I was a Livejournal devotee for many years. I still use it for personal blogging, because nobody else (that I know of) has friends lists, pages where I can easily read everything that all my friends have posted at once. And I admit that I also avoided WordPress for years because I dated a dickweed who was obsessed with it. But now that I've given it a shot for this blog, I have to say, I love it. Especially for my very favorite feature: it tells me when people link to me and talk about my blog!

Recently, that led me to awesome new blogging ideas from Claire at CookThink. She shares some of her concerns when planning meals....

"What have I got around the house? I’m getting ready to move into a new apartment. Even though it’s only a few blocks from my current place, I’m still hoping to use up some odds and ends from my fridge, like those frozen artichoke hearts I’ve had forever, or the peach I bought at the farmers market and need to eat right now.

"Will I be eating out at all? For the past week, I’ve been craving pizza from a place near my house. I don’t think I’ll get away with not having it soon. So that goes into the mix too.

"When will I really not have time to cook? I have a class Wednesday evenings, so that was definitely a no-cook, eat-an-apple-on-the-way-out-the-door day."

These are questions I consider too, and I realized that I haven't brought them up here. Somehow I think that if I introduce these ideas it will make it impossible for anyone to use the meal plans I share here. After all, you're probably not going to your mom's house and getting tons of leftovers, or traveling to Chicago this weekend, or trying to eat up all the food your roommate left when she moved out. But then again, the point of this blog isn't to dictate to people what to eat when; it's to demonstrate how to take all these things into consideration so that we can plan ahead in a way that makes sense for each of us, so we can save money and take care of ourselves.

So, I thought I should share how I use each of these questions in planning my meals too, at least a little bit!

What have I got around the house? Often my meal plans make more than I expect, so I have meals available for part of the next week too. But it's also been helpful to me to glance through the cupboards and fridge and see what I have just lying around. Right now that includes dry pasta, jars of cherries, miso paste, and tinned olives, just off the top of my head. The tinned olives might have gone bad by now, but if not, I should find a way to use them. Maybe that great tuna pasta salad from a few weeks ago! Longer-lasting items can save me money on my grocery bill but don't have to be used up immediately. Even better, they can inspire me to dig up recipes I've never thought of, to get exciting creative meals out of things that normally wouldn't interest me.

Will I be eating out at all? This is the one I leave out the most. Often I don't know if I will be eating out or when, but I know that I generally buy food out at least once a week. Sometimes it's brunch or dinner in a restaurant, but often it's just that I didn't plan my time to match my meal plan and I have to grab food somewhere because I am hungry and not headed home. This will decrease when I work more on my undereating issues; I often tend to put off my meals or not make a point of having food to eat wherever I am going and then "have to" buy food somewhere to make up for it.

When will I really not have time to cook? This is less of an issue for me nowadays, because I work at home and I don't have a lot of evening commitments. But it does come up sometimes when I am planning when to cook my meals, because that's usually around the weekends and those do get busy. I guess more to the point is that if I plan when to cook my meals, I get to say "okay, I can throw these both in the oven on Friday and then I'll have enough to not cook more until Monday sometime," but if I don't think that through then I end up just making one meal at a time until I can plan better, or putting off my big cooking for the week until I don't have any food left OR time left to cook in! Planning is such a great tool!