The shopping plan and recipes presented in 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store can be summed up simply as this: spend way less money on groceries, make many fewer trips to the store, and yet make many more delicious weeknight meals for your family. Find out for yourself… comment on this blog post. From those comments, one winner will be selected at random this Friday to win a free copy for themselves.

Now, back to what I’ve been cooking….

Day 23

Menu: Chicken Enchiladas — have you tried our enchilada sauce? It’s melt-in-your-mouth good! (On our recipes page).

Game plays applied:

70 Meals, One Trip to the Store

Ahhh, it’s great to have everything you need ON HAND to make dinner.

Gifts to Self

Remember that chicken that I pre-cooked and froze? That made these enchiladas super easy to whip up.

Day 24

Menu: Baked Pasta

Game plays applied:

70 Meals, One Trip to the Store

I always have everything on hand to make Baked Pasta.

Flexibility

This is one of those recipes that I call a palette. Once you have the basis of the recipe, you can add whatever ingredients suit your fancy (or that you have on hand). Tonight we used meatballs and spinach.

Day 25

Menu: Pecan-Crusted Fish

This is my favorite fish preparation, mixing the sweetness of honey with savory pecans.

Game plays applied:

70 Meals, One Trip to the Store

There are recipes for Pecan-Crusted Chicken and Pecan-Crusted Fish in the book. Two more delicious meals I can make any night of the year with what I have at home.

It seems appropriate that all three meals in this post were from 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store, when it’s time for a giveaway. Don’t forget to comment for your chance to be this month’s winner.

Going shopping when you shop Smart can be so stress free, you may wonder what you’re missing. You know that feeling of “what am I forgetting?” at the grocery store if you’ve forgotten your list? I was hit with that feeling during today’s shopping trip, as after being out of town for a week, and with a nearly empty fridge, I expected I would need a lot of things at the store. But I quickly realized those thoughts as I knew what they meant – there really wan’t much that I needed.

I grabbed a package of fresh mushrooms knowing I have ground beef in the freezer (from last week’s stock up) and every thing else I need to make salisbury steak. I grabbed avocados, tomatoes, cheese and lettuce, knowing that with them I can make many variations of tacos/tostadas with the chicken, shrimp, beef and tortillas I have in the freezer.

Then, because I had room to spare in both the cart and the budget, I added a brisket and cranberry sauce to my cart to make my favorite elegant meal, Cranberry Brisket, from the Cook Once… Eat Twice! cookbook.

When I got home to unload, there was plenty of room in the cabinets to unload my groceries — and I don’t have that much cabinet space. The thing is, after you really get into shopping Smart, and buying ingredients that you use over and over in many different dinners, you are buying a whole lot less of “this and that”. Believe me, “this and that” can take up an incredible amount of room in your cabinets and storage space. And because it’s only rarely used, it doesn’t move. When you buy Smart ingredients, you use them. And you’re buying less clutter, so your cabinets become naturally organized.

My Smart ingredients are mostly the things on the 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store shopping lists (These can be seen, and printed, off the Smart Ingredients page of the website), along with a few of my favorite seasonings and frozen shrimp. Your Smart Ingredients can vary based on what dinners are a sure-fire hit for your family. What’s your family’s Smartest ingredient?

If you’re a blog subscriber you should have received a coupon code via e-mail for the new copy of the 70 Meals, One Trip to the Store cookbook, including beautiful photos, extras and a fantastic new design by Studio One Eleven www.studio-oneeleven.com. If you own an original copy of the book, check out the Shop page for information on how to order a replacement copy at cost. Thanks Studio One Eleven, we love our new look!

I tell my students in my cooking  classes and the patrons at my cooking demos to “trust me” that the cookbook really works. I know it does because I use it myself. Truly, 5 meals out of 7 busy weeknight meals I make for my family are out of this book. But I’ve been using it for the 4 years since I started the first draft, and the book continues to surprise me.

I always have the majority of the ingredients on hand, at any given time. This means I can make nearly any one of the 70 meals in the book without a trip to the store for ingredients.

Yesterday, I began preparing for a nice media day on Monday, where my amazing publicist Meggan has booked me on the NBC-Milwaukee morning program “The Morning Blend.” I will be preparing three dishes from the book, Grecian Chicken, Meatball Sandwiches and Southwest Pasta. Immediately following, I will be doing a book signing at a local grocery store, Sendik’s, where I will be giving out samples of the Grecian Chicken and the Southwest Pasta. I know will need a lot of food. There will be three pounds of pasta, 2 crock-pots full of Grecian Chicken, and since I’m cooking anyway, I’ll be making enough meatballs to feed my family the night of the demo. As I assessed the recipes in my head on my way to the store, I could come up with very few things I didn’t have on hand at home. So I brought a copy of the book into the store with me, to reference the recipes and make sure I was covered. Sure enough, there were only a few needs. For the Grecian Chicken, all I needed was artichokes, for the Southwest Pasta, some green peppers, and for the meatball sandwiches: rolls, Mozzarella cheese and ground beef. I spent $20. Twenty Dollars! And ten minutes in the store. What I bought, combined with what I have on hand at home will feed more than 40 people in various proportions. And I have NO storage pantry other than my standard shelves.

It was a great reminder to me why I am out there at classes and events promoting this book. It really does work.  By shopping smart, buying less ingredient clutter, and stocking up on Smart Ingredients, I am truly manned for dinner success. Canned diced tomatoes? I always have them. Taco Seasoning? I buy McCormick’s bulk size for $4.39 and it lasts me one year. I have plenty of chicken in the freezer, and plenty of pasta on the shelves. A large amount of stress was eliminated from a lot of planning and a busy day.