Spoiled produce, we meet again.

Have any of you ever waited too long before cleaning out your fridge? We just went shopping tonight (what a great date-night activity, eh?) and cleaned out the fridge before putting in the newly purchased items. First of all, it had been way too long since we last cleaned the fridge out, and there was some nasty stuff in there. Secondly, we threw away some of the same things we purchased that hadn't been used and had gone bad; lettuce, celery, tomatoes, carrots, cottage cheese.....why do we continue to buy these things when we know they'll just spoil in our fridge 'cause we'll never use them?? Because of this horrible habit of ours, we got smart this time and wrote down what we put in the fridge so we know what we have, and we even planned meals with some of the items. Actually, we did even better than that; we went so far as to plan the meals at the store while we were shopping! Now, I know you're probably thinking...."Isn't it customary to plan meals before entering the grocery store?" but just let me tell you, planning meals at all is a huge step for us. We'll take it in any form we can get! We usually just buy whatever sounds good and get home and realize it's all snacks. I'm proud to say we got at least 6 usable meals from this shopping trip! Now the trick is to actually use the fresh produce fast enough. We're hoping this time around that maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to conquer this seemingly impossible feat.