Strategies against this include cooking for several people (well, that ain’t happening), doing meal prep several days in advance / cooking larger portions that you can eat over a couple of days, and buying frozen ingredients (still better than buying entire frozen meals). Some non-frozen ingredients keep for a long time, too, e.g. dried rice or noodles, onions, pickled vegetables.
Something that worked for me is always shopping for a specific meal. Instead of buying ground beef because I might want burgers or tacos or chili, I instead buy everything for a chili. It’s lead to less “oh I forgot I had this beef in here” and more “I better use this nice, fresh beef to make chili because otherwise I’ll go hungry.
It’s not a perfect system, and seems really obvious in hindsight, but has been a paradigm shift for me.
100% the longterm ingredients. I have an emergency meal which is just rice, frozen peas and carrots, and crushed cashews. I probably have green onion and definitely have numerous sauces available, too.
Your emergency meal sounds healthier than most of my regular meals, lol! It’s usually just fries, zucchini and some kind of frozen meat or fish (all baked). Fresh zucchini probably doesn’t last long enough for OP’s needs, but it does last really long for fresh produce. Though part of it is that I kind of follow FODMAP so onions and legumes are out for me.
Not sure what FODMAP is. Regardless, if it works for you it’s pretty much always better to eat something than go hungry, and really if baked fries are the only “negative” there I mean how bad is it really? And it’s not like I don’t ever eat fries.
Yeah …
Strategies against this include cooking for several people (well, that ain’t happening), doing meal prep several days in advance / cooking larger portions that you can eat over a couple of days, and buying frozen ingredients (still better than buying entire frozen meals). Some non-frozen ingredients keep for a long time, too, e.g. dried rice or noodles, onions, pickled vegetables.
Something that worked for me is always shopping for a specific meal. Instead of buying ground beef because I might want burgers or tacos or chili, I instead buy everything for a chili. It’s lead to less “oh I forgot I had this beef in here” and more “I better use this nice, fresh beef to make chili because otherwise I’ll go hungry.
It’s not a perfect system, and seems really obvious in hindsight, but has been a paradigm shift for me.
My issue is that I often end up choosing the “go hungry” option over the chili option
and I love chili
This, I typically make a stir fry or something that will last a long time for me
100% the longterm ingredients. I have an emergency meal which is just rice, frozen peas and carrots, and crushed cashews. I probably have green onion and definitely have numerous sauces available, too.
Your emergency meal sounds healthier than most of my regular meals, lol! It’s usually just fries, zucchini and some kind of frozen meat or fish (all baked). Fresh zucchini probably doesn’t last long enough for OP’s needs, but it does last really long for fresh produce. Though part of it is that I kind of follow FODMAP so onions and legumes are out for me.
Not sure what FODMAP is. Regardless, if it works for you it’s pretty much always better to eat something than go hungry, and really if baked fries are the only “negative” there I mean how bad is it really? And it’s not like I don’t ever eat fries.