Find a Recipe by Ingredients You Have at Home

Tired from working all day at the office and not excited about going home and spending 2 hours cooking? We have all experienced his. And nobody wants to do dishes after working in the kitchen for a couple hours.

Let’s stop eating out and ruining our health and our food budget. Although, it’s easier to just pick something up on the way home from work, it’s both expensive and unhealthy. My goal is to get us all into the kitchen and to realize that it’s not as time consuming to cook at home, when done right.

Cooking is easier than you think and obviously healthier because you can control the ingredients that go into each meal.

There is one thing that you have to do in order to get dinner to the table without spending all night dedicated to this and it can be summarized with one word. Planning.

Step 1 – Get a calendar and list your meals for the week. I only cook Sunday – Thursday. It’s important to make enough for lunch the following day. For example, if I’m making a meal on Monday, I try to make enough to take for lunch on Tuesday. This really saves a lot of money because a lunch will cost at least $5 per lunch.

Step 2 – Make a list of the ingredients you’ll need and compare with the ingredients you already have at home.

Step 3 – Go to the grocery store with your list. This trip to the grocery store can take 30 minutes to an hour depending on when you go. I go to the store early Sunday morning to beat the rush.

Step 4 – This is the best and most fun step. Cook your meal. Once you have all the ingredients, cooking is easy and a lot of fun. When watching a cooking show on TV you will see how easy it was for them to make the meal once all the ingredients are purchased? With proper planning, this is how it will be for you in the kitchen, each night.

Final step – You are not doing any dishes! Have your husband, wife or kids wash all the dishes. You did the hardest part, buying the groceries and cooking (even though cooking was the fun part), it’s time for them to pitch in and help make the dinner night awesome and stress free.

After a couple months, you will be addicted to cooking and you will see your savings increase and you will probably lose some pounds, too.