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I grew up with warehouse shopping. After all of the pantry items were put away the next task was to open and separate the meat packges. My parents used foil & freezer bags. I would recommend the home food savers to seal your meat and prevent freezer burn.

We don't get a ton of food at Costco, and we have only been doing it for a short while.

We use the Fresh 20 for meal plans and it requires more of one type of food then when I was previously meal planning (since it is only 20 fresh ingredients a week). For example, this week we needed 5 cups of spinach and 10 Roma tomatoes. These quantities are about what Costco sells.

We are starting to stockpile with meat using the freezer. We buy whatever meat we need for the week and the extra quantity we re-package and freeze. I have a list of what we have frozen, so when the meat pops up again, we don't have to buy it. It has thrown off our grocery budget at the beginning but I'm sure it will even out. We might get a deep freezer but until then, we have limited freezer space.

I would say we get about a third of our fresh groceries for our meal plan and almost all of our "pantry items" each week at Costco and fill in with the more specialty items or smaller quantity items at the grocery store.

We buy frozen ground beef, cut it into 1lb portions and freeze in freezer bags. We also buy the big bag of chicken. We don't really meal plan when we shop. But having chicken and beef on hand I can do so many casseroles, soups, tacos, fajitas, burgers, or grilled/baked chicken etc. We buy some of their pre-made casseroles, frozen pizza, bacon, sausage and canned goods too so I can make more meals from that stuff. Basically any dry good or something I can throw in my deep freezer is safe not to meal plan around because it's good for several months, if not longer. I also buy shredded cheese in bulk and freeze that.

If you really want to meal plan search recipes with that main ingredient and go from there. I find I still have to shop at a regular grocery store for smaller portioned things 1-2 times a month and then Sam's club once a month so we only shop a total of 2-3 times a month and I love it! Good luck!

@looch: We buy lots of protein and break it all down into separate meal portions and use a Food Saver to re-package.

We often buy the three packs of whole chickens so we will repackage one whole one raw for some other time. Then we will cook one, shred all the meat to be used for salads or soups and then we make chicken stock with the bones. The last chicken my SO usually breaks down into quarters, marinates it and then we freeze it to do roasted another night.

Same kind of thing if we buy pork loin. We cut the whole loin into chops and a couple of small roasts and package/freeze them.

As for veggies we usually use as much as we can fresh and then make soup or stew with whatever is left. If you wash and cut the veggies up you can lay them out on a cookie tray and freeze them. Once they are frozen put them into gallon bags. Then you have veggies ready to go with any meal on short notice!

If you give me an idea of some of the items you are considering we can brainstorm some options! - ETA: never mind you already did this.

@looch: Yep, it should be the whole loin piece and it is really easy to cut for chops yourself

Yeah you can buy a HUGE loin at the store, and at least at Sam's, it's labeled with the different cuts. And you can slice it accordingly. THe middle's the tenderloin and the end is a rib and somethign else, I can't really remember. One end is great for pulled pork, the middle for grilling, and the other end we usually just wing. It's really a huge piece of meat.

I found that I can't really grocery shop at a warehouse store while meal planning, and my grocery store has better prices for most produce and meat anyway lol. If I am going to be using a lot of something like spinach for the week, sometimes it makes sense to pick up a huge pack of organic spinach at BJs but when I only need 2 of something, it doesn't really make sense to buy bulk an worry about using all the extra somehow. I mostly stick to the toiletries and pantry items like oil or snacks at the bulk stores.

Before starting the fresh20, I used to buy proteins in bulk at Costco, and I would meal plan for the week based on what proteins I had in the freezer. So on Saturday or Sunday I'll take all those proteins out and have them start defrosting, so they'll be thawed by the time I make them during the week. Then I'd grocery shop at a regular supermarket for the needed produce and other ingredients to complete a meal.

I don't warehouse shop on a very regular basis (every other month or so), but I do use it for certain staples. So I will pick up some things at BJ's that we go through super quickly or that we can freeze or store, and I will plan meals based on what I have in the freezer.

So for the warehouse, I would shop first and then plan meals, if that makes sense. I typically only buy things I know I use often: chicken breast, peanut butter, cereals, whatever.

@looch: we just got a two pack of the pork loin's from Cosco. I did one the other night I set it in the crockpot and poured barbecue sauce over it. It came out really really well