Don't Grocery Shop Hungry

Best advice ever.  Seriously.  I've now completed my plans for dinners over the next few days and it's time to be off to the grocery store but I'm hungry!  Looking at recipes and planning meals for the last hour has really made my tummy growl...

Anyway, thought I would share some of my upcoming meals!  I will take pictures and put recipes up as I make them and let you know how I will cut calories and modify to fit the diet.  The most fun of cooking is the modifying and teaching myself how to cook and grocery shop differently.  And I figure if my grocery list has more veggies and fruits than cookies and candies, I'm on the right track!

Here's the line-up (in no particular order):

Turkey Veggie Meatloaf Cups
Shrimp Kabobs w/quinoa cranberry salad
Honey Garlic Pork Ribs
Tomato & Tuna Pita Melts
Guacamole Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Breakfast Sausage Egg Muffins

Everything here includes ingredients on sale and most of them are super fresh so it won't be difficult to stay healthy!  Next is to just get the ingredients I don't have and start cooking!

A (Wo)Man With A Plan

One of the things I'm teaching myself about is meal planning, because planning ahead for your eating is one of the components of a healthy diet and weightloss.  I find that the weeks I am able to spend some time planning my grocery list and the meals I will eat, I do 150% better than the weeks I do not.  It's kind of a no-brainer if you think about it...if I plan my meals then I know there will be food around to eat and I won't be as tempted to eat out or grab something that is fast.  When I don't plan my food, especially my breakfast or lunch, I make much worse decisions about what I eat.  I also find that if I don't look at my days and plan out my weeks for activity, it follows that I'll be a couch potato, but that's a topic for another day. :-)

So on the topic of meal planning, here's how I do it.  Usually it occurs on Sundays when I have a chunk of time to spend working on our meals.  I start by surfing the grocery store websites to find the best possible deals for the week.  We also have to be budget friendly with what we eat, so whatever is on sale, is what we eat!  And usually I'm most concerned about what the meat is going to be and then I build the menu around that.  So once I know what's on sale then I usually go to allrecipes.com and do a little searching.

I don't like to cook the same thing all the time, so allrecipes is a great website to find that variety.  I also have to be aware of how difficult or time consuming the recipe is and how many ingredients are going to be involved.  I like to keep it simple, cheap and varied.  This week, it looks like we will be having some yummy shrimp, chicken and pork...I'll be back with recipe ideas soon!