Simple Tomato Spinach Pasta

The #1 thing that I have learned from tightening up our grocery budget and making sure we have edible meatless meals on the table every night -- PLANNING IS KEY! I could easily spend hours looking at recipes every day debating what to make each night but who has time for that?!? Sitting down to write down our dinners for the week and create a grocery list has, seriously, made my life so much easier. It also eliminates impulse purchases at the grocery store -- win. I do my planning on notepads like the ones below :) Oh and in case you're wondering, I do still spend far too much time browsing blogs, magazines and cookbooks for recipes... you can never have enough!

My friend, Lauren, also wrote a great post on Meal Planning. She has some great Pinterest boards which can help you get started!

Planning also eliminates excess ingredients which also saves us big bucks. I can't handle wasting ingredients. Nothing gets thrown away in our house... ever. If vegetables have reached their peak, I chop them up and freeze them. If we have leftovers, those serve as lunches for the week. I actually found myself eating cold leftover pizza at work recently. I haven't done that since college. These days I try to keep our leftovers a little classier than that. Two people who used to loathe leftovers, have quickly learned to appreciate them :)

Anyways, back to saving ingredients. Tomato paste. I appreciate that is it sold in a smaller can, but most recipes still only call for a tablespoon or two. If you don't make recipes with tomato paste all week, you end up throwing the whole can away. Well, Iowa Girl Eats introduced me to this genius way to freeze leftover tomato paste.

Now back to planning. For those nights we don't have a plan, its great to have a few standby simple, tasty meals that we can throw together on the fly. This creamy tomato pasta fits in this category. It is so easy and I bet you already have the ingredients in your kitchen. If not, go get 'em for those hectic nights. It would be great with grilled chicken or shrimp. Feel free to play around with adding different veggies too. We loved it with the spinach and tomatoes -- sometimes the simplest ingredients work best!

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