Meal Planning
I first got into meal planning after we moved back to Rochester. We were "test driving" a new monthly budget and I came across an article that suggested using meal planning as a way to trim your grocery budget. At that point, my meal planning process looked like this:
1. Find 5-7 dinner recipes & add them to the calendar*
2. Make a list of all of the required ingredients.
3. Cross-reference our pantry/refrigerated items with the ingredient list and crossed off anything that we already had on hand.
4. Make an organized (aisle-by-aisle) grocery list of the remaining items (we usually shop at Wegmans and use their amazing iPhone app which does this for us.)
5. Add any additional grocery items to the list for breakfasts/lunches.
*The days on which each meal was "assigned" didn't matter, because we would just pick which of that week's meal sounded best on any given night. Obviously, our options were much more limited at the end of the week!
One aspect of this system that I never quite perfected was the number of meals that I needed to plan for each week. Assigning one meal per night didn't always work because sometimes we had a TON of leftovers that we would eat for lunch and/or dinner another night, and other times we were seemingly out of food before the week ended. However, it worked well most of the time.
A couple months ago, my hubby lost his job and our budget changed in an instant. I've always been a stickler about maintaining our budget each month, but after he lost his job I was forced to review our monthly expenses to truly separate our necessities (housing, utilities, insurances, student loans, etc.) from our luxuries (Netflix, miscellaneous spending money, etc.). I soon realized that our grocery bill was somewhere in between the two - yes, meals are a necessity (obviously), but he amount that we spend per month on groceries can vary greatly depending on how many luxuries we allow ourselves.
Soooo, our grocery budget is pretty tight; it's currently $300 a month which includes our paper products (napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.) and similar household items. I did some fun Internet research and discovered another way to maintain this budget while saving time in the process. Freezer Crockpot Meals.
The idea behind this one is a little different. My new meal planning process, as of April 1, will be as follows:
1. Find a month's worth of dinner recipes and add them to my calendar (and removing any days that we have other plans or intent to go out to eat)
(I use a Google calendar for this, and I add the link to each recipe to the "event." I also have a Pinterest board of Freezer Crockpot recipes.)
2. Make a list of all of the required ingredients
3. Cross-reference our pantry/refrigerated items with the ingredient list and crossed off anything that we already had on hand
4. Make an organized (aisle-by-aisle) grocery list of the remaining items
5. Check for coupons for any of the items
6. SHOP!
7. Spend one afternoon (approx. 4-6 hours) writing recipes/cooking instructions onto freezer bags, chopping veggies, separating bulk-pack chicken and putting ingredients into freezer bags
The beauty of all this work is that, on any given day, all we have to do is empty the bag into our crockpot and then make salad/vegetable/rice (if needed) as a side item.
This won't stop me from grocery shopping each week, but it will require one large shopping trip and smaller weekly ones. Each week, I will pick up breakfast/lunch staples, including:
Milk, fresh fruit, cereal, yogurt, juice, and bread (to name a few).
Up next.... my monthly meal plan for April, including recipes!
1. Find 5-7 dinner recipes & add them to the calendar*
2. Make a list of all of the required ingredients.
3. Cross-reference our pantry/refrigerated items with the ingredient list and crossed off anything that we already had on hand.
4. Make an organized (aisle-by-aisle) grocery list of the remaining items (we usually shop at Wegmans and use their amazing iPhone app which does this for us.)
5. Add any additional grocery items to the list for breakfasts/lunches.
*The days on which each meal was "assigned" didn't matter, because we would just pick which of that week's meal sounded best on any given night. Obviously, our options were much more limited at the end of the week!
One aspect of this system that I never quite perfected was the number of meals that I needed to plan for each week. Assigning one meal per night didn't always work because sometimes we had a TON of leftovers that we would eat for lunch and/or dinner another night, and other times we were seemingly out of food before the week ended. However, it worked well most of the time.
A couple months ago, my hubby lost his job and our budget changed in an instant. I've always been a stickler about maintaining our budget each month, but after he lost his job I was forced to review our monthly expenses to truly separate our necessities (housing, utilities, insurances, student loans, etc.) from our luxuries (Netflix, miscellaneous spending money, etc.). I soon realized that our grocery bill was somewhere in between the two - yes, meals are a necessity (obviously), but he amount that we spend per month on groceries can vary greatly depending on how many luxuries we allow ourselves.
Soooo, our grocery budget is pretty tight; it's currently $300 a month which includes our paper products (napkins, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.) and similar household items. I did some fun Internet research and discovered another way to maintain this budget while saving time in the process. Freezer Crockpot Meals.
The idea behind this one is a little different. My new meal planning process, as of April 1, will be as follows:
1. Find a month's worth of dinner recipes and add them to my calendar (and removing any days that we have other plans or intent to go out to eat)
(I use a Google calendar for this, and I add the link to each recipe to the "event." I also have a Pinterest board of Freezer Crockpot recipes.)
2. Make a list of all of the required ingredients
3. Cross-reference our pantry/refrigerated items with the ingredient list and crossed off anything that we already had on hand
4. Make an organized (aisle-by-aisle) grocery list of the remaining items
5. Check for coupons for any of the items
6. SHOP!
7. Spend one afternoon (approx. 4-6 hours) writing recipes/cooking instructions onto freezer bags, chopping veggies, separating bulk-pack chicken and putting ingredients into freezer bags
The beauty of all this work is that, on any given day, all we have to do is empty the bag into our crockpot and then make salad/vegetable/rice (if needed) as a side item.
This won't stop me from grocery shopping each week, but it will require one large shopping trip and smaller weekly ones. Each week, I will pick up breakfast/lunch staples, including:
Milk, fresh fruit, cereal, yogurt, juice, and bread (to name a few).
Up next.... my monthly meal plan for April, including recipes!
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