There are a few strategies I use. 1. Dinner parties. Nothing formal, just invite people over for food. I am pretty well compensated, so while I spend a little

There are a few strategies I use. 1. Dinner parties. Nothing formal, just invite people over for food. I am pretty well compensated, so while I spend a little more than is strictly necessary, it is less than eating out all the time, and I can share tasty meals with friends. Further, costs can be amortized by having others bring dishes, and you'll start getting in dinner invites too. 2. Know lots of recipes and variations for a few ingredients. This helps with the "too much" problem, as you can use stuff quickly without getting bored. When you add new ingredients to your repertoire add them with depth. Eventually you will start learning how things work together and just whip up stuff pretty easily. A good way to get into this is make it a game -- try to figure out how to make a tasty meal from say, only things on shelf #2 or have each friend bring one ingredient and it is your job to make a dinner. 3. Similar to the previous one: get good at what I call "ingredient chains". There are lots of these, but a classic example: Buy a chicken, roast it. eat it hot. Take some of the meat for sandwiches this week. Take the bones and bits and pieces of meat and make a stock out of them for soup. 4. Don't worry about throwing away food. Seriously, I throw away ingredients all the time... sometimes I just don't get around to using them, or I change my mind. This is still so much more frugal than eating out, that it is worth it (within reason of course). 5. Buy the good stuff.. reasoning here is the same as #4. I can pay $100 for groceries per week, getting the quality stuff, and still spend less than eating out at all but the crappiest fast food places. None of these are clever solutions, but they are a different approach to the situation that obviate the problem by either eliminating the problem via base assumptions or by changing the problem to "not actually a problem". hth :)