Next Week’s Meal Plan: 5 Dinners to Clean Out the Fridge Before Vacation

This week I added an extra challenge to my meal plan: I did not go grocery shopping over the weekend. My husband and I are leaving for vacation at the end of the week, so I am on a mission to clear everything out of the fridge that might spoil, which includes a lot of CSA veggies, eggs, ground turkey, and some cheese. I’ll plan to lean on our well-stocked pantry and freezer to fill in the gaps. In order to minimize food waste, my other goal for feeding my family of two this week is to make meals with no leftovers (or if there are leftovers, they need to be able to be stashed in the freezer for future use).

Planning my weekly meals is a habit I enjoy. Since I’m frequently asked by friends and family what I’m cooking for dinner each week, I thought it’d be useful to share my weekly meal plan here. Whether you’re just learning to meal plan and looking for a real-life example of how this works or you’re an old pro on the hunt for inspiration, here’s a peek at how I’m feeding my family of two this week.

• The Beginner’s Guide to Meal Planning: What to Know, How to Succeed, and What to Skip
• The Best Way to Use a Weekend for Meal Planning Success
• Ask Yourself These 5 Questions Before You Start Meal Planning
• 5 Strategies for Picking Recipes for a Week of Meal Planning

The easy meatless meal is always great on Monday nights. It comes together with minimal effort and is so comforting, even on warm summer nights. The bulk of the ingredients come from the panty, plus a tomato and a mess of different greens from this week’s CSA.

I have been eyeing these burgers since Sheela first shared them, and my husband will be thrilled to see them in this week’s meal plan. It will help me use the ground turkey and last bits of cheddar from the fridge, and I’ll plan to pair our burgers with a simple corn salad.

At long last I will finally make this pantry-friendly pasta dinner. It has been on my list of recipes to make for a couple years, but slipped between the cracks until now when I was looking for a meal to finish off the last of the Greek yogurt in the fridge.

This week’s CSA haul blessed us with all the makings for ratatouille. I’m tossing in everything we have, and even though it will make much more than we can eat in one dinner, I’m happy to stash the leftovers in the freezer for when we return from vacation. A few fried eggs to top it off will make dinner more filling, and it helps me clear one more thing from the fridge.

Thank heavens for canned beans and 10-minute meals. Plus, what better way to ease into vacation mode than tacos? With a near-empty fridge, I’m leaning on my pantry to pull our last dinner at home together.