plan and then have food to waste. Or the last one, which is the fridge black hole. Ugh, it really is bad.

It's bad. It's bad at my house. I need to be better about purging thing- or like, you know, reorganizing and reevaluating what I have more often than I do

Roni: Well, I think it's funny because I'm not necessarily like a fridge black hole person. Like, our fridge is... Even right after I go to the grocery store, I look in the fridge and I'm like, "Our fridge looks like there's not a whole lot of food in here." Whereas, like, I go to some people's houses, maybe yours, maybe other people's, and you open the fridge and you're like, "There's a lot of food in here," you 

Riley: Yes. Yeah 

Roni: But it's so interesting still because [00:13:00] even where I feel like I don't have like a super full fridge all the time, my eyes just like glaze past certain things, you know? Like, I, I took the garbage out yesterday and I like did a cursory glance in the fridge, be like, "Is there anything that needs to get thrown away?"

And like five minutes after I took the trash out, I was like, there's three things in here that like my brain did not register when I looked in the refrigerator, yeah, that needed to get thrown away. Yeah. It's just... It's so weird that like I feel like that's how the black hole effect happens is like no matter the state of your refrigerator, like your brain just like shuts off certain things.

Riley: I think it does. Yeah. Yeah, I, I don't have a ton of comments on my fridge black hole, like, just, like, to, like, make myself feel better since you called me out. But, like, I do... Like, we're an ingredient house, you know? Like, there's just... It's a lot of... Like, I, I like to have ingredients so that I can make things when we want them.

Hummus, so there's tahini. How often do I use tahini? Every seven months. Like, but we've got it. There's, um, [00:14:00] roasted red peppers. There's jalapenos. Like, there, you know, there's all these things that don't go bad, that last... Or they don't, they do go bad, but they don't go bad very quickly. They don't, they last quite a while.

And then I think we just need a drink fridge, 'cause that also clogs it up, right? Uh, we have all these beverages that are cold in the fridge, and if they weren't there, it would not look quite so black hole-ish. But my husband's also a big sauce guy, so we've got, like, this whole, you know, one, one whole door is a sauce door.

Roni: Totally

Riley: Very specific sauces for his very specific things, 'cause we like to have specific specifics, so.

Roni: Yeah, yeah, I would say when it comes to a lot of those like these are the things that we have 'cause they don't go bad very often, my husband will randomly find ways to use the majority of those things. If we have like pepperoncinis or like anything vinegary, he just eats them. He'll eat them out of the jar, you know?

So it's like if I think that I have pepperoncinis on hand, I probably don't because he [00:15:00] just will like randomly eat them. Um, the other night he just like found a random way to put some, uh, sun-dried tomatoes on a meal, that I was like, "Where did you find those?" He was like, "Oh, they're in the fridge." I

Riley: "What?" I just glazed over them.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: So y'all have, like, almost the opposite problem of what the internet says, 'cause it's like the husband goes to the fridge and they don't see anything, and he goes to the fridge and he sees it all, and you go to the fridge and you don't see

Roni: Yeah. Well, yeah, it's a little of both. He sees all the con- he definitely sees the condiments 'cause he is a sauce and condiment person, so

Riley: Yeah, we also have pepperoncini peppers. But, like, I'm thinking, I'm thinking immediately like why do I have those? Because if I decide to make a roast, that is actually a meal I don't need to buy anything for. I've got a roast in the freezer, pepperoncini peppers, the packets of s- of seasoning powders and things like that that I use.

Like, I literally just put it in the Crockpot. Like, so to me, it's all sitting there because we're an ingredient house.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah. So

Riley: And I d- I... If I meal planned that, it's a zero dollar meal [00:16:00] plan.

Roni: Right.

Okay, well, speaking of meal planning, let's move into the planning stage of where, how the, how food even gets planned in our households before we ever even go to the grocery store. So when you do your meal planning, Riley, do you think about what you already have at home, or do you usually start from scratch?

Riley: It depends. I do the, like, about twice a month I try to have a week where I spend as little as I possibly can on groceries, and in that we- in that meal planning week, I almost always, I have to start with what I already have because I n- you know, like, the, the $0 meal I just mentioned, I need to know about that $0 meal and plan it so that I spend $0. so I usually start with what I have. But then there are also weeks where I'm like, "Eh, nothing that I have really sounds that good, so let's just... What do, what can we make? What does everybody else want? What... Let's, let's make a meal plan that just is on things that sound good or [00:17:00] things that I saw that looked really good on Instagram or something along those lines," or when a friend texts me a recipe and I just add it to the meal plan 'cause it looks good.

