I love looking at cookbooks. I say it is my schooling for being a home chef so I have tons of cookbooks and read through them like novels when I first get them. I also love the idea of getting organized with my week and seeing what can I cook. There is nothing better than having a fridge full of food to create meals throughout the week.

Here is where the problem lies, I NEVER cook all the meals I plan for. Some meals are a hit and all gone the night I cook them. Some meals are not a hit and don’t even make the cut for leftovers. They just sit in the fridge with high hopes of not being thrown out.

They eventually get thrown out.

This time when I went to make plans for the week’s dinners I had this novel idea to just plan two meals. 😳 I had to literally stop and think it through because only two meals…..who was I???

I decided to go for it and chose a mustard glaze salmon from Danielle Walkers newest cookbook – Eat What You Love- and the Fiesta Chicken and Carrot “Rice” from the cookbook -Skinny taste. One & Done-

I made my (very small) grocery list and went shopping the next day. It was this strange….freeing but not enough experience under my belt yet, to see if I liked it or not….type feeling.

Tuesday I cooked the salmon meal and LOVED every single bite of it. I was thrilled when some of my kids did not like the mustard taste because it meant leftovers for me. I will try making it again with less of that and see how it fairs for their confused taste buds 😁

Wednesday comes along and normally I would have stuff bought for a meal, forgetting that we are going to church and they feed the kids. This time though, I was good. I ate my leftover Salmon and the kids ate pizza.

Thursday rolls around and this is the day to cook the next meal…..except I didn’t get the chance. We packed up my oldest and brought her home from college. Upon getting home Jerry and I had to get ready for a Christmas party. I didn’t have time for this new fancy meal but, I did have hamburger meat thawing in the fridge. It was perfect for a quick and delicious spaghetti dinner. This would mean more leftovers in the fridge. Not a ton, but enough that it needs to be used up so we are not throwing “money” in the trash.

Friday we had a big pot luck Christmas party here at the house so, once again, the second meal I planned on making still hasn’t been cooked. Had I of planned on the normal 5 or more meals for the week, I would be negative – 4 meals with the sure fact that half of the ingredients would go bad in a couple of days.

Today it is Saturday. Will I get to the meal? Probably not. It is the season for parties and I have a photoshoot and another party this evening. Dinner tonight will be the food at the party and the leftovers for the last night and the spaghetti. The salmon is all gone 😋

The awesome thing is that I can freeze the chicken meant for meal two and I will have wasted zero food this week from over planning. 🤩

I am still too early in this experiment to see if I am in love but we are definitely in the courting stages and it is going well. ❤️