I do pretty good for awhile, and get the freezer full of stuff to just put in the oven. It sounds easy to say just plan ahead and plan your menus and everything will fall into place, but real life gets in the way sometimes. Here are some of the ways we keep our food bill extremely low, yet get to enjoy great tasting meals. I have a work center where menus, refunds, a perpetual grocery list, inventory of foods that are bought in bulk, cookbooks, calendar of events are kept and all necessary office supplies are at my finger tips. My inventory sheets are generated in the puter with the basics that we regularly stock and enclosed in clear plastic page protectors so that a wax pencil can be used to easily add or remove quickly from the inventory, by simply rubbing off one log.
Same system is used for our yearly food supply from the garden.
All foods are rotated, with the new additions goin behind or under the older stock. If we notice that we have double the amount of say beef stew as we do chicken soup, the beef stew would be on the menu twice to once for the chicken soup. Now, many can use the Once A Month Cooking Plan. Those that can do this with frugal recipes will save tremendously. Most of the recipes in the OAMC were too pricey for this Tightwad.