I will still always take that meal plan and look and see what I already have and remove those items. But it does kind of vary. I would say, like, two weeks out of the month it's more, like, whim driven. Like, oh, I really want to have this 'cause it sounds good, and then two weeks a month I start with what do I already have because I wanna spend less.

What do you do?

Roni: I think I do a similar thing but on, like, a week-to-week basis. So I think it's more like if I plan four dinners every week, it's probably, like, two of them are, "Ooh, uh, this looks good, this sounds good, I'm gonna plan it just because," and then the other two are more driven around what we already have.

Riley: I like

Roni: yeah, so I am looking at what we already have. I'm always thinking about, because, like, meat is the most expensive thing at the grocery store, I'm always looking at what kind of meat do we have already at home that I can plan around. So even if it's the recipes that I'm like, "These are fun, I'm gonna plan them [00:18:00] regardless," if it's, like, a recipe that calls for Italian sausage and we have, you know, Italian venison sausage, like, I'm gonna use that instead of buying Italian sausage at home, so...

Or buying it gr- at the store. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm always thinking about the meat portion of a recipe in particular so that I don't have to buy very much meat at the grocery store

Riley: Yeah, I, I do that too. Yeah, I do the same thing. And I also try to do it with seasonings. I try to be pretty conscious of that. Like,

Roni: Mm-hmm

Riley: seasonings are another pretty expensive item at the grocery store. It... They can feel expensive. They can add up in a grocery bill, right? And I, I always triple check to make sure I have them.

'Cause I've, I know I've not done that in the past, and I've ended up with 37 of the same thing,

Roni: Yeah.

So I feel like if planning is the stage where you feel like you're, you have your breakdown of, you know, where your food gets stuck, um, you, you buy things without planning, I think an important thing to think about [00:19:00] is to give your ingredients a job, and that's basically what you're doing when you're creating a meal plan.

So when you're creating a meal plan, you know, you create your, you have your grocery list, and the things that are on the grocery list specifically go to recipes, so that way you're not just buying that random ricotta and hoping that you use it in a recipe. You're buying the ricotta because you have lasagna planned or you have your lemon ricotta plan- pancakes planned.

So there's a purpose. That ingredient has a job when it goes into your refrigerator

Riley: Yeah, I like that this is, um, this is not an uncommon tactic with budgeting tools, right? Every dollar has a job. Uh, whose whole tagline is that? Is it YNAB? Is it Dave Ramsey?

Roni: I think it's YNABs, yeah

Riley: Yeah, okay, every dollar has a job. And so I like the idea of just saying, okay, every ingredient has a job. Ugh, you know, this is a tricky one, right?

Because... And we're gonna talk more about this a little bit later in the episode, but buying random things because you hope to use them is not an ideal way to meal plan. [00:20:00] When you live with other people, sometimes you do have to buy those random things because you say, "Okay, well what if they want this for lunch?"

You know, sometimes it's not just, you know, it's maybe you have a very opinionated spouse and they're like, "Well, I don't really... That doesn't sound good today for lunch. I'm gonna have this instead." Well, if you don't have those ingredients, you can't have that instead, right? Um, and so I think that it's just some of it is just, like, within reason, right?

Like, every job, every ingredient needs a job, or things that last longer. You know, like it's not... The shelf life is a bit longer. You know, I'm thinking peanut butter. Like, if you want a peanut butter sandwich, that's very basic, but, like, that's gonna last a long time. Um, you know, a lot of cheeses last longer than just a week, you know?

So, so you've just gotta make sure you're balancing the everything has a job, but we probably have to purchase extras because we don't know what it's gonna look like on Thursday. Well, we don't know if we're even gonna be home, or if we're home, what are we gonna eat? Like, gotta balance it a little bit.

Roni: Right. Yeah, something that comes to mind for me is things like flour. You know, like when I run out of flour, I put [00:21:00] it on my meal plan even though I don't necessarily have anything planned for the flour. But flour is just, it's a staples item, right? So we always have it so that if I wanna make banana bread, I can make banana bread, or if there is randomly a recipe that calls for a white sauce, you know, I need that, I need the flour for it.

So yeah, there are definitely exceptions where you're like, "This doesn't have a, a super specific job in this week." However, I think going with there's an intentionality in the purchasing. It's not just like... I mean, this was what I did before I meal planned, right, was like I would go to the grocery store and it was literally random.

