It was just last week that I confessed to wasting a lot of food in my line of work during the process of recipe creating and testing. It’s horrible, I know, but at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing that each recipe IS tested and not just made up randomly in my head AND that the food scraps either go to the chickens or the worm compost. Believe me, the chickens and worms love it.

However, I do have a solution for cutting down on buying too much grocery – The Fresh 20 by my friend, Melissa Lanz. Basically, it goes like this: Every week, The Fresh 20 will send you a grocery list of 20 fresh ingredients (i.e. vegetables, meat, seafood, fruit, dairy). With those 20 fresh ingredients and your pantry staples, you can make 5 meals to feed your family.

Genius, right? This plan eliminates the guesswork of “What’s for dinner?” and “What groceries to buy?”

While the service is a monthly fee, the cookbook, with 80 recipes (that’s 5 recipes each week for 16 weeks) is on sale at Amazon for less than $20. The week that I chose included 20 fresh ingredients that made this Chicken Satay with Peanut Noodles, along with:

Greek-Style Lamb Tacos with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce & Salad
Orange Jalapeño Shrimp with Broccoli and Brown Rice
Guacamole Tostadas with Fried Eggs
Lamb Penne with Simple Green Salad

There are options for Vegetarians and Gluten Free diets too. Easy peasy.