Definately NOT a Domestic Goddess, HELP!!

Planning ahead is a good idea certainly. When we're being good, we'll plan a list of meals out on the weekend for the up coming week and go shopping for that list. If you don't cook a lot, I'd suggest going to Skinnytaste.com for recipe ideas. There's lots of good stuff there. I'm not so good at cooking ahead of time, but others swear by it.

I tend to cook once ( a big batch of soup or stew or stirfry) and then eat it for the next three days.

I plan the meals for the week first, write down all the ingredients I need, then head to the store.

The meal with the most vegetables gets made first.

Casseroles are also a nice option to bake and then eat for a few days. Enchilada casserole just taste better each day.

Of course, its just me and hubby so it works. Kids would make it more difficult.

You can also make a big batch of meat (chicken, turkey, lean beef) spaghetti sauce and freeze the extra to pull out and add noodles to later.

The only thing I really plan is the meat for dinner. I get mostly chicken and fish, make sure I have enough for the week and then go from there buying fresh veggies and stuff I like. I always make sure to have a few staples in my pantry though just in-case. Things like stocks ( for soups) rice, pastas, canned beans and some canned veggies like tomatoes. This way you aren't out buying every single ingredient for every meal every week.

There are two of us. We plan a one day menu that takes us through three days. Day 1 we cook all three meals for four. Day 2 we eat the leftover full meals identical to day 1. Day 3 we utilize pantry items and left over ingredients to make healthy meals or go out with friends for a meal. We can alternate days 2 and 3 depending on our schedules. Say I have a lunch meeting at work on day 2. This way we have some pretty major cooking only 2 or 3 times a week. It has worked exceptionally well for us. Yo-yo cooking and yo-yo dishes but no yo-yo dieting.

We have done this for almost 1.5 years. It is amazing in so many ways. One morning we suddenly felt like we were in a cooking show and burst out laughing. In our tiny kitchen spouse was prepping lunch on one cutting board and I was doing the same for breakfast on the other. We have been married over 35 years so it is really nice when you can find new things to laugh about. So I'm really glad you husband has offered to take on the shopping. Planning and implementing a healthy menu is a lot of work with a lot of rewards.

I'm not a big fan of eating the same thing for several days in row, so I try to have items on hand that I break down into serving sizes, like chicken breast. It's too easy for me to over-do the serving size if I have a big casserole staring at me! Single serving of a chicken breast will thaw quick, and then I go from there. I have found that I am making more little trips to the store for fruit & vegy's though. I just try to stay focused on my list.
I'm probably not much help, but it works for me.

I don't know if you have children or not, but we have 7 total in our house. Before I go grocery shopping for the week, each person names one meat and one veggie for "their" dinner. It gets everyone involved and I only have to figure dinner 1 night a week. I also learned to not isle shop. Stay on the outside 4 walls, everything you need is there, veggies and fruit, meat, and dairy. I only go to the cereal isle as I have 5 children! Good luck

We shop according to the lost leaders in the supermarket flyers, and freeze the extras. There is also a wonderful fruit and vegetable market nearby where we buy our veggies and fruits for the week. When we hit the supermarket, shop the perifery, and the aisle with the ingredients for baking, the canned and frozen veggies. We are from-scratch cooks, and will freeze a meal for what I call a "too exhausted to make supper"day.

Your shelf of cookbooks should include the Joy of Cooking. This is a basic reference that will tell you how to cook anything you put your mind to. There are chapters that will give you basic information on how to make a good food stock, how to butcher beef, and all kinds of useful things. Other excellent cookbooks are those put out as fundraisers by community groups. These are books where women share their best recipes. These tend to be basic but good, featuring locally available ingredients. On of our stalwarts was one put out by the Mennonites years ago, which gave a frugal, ecologically sustainable approach to cooking.

Add to that whatever your lastest food enthusiasm is. Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks on Indian cuisine give exquisite recipes. There are excellent cookbooks on Italian and French foods. Chinese is another of the world's great cuisines. As you work through the cookbooks, and your library has shelves of them, favorite recipes become family favorites, and you learn how to combine ingredients together, so that over time, you learn to freelance.

One caveat: not all recipes printed in magazines are good. Find the magazine where the recipes are excellent each time you cook them. One of my favorites is a little magazine called Homemaker's, which you buy at the supermarket for about $3. I have never encountered a bad recipe in that magazine. The same goes for cookbooks. Some cookbooks are not worth the paper they are written on. That is why the public library is a good source. Once you find that keeper, you can order it from Amazon.

Cook with butter. Life is too short to do without. Eat less if you have to. Butter makes everything so good. Ask friends for their recipes. Cooking is something you have a lifetime to learn, and once you find out how delicious the from-scratch cooking is, you will never want to eat the prepared stuff again.

Cook with butter. Life is too short to do without. Eat less if you have to. Butter makes everything so good. Ask friends for their recipes. Cooking is something you have a lifetime to learn, and once you find out how delicious the from-scratch cooking is, you will never want to eat the prepared stuff again.

I agree! Margarine seems to be a few molecules away from plastic to me.

DH and I sit down on Sunday afternoon and plan a list for the week. We also plan 1-2 nights for restaurants when we know we will be tired/hungry/lazy. We assign dishes so the work is evened out for the week and the cook also has to clean. I use allrecipes.com for many of my recipes, it has nutritional information and an active community that reviews and rates recipes, which makes it easier to find good recipes. I have a free account so I have saved hundreds of recipes to my recipe box. Each week we use a few tried-and-true recipes and we try to cook one new recipe. At this point in time, our basic pantry items have already been purchased, so with many recipes I only need to purchase meat and veggies. Our grocery bill is usually around $50 (we both have access to free lunch so we save money there). Also, measuring cups and a food scale have been indispensable to this weight loss process.

I love cooking but don`t plan ahead much. I have all the staples at home and usually we`ll get some meat on the weekends for the coming week. Then during the week I will call my husband from work and ask him what he feels like that night. Once I know what he wants for dinner, I drop by the grocer on the way home to get any veggies or odds and ends I might need for that meal. He gets home later than me so that works for us.
I will cook a dinner big enough to last two days so the next day we`ll have leftovers . Or I can freeze some if I made a lot.

I eat beans and rice for lunch almost every day which I cook all at once on the weekend and divide into serving sizes ahead of time. I use a lot of frozen meat from TJs also which is flexible and always cooks well.

also, try allrecipes.com because they have a search engine where you type the ingredients you have and it comes up with recipes that includes those things.

You got some great responses here! I am probably the only one who would love to plan (by nature I am a list-maker and planner) but SO can't ever decide on what he wants to eat until long after he arrives home from work. We eat dinner at around 7 as a result.

Anyway, if I had it my way, I would plan an entire week at a time. You can easily do this by looking at your local grocery flyer and choosing things on sale. Keep in mind it is also very rewarding to utilize leftovers. If you steam veggies for a side one night, toss them into an omelette the next morning or top a salad for lunch with them.

The best part of planning ahead like that is you don't get stuck in a food rut-- you can easily see what you've had recently, and mix things up.

GL!