It was like, "Oh, asparagus in seas- in season? I'll buy asparagus." Well, unless you have a plan for when you're gonna eat the asparagus either in a recipe or as a side dish, like, your asparagus is gonna go bad

Riley: Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I, I think, I think this one has a lot of caveats to it. You know, like every ingredient has a job. Um, but also if you are planning... I, I'm thinking about when I go to [00:22:00] Costco, and sometimes I see things that we typically buy, but we may not need them that week. We typically buy them, but they're on sale.

It's like, okay, well, it's going to have a job.

Roni: Yeah

Riley: It's just in the queue, you know? But I'd rather save the money on it now. There are some like sparkling waters that we like, and they were like buy three get three free, which is an excessive amount of boxes of sparkling

Roni: Yeah, right.

Riley: And, and, and again, it's not gonna go bad, so it's not the greatest example, but I'm like, I know I've got family coming in town soon, so I'm going to buy them now because I'm sa- I'm literally saving so much money on these waters.

Roni: Yeah

Riley: Even though it looks crazy and I've got this gigantic stack of sparkling water now, it, I, I'd rather pa- I'd rather pay less for it now than pay double for it later.

Roni: Yeah, for sure.

Riley: And so some of it, some of it... I think that's another way that every ingredient might not have a job, but if you plan, if you purchase... I mean, there's still intention behind what I did.

It was just... And if, you know, something's [00:23:00] on sale, I'm just thinking like there's a lot of caveats to this one I think in particular. But, but not just winging every bit of it. Like, going into the grocery store and being like, "Well, I'm really hungry and macaroni and cheese sounds good. Let's buy that." And mozzarella, and sausage, and strawberries, and then you're like, "But then, uh, I didn't even eat this home, at home this week."

Well, what did you do with all those things, you know? And they all just, you know, all those things that are fresh go bad, so.

Roni: Yeah, I think particularly if you are a, a default to takeout kind of a person or, like, default to getting food delivered to your house, having a meal plan that you're gonna stick to is important and not just, like, buying things randomly because you're not im- you're not gonna figure out a way to use those things.

You're just gonna be like, "I'll get on Uber Eats and get dinner."

Riley: Yeah, yeah, the know thyself. Like, look in, look inside and have some self-awareness.

Roni: Yes

Riley: I have to be [00:24:00] really, I have to be really careful about this. Like, I'll- if I'm in the grocery store, and I'll be like, "Wow, that treat looks so good," and then I'll buy it, and then I will never eat it.

Roni: Oh, funny.

Riley: We have candy goes, comes to my house and goes to die. Like, nobody eats it. It is crazy. Like, yeah, and so I've had to start being like, "You're literally not gonna eat this. Like, it looks good and it sounds good right now, but you're not, you're not gonna eat it,

Roni: Yeah.

Riley: so just leave it here at the store."

Roni: I think related to this is also knowing what your possible backup plan is for ingredients.

Riley: Yeah

Roni: So like you have a planned use for something, but say you have a recipe that has more leftovers and you guys end up eating leftovers and not end up eating that recipe, your plans change and you end up going out to eat with friends and a, a recipe doesn't get made, whatever the random thing that could happen is, having a backup plan for what you're gonna do with that I think is important.

And sometimes it's just putting it in the freezer, which is a great backup plan. But I mean, like say you buy spinach and your original plan [00:25:00] is to have like a spinach and strawberry salad, and you don't really get to it, and then maybe the spinach is getting a little weird or something, and it's like, okay, well, the backup plan is to like put it in something where the gets heated up, right?

So like it's gets added to like a, a pasta dish or something. Maybe it gets put into a smoothie, in which case it could go in the freezer first and then go into a smoothie, um, or it gets like blended into a soup, something like that. Like I think this is a... And maybe this is like an advanced skill may- not for somebody who is newer to cooking and planning, but just kind of like thinking through in the process, right?

It's like thinking like, "Well, what, what else could I use this for if for whatever reason it doesn't get used in this recipe, or we don't make this recipe, everybody decides they hate this recipe and we don't wanna eat it this week?"

Riley: It happens at my house. It actually just happened with spinach here. Oh. I did use it, but it was just more spinach than the recipe needed. Um, and I did add a little extra, but I didn't wanna push it too [00:26:00] far. You know, I still have toddlers, you know? You just gotta like you still got... You gotta... Can't push it too far.

And then I ended up using the rest of it on a breakfast sandwich this morning.

Roni: Yeah. I feel like, I don't know why spinach is the thing, but I feel like this is one of those items, like you buy a bag of spinach, a recipe calls for like two handfuls, and you're like, "Okay, there's seven handfuls in this bag."

Riley: Yeah, it does happen. It does happen w- in particular with spinach. I think you just can't buy a small amount of spinach, you know? I'm thinking about a person who's just a single person cooking for themselves, like you better have a plan every day for that spinach.

Roni: Absolutely. Yeah

Riley: But it's happened here and, and I think scrambled eggs is a great way to use up spinach, just throwing that out there.

It's very low taste, you know? But, uh, yeah. Anyway, it is hard and you have to have a plan, and I don't like to throw things away, so I ended up using the leftover spinach for a breakfast sandwich today, and then I was done with it, and that's always just feels good to throw away an empty container of something.

Roni: Well, I think just some general tips for planning, and we've said these things so many times before, so we don't wanna be a super broken record and go into these in detail. But, you know, if, [00:27:00] again, if the planning stage is your hard part, think about planning simpler. We've said this all year so far.

Uh, plan fewer recipes in your meal plan, f- plan simple recipes, plan your family favorite recipes. Also you can reuse your past meal plans. This is amazing. If you use Plan to Eat, you can scroll back through all of your past meal plans. You can, you know, copy and paste them onto the current dates, or you can create menus and then reuse them over and over again.

And then it's also important to make sure that you're planning based off of your schedule and the energy that you have. I think just looking at sche- we've always talked about schedule, but I think combining those two can be really important because, you know, you could have a day where you're like, "Cool, we're...

It's a busy, it's a busy day, and so we're just gonna have, like, a quick recipe," or whatever. But also if you know that quick day is gonna mean that you're totally depleted of energy and you don't even wanna make a 15-minute dinner, well, then do something different. Have leftovers or, you know, something else in the works, a [00:28:00] Crockpot meal or something in the works for that day instead

Riley: Mm-hmm. It's been a little while since we've talked about, like, meal planning Tetris, you know? Um, but I do feel like I'm going back just a tiny bit to, like, the spinach and, like, how to use it up. And I do feel like it, it probably... When I go on to go back to this, like, tips for planning too because if you get really good at saying, "Okay, I've got spinach and it's gonna need to go in two recipes with spinach.

I need two recipes to have. You know, I need, I need this one box of spinach that goes into two recipes," when you get into that, like, Tetris meal planning, it can really save you a lot of time, and it allows you to plan a little simpler because you're purchasing less ingredients 'cause one ingredient is going for more recipes.

Um, but if you have a really good week where you, um... Like, man, it went really well. Nothing went to waste. Everything got eaten. Like, that's a meal plan to reuse and focus on. And say, "Okay, this worked. How can we, how can we replicate this in the future besides just using this exact same meal plan over again?"

Um, and again, all these things are things you can do with [00:29:00] inside, inside Plan to Eat, just saving menus, reusing them, duplicating them, um, and then looking at a, looking at a calendar and saying, "Okay, this recipe calls for that and that recipe calls for this. Perfect. Check, check." Like, I don't need to buy double.

We're not cooking for eight people. We're cooking for four or three. But you, y- you... Those kinds of things really come into play with meal planning, just, like, looking at the big picture, um, planning simpler. Like, when you can see it, you can actually do that. When you can't see it, and you're just, like, meal planning in your mind, like, that's, that's a Jenga tower waiting to fall, right? So

Roni: So many games we play when we, when we meal plan. Tetris, Jenga.

Riley: I know, I know. That's what I'm saying

Roni: Okay, let's move into the grocery shopping stage. Maybe it's the, um, you know, shopping part is where you have some breakdown, where you end up wasting food, wasting money. I think obviously the biggest breakdown here is, like, you're buying without a plan. We just talked a whole bunch about meal planning and why that's important.

And [00:30:00] again, in order to reduce your food waste and your cost at the grocery store, you wanna make sure that everything you buy does have a purpose, so, like, that give everything a job kind of a, kind of a thing. Um, but one thing that we've kind of alluded to but we haven't gone into detail with yet is to make sure you shop at home before you go to the grocery store.

So if y- one of your problems is, like, overbuying ingredients, part of that could be that you don't take inventory of what you already have before you go to the grocery store. And, like, Riley, you gave the example of your spices at home. Like, spices are expensive. We don't need to be having three different kinds of the same spice at home because we're never gonna use all of it, and they're like $5 for a small little thing, you know?

Riley: Right.

Roni: Or more, I don't know

Riley: Yeah. Well, one, you have to have a great list to shop at home. You have got to have a succinct list that's got everything on it, and the amounts you need too. Because nothing is quite as frustrating as when you go to cook a meal... This, this almost, almost [00:31:00] happened to me this week.

Thankfully it didn't, but it almost happened. I went to go cook th- the rice, and we had just... I thought we had just enough rice left for one more meal. We ended up having rice for two meals. And so I went and, like we, we basically squeaked it in there. We had rice, we had enough rice to make fresh rice for two nights.

But nothing is worse when you go and you look and you're like, "Oh, wow, we don't have the main ingredient?" Because I assumed, I assumed that I had it. I, I am sure that other people have done this. I don't think I'm the only one. But I've made an, a, an executive decision, oh yeah, I know for sure we have pepperoncini peppers.

That is a very specific flavor, and if you leave it out of the recipe, it's gonna be really sad without it, okay? Um, and then I go to make it, and I don't have it, because I made an assumption, 'cause my brain cannot keep track of it all. And so taking your list, shopping at home is one of my favorite ways to save money, because you don't re-buy.

Save yourself when you're actually shopping, because you have what you... Or, sorry, when you're actually cooking, 'cause then you have what you need. It's just, it's, it's [00:32:00] really, really helpful. If I can impress anything upon people, shop at home before you go to the store. It's so helpful.

Roni: Totally. And actually, like, pick up things and make sure that they have the amount that you think they do. I th- I think the thing that I often struggle with in this is, like, a sauce calls for heavy cream, and I look in the fridge and I'm like, "We got heavy cream, no big deal." And then I go to make the, the recipe and I'm like, "Oh, I needed a whole cup?

I only have, like, two tablespoons."

Riley: Yes. Yep.

Roni: So yeah, it's, uh, it's worth the time that it takes to, like, double-check these things

Riley: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's also helpful when you're going through to just glance at things you already buy and regularly buy. I don't know, honey might not be in my meal plan this week, but we eat honey a lot. So, like, if I've got one tablespoon of honey left over, we're gonna need to add that to the shopping list.

So it's a great time to take off what you already have, add what you need, and add staples as you need them.

Roni: Yeah.

Riley, do you feel like there's a difference [00:33:00] between what comes home from the grocery store when you shop versus when your husband shops?

Riley: Well, there is for sure, and it's a little hard to pinpoint exactly, exactly what those things are. Uh, sometimes it's just all the extras because, because I often... I, I, I stick to my shopping list pretty well, like pretty closely. Um, like I mentioned earlier, Costco is a place where I can accident- you know, not accidentally, but like I'll end up with extra things because of sales or things like that.

But yes, things are different. Um, brands are different. Um, the, um, the quantities are different. Oh, I walked past this and it looked great, and we ended up with zebra cakes. Um, that sounds really specific. It might be. Um, so there is a difference when my husband and I shop. But he usually takes my list because I'm the meal planner, so it's not that far off.

It's just the differences are in, like the what I would have purchased if I had been there versus what he buys. Like he might buy a salad that's [00:34:00] on clearance, and I probably wouldn't.

Roni: Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, my husband doesn't do the shopping very often, but he did do the whole, he did our whole grocery shopping trip about two weeks ago, which is, like, the first time in a really long time that he's done, like, the full grocery trip. And, uh, and yeah, he came home with... You know, I think the difference is, is that he's just like, "I need to get in and out."

And so he's not even really paying attention to, like, prices or anything like that, right? Like, he's like, "I saw honey, I grabbed honey, I put it in the cart," not necessarily, like, looking at the... I like look at the things and, you know, like, I have, like, the back- I have, like, background knowledge of, like, we should be h- buying honey that's local because of X, Y, and Z, you know?

So I'm, like, reading the labels and, so it's just a different experience. But it's actually really funny because aft- literally right after my husband went grocery shopping, and, uh, he didn't, like, way overspend at the grocery store or anything. It just was like, I just noticed that things were a little different.

But I then saw a, an [00:35:00] article on moneywise.com that said, in general, men spend 5% more at the grocery store when they shop. So,

Riley: It, that doesn't surprise me at all because I, if I... I'm gonna bring up Costco again. If I take my husband to Costco with me, we automatically spend $50 more, 'cause he's like, "Yes, I need these gloves, and also this treat is on sale, and I had a sample and it was great. Why would we not also buy a rotisserie chicken that we don't need?"

Roni: Yeah

Riley: It doesn't surprise me

Roni: Yes. Yes. Uh, I, but I thought that was really interesting, and I, it felt like it validated the experience that we had.

Riley: Uh, is this when you text me and said that you, um, had to walk him through the store?

Roni: Yes.

Riley: Yes.

Roni: Yes. Uh, yeah, so really funnily, Riley, like, I don't know, has it been like two months ago now maybe? A month ago?

Riley: so, yeah

Roni: Riley made an Instagram reel where she was like, "Are you even married if you don't [00:36:00] Lewis and Clark your spouse their way through the grocery store," right? And so she's like, she's like pretend navigating her husband through the store in the Instagram reel, and I actually had to do that for my husband.

I sent him our grocery list, and then he called me, and he was like, "Okay, where are..." Like, literally we started in the produce, and we went all the way through the entire store, and he's like, "Where are the carrots? Where are the whatever?" And I'm like, "It's on the south wall in the Uh, yeah, and then he's like, we, we did need honey, and he's like, "Okay, well, where is the honey?"

I was like, "Okay, well, it's on the same aisle as the bread," which seems a little weird, but it's like on the opposite side, and it's next to the peanut butter. And he was like, "Wow, you're doing a really good job at this." I'm like, "Well, I'm here every week."

Riley: That's awesome. I love it. Okay. The next place where you have to pay attention, 'cause things can get wasted or thrown away, is with cooked food, leftovers, the storage, a- like all of this stage of meal planning.

The cooked, the stored, [00:37:00] the leftover stage. So at your house, like do p- do you move meals around quite a bit? Now let me add, you and I have talked a lot about this, and we plan less so that we can rearrange with flexibility.

Roni: Mm-hmm

Riley: But what happens when you move meals to another day?

Roni: Yeah, so I think the m- the m- the biggest reason that food gets moved to a different day is mostly because of, like, a freezer situation. Like, I didn't thaw the thing that I was supposed... Like, I didn't thaw the meat or something that I was supposed to, and so I need to switch out a different meal instead.

But then I guess, uh, meals also get pushed around because of the weather, If it is really warm outside and I have, like, beef stroganoff planned, like, m- that's just not what we're in the mood for. And my husband is more particular about the, the weather situation and what he's eating than I am.

So, like, I would be like, "It's fine. I love beef stroganoff. I'm gonna eat the beef stroganoff." But he's like, "It's hot outside. I... My person is hot. I don't wanna eat [00:38:00] hot food." So, so I would say those are the two main reasons that I, like, push meals around. Every once in a while I'll have a recipe that I put on the meal plan, and I, I planned it, I shopped for it, and then, like, as the week goes along, I'm just like, "This...

I have no desire for this recipe." Like, it just doesn't really sound that good, and I will push that meal off until the end of the week. And sometimes I just won't even make it. I'll just, uh, you know, if there's anything that's perishable, I'll just, like, repurpose it into a different meal

Riley: Yeah, I do the same thing. And, and we, we get a lot of pushback on people saying like, "I don't want a meal plan because I, I don't know what I'm gonna wanna eat." Now you and I both live quite a long way from the grocery store, so we don't have the same luxury of like not knowing, you know? Like we're not going to eat or we're gonna drive 45 minutes to town to find something to

eat. Um, but I, I move meals around for similar reasons. Sometimes it's just because people are like, "Eh, it doesn't really sound very good tonight. Let's have that tomorrow and have this [00:39:00] tonight." Um, sometimes mine's an energy level thing. I'm like, "Oh man, that takes too long. Let's move it." But that is the benefit to meal planning the way you and I meal plan, which is four or five dinners, can move things around, have leftovers one night and like a backup night or we eat out.

And so that is one really nice thing about it. Uh, I, I have certainly had weeks where I have moved meals around to the point where like now that's bad, and that is sometimes why I move meals around, 'cause I say, "If we don't eat this, it's going to be bad, so we're gonna eat this tonight. It's gotta get cooked."

But it is helpful. It's a helpful way to meal plan when you've got some space because you can pivot, and use up what's gonna go bad or move things around by preference.

Roni: Mm-hmm. What do you feel like is the food that gets lost in your refrigerator the most?

Riley: Green onions as garnishes

Roni: Oh, yeah

Riley: Yeah. Uh, oh, yeah. I don't

Roni: Green onions

Riley: even buy them anymore. I don't even know why... I g- I, I almost always remove the garnish-related toppings, unless it's [00:40:00] something that's very pivotal, like a fruit or a sauce or, you know, something that's like a, like a sesame seed or a green onion garnish.

We almost, I almost always just remove those because I, we don't usually do that

Roni: Yeah, I have stopped, I've pretty much stopped buying green onions as well because I feel like it doesn't matter what I do. I put them in the water, I put them on the counter. I put them in the water, I put them in the fridge. I don't know what the thing is that's supposed to be able to make them stay good, but unless it's like the green onions are planned for the recipe either the same night, either the same day I get home from the grocery store or the next day, like they're like limp and gross, or they've somehow dried up even though they're in water, and then they're like crispy, you know?

I don't understand green onions at all. I have stopped... I, yeah, I've stopped buying them.

Riley: I have a lot of success with them on the counter, but I don't use them enough to want to leave them on the counter. I have a basil plant on my counter and I'm, I utilize that. You know, like I, I can live with this on my counter, but green onions just go to die

Roni: Yeah, I, e- [00:41:00] even when I put them on my counter, they just... I don't know. Maybe they're in too much sun, not enough sun. I don't know. They feel temperamental

Riley: yeah, yeah. Cilantro is another one that I'll utilize it for a, a single recipe, but it doesn't usually make it to another recipe. And like, it goes bad really fast.

Roni: It does

Riley: Very delicate little herb

Roni: Yeah. Yeah, I w- so I think the, the gist here is that herbs, herbs often get left in the fridge.

Riley: Milk is another one that I think, um, oscillates in my house, like, kinda like the fruit I was talking about earlier. Sometimes we drink so much milk and I'm like, "Dude, we're drinking so much milk and I've gotta buy more milk." And then I buy more milk and then it doesn't get... I don't know. Not really sure what, what this, like, reasoning is for these kinds of things, but, what I see get used up a lot in my house would be cheese.

Like, I'll... Like, we pretty much always eat cheese that we have. It never... You- it doesn't usually go bad

Roni: Right. along the lines [00:42:00] of this cooked food, what are we gonna do with it? When it comes to leftovers, I feel like leftovers need a plan just like a regular meal does.

Riley: They do. They do. They,

Roni: we've talked about before, I often plan to leftover night in our week so that we make sure that there are any leftovers that need to get eaten up.

Uh, although, like I said earlier, sometimes we have too many leftovers, and one leftover night is not good enough

Riley: I agree. Um, I often will call this, my leftover night, like a fridge clean out, because I don't wanna lock everyone into leftovers. Like, you're allowed to make a fresh meal. Like, it just needs to be what we've got here in the fridge, and it needs to be eaten. Okay, we've got lunch meat that needs to be eaten.

We've got these random pieces of pizza that needs to be eaten. We've got, um, the, the leftover, actual leftover dinner that needs to be eaten, or whatever it looks like, whatever those things are. I'm, I'm okay with somebody even making something fresh. Like, we got 15 blueberries that are gonna die. We got...

Somebody's gotta eat those in a yogurt bowl. Like, to me, that's a fresh meal. It just is utilizing a thing that's about to go to b- [00:43:00] go bad. So I kinda call our leftover night, like, a fridge clean out. Like, you're allowed to have some choices here. Um, yeah. And I, and I, and I often will eat leftovers for lunches and just plan them that way, and so that helps, too.

I, I really hate throwing away leftovers, but I will if it gets past, like, three days

Roni: Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah, I just think it's, uh, always best to know what you're gonna do early when it comes to leftovers, whether it's like meal prep things, i- the individual meal prep items, or like a prepped meal, a cooked meal, because if you don't decide early, it's definitely gonna go to waste at the end of the week, right?

Like, if you made something on Monday and you haven't figured out how you're gonna use it by Friday, it's probably time to toss it

Riley: Yeah. Yeah. Unless it's like, unless it's like carrots and celery or something and they're still fine, you know?

Yeah. There are some meals that I make with the intention of like, we love this so much we want to have the leftovers. Um, and so I will make them and then have that be immediately the next night's meal or [00:44:00] lunches for the next couple of days. But, um, we definitely want to have a closed loop with our food, right?

It needs to be planned, cooked, and eaten, and then either you repurpose that leftover or you repurpose it, you eat it, or you freeze it. But we definitely wanna make sure that we're closing the loop. It's gonna help us waste less food

Roni: Yeah. That's kind of the whole point of today's podcast is, like, helping pinpoint some of these areas and, you know, if nothing else, to get you thinking about, like, where in your house do you potentially have some of these breakdowns and how you could just, like, improve the system a little bit. Obviously, like, there's no...

It's never gonna be perfect. Riley and I have talked a lot already about how we fail at these things. We fail at each stage.

Riley: Yeah. Yeah

Roni: But, but, you know, like, drawing attention to it and working on it, um, y- yeah, like, you're just gonna see a big difference in the amount of food that you're wasting

Riley: Mm-hmm. Yep

Roni: All right. Well, before we wrap up today, we have a wonderful listener who emailed us, Melissa. [00:45:00] Melissa says, "It's just my husband and myself at home now, and I find myself planning dinners but not really lunches. This is a new mindset for me. Wondering how to think about lunches that used to just be sandwiches with kids but now are different into the meal plan.

How many lunches per week, et cetera? I find I am so good at meal planning, but I don't really have extras around anymore."

Riley: It's a perfect way to end this podcast, right? Because she doesn't have extras in around, around anymore, which is amazing. Like, she's not wasting food, but now she needs more food.

Roni: Yeah. Yeah, it is an interesting dilemma to be in to, like, you've not really planned ideas for lunches because lunches were just always, like, uh, they were, like, systematized, right? Like, we just had sandwiches. Kids took sandwiches to school with them for lunches, the end. And then, you know, I'm guessing she's become an empty nester, and now she's like, "What do we do?

We don't wanna eat, maybe we don't wanna eat sandwiches anymore. Now what do we do?"

Riley: Yeah. Yeah, I think she's, I think this, she sounds like the [00:46:00] perfect person to meal prep something. You know? I'm thinking like, because she's not planning lunches, she doesn't have any ex- she's not planning lunches, so she doesn't have any extra food, so including a recipe specifically for lunch, works really well in this situation.

'Cause then she's actually purchasing what she needs, and she maybe eats that for four or five days, something along those lines, something that holds up really well. I'm thinking, uh, I'm thinking about that amazing blueberry avocado quinoa salad that you and I love so much. That holds up so well in the fridge, pairs really well with a protein, or not.

And that'd be something really helpful I think just to like say, "Okay, this is what I'm gonna have for lunch every day this week." Um, something that you like. Kinda like your husband, like you've got all this grilled chicken, and you've got salad ingredients, so he's gonna have a chicken salad every day for lunch.

It's not a ton of extra, but it just, it, you allo- allo- allows you to know what you're gonna have, um, and then you have those ingredients on hand

Roni: Yeah. I mean, one thing that you and I talk about all the time is making sure that we do have leftovers so that we have lunches. I would say that's, in general, [00:47:00] what I rely on the most is to have leftovers, even if it's not, like, a full meal. Like, I'm not saying, like, we have a casserole and so I eat casserole for lunch the next day.

It's like maybe we have grilled chicken and we have some pasta that was made and we have, you know, part of a salad that we didn't finish the night before. And so it's like lunches is, like, leftovers, but sometimes it's a bit of a smorgasbord leftover, you know? So I actually had it today, and it was like...

I was like, "This is so good." I had-- We made couscous last night, and I forget about couscous until it's in a recipe and then I'm like, "I freaking love couscous." And, um, yeah, had it with, like, a little, like, Mediterranean vegetable salad kinda thing, and then had, had it with chicken and I was like, "This was the perfect lunch."

Riley: That sounds great. Another thing that I thought of while, uh, while reading this note is just rethinking sandwiches. It's familiar, because she mentioned it, right? Like, this is what she's used to. But something like a panini, a flatbread, an open-faced sandwich, like, [00:48:00] just, like, upgrade a sandwich. Summer's a great time to start doing that because there's, like, beautiful produce that you can put on there.

I, I mean, I don't know, it sounded fun to me. Just, like, upgrade your sandwiches. Now you're h- it's just you and maybe your spouse, and you're making fancy sandwiches for lunch. Um, another idea would be a charcuterie. Charcuterie ingredients, kind of like your smorgasbord idea. Um, but just, like, you have all these ingredients.

They don't go bad too fast, but then you can mix and match, like, what sounds good that day. But it's a little more of, like, a snacky lunch. We call it an adult Lunchable at our house.

Roni: I like that a lot. That's funny. Yeah, I mean, and I don't know, Melissa, I don't know if, you know, it's just you and your husband and you both are now retired as well. Like, if you've got time, there's nothing wrong with planning a recipe that you're gonna make at lunch. I understand if you don't wanna cook, you know, like if you're cooking for dinner and you don't wanna cook at lunch, but there's also nothing wrong with like, you know, we plan our favorite pasta recipe at lunch because we've got time and we're feeling fancy, you know?

Riley: Exactly. Yeah

Roni: All right. I [00:49:00] think that wraps us up for this week, right, Riley?

Riley: I think so. Yeah

Roni: As always, we appreciate you listening to the Plan to Eat podcast. You can give us a rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Audible, and we appreciate all of those. We love to read your reviews of the podcast, and we will talk to you again in two weeks