A couple of people have asked about the meal planning I mentioned, so I thought I'd explain what we do. I'm sure many many people do this, and I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out!
Before we started planning our meals, I would have a vague idea of what meals we could have during the week. Ray and I would usually decide what to have for dinner on the bus ride home from work. Then we'd have to stop off at the grocery store to get last minute stuff to make dinner, or we'd just go out to dinner.
The last minute grocery store stops usually meant that we'd buy extra stuff that we didn't need just because it *thought* we would use it. We tried shopping once a week, but ended up wasting food because we didn't really have a plan on what to use.
So...it wasn't working. We were spending too much money on groceries and eating out, and I was stressing too much during the week on that immortal question "What's for dinner tonight?"
We decided that we'd take a few minutes each week (it usually ends up to be about 20 minutes) planning on what we want for dinner each day Mon-Sun. Then we check our freezer and cupboards to see what we need to put on the grocery list each week. We keep a list on the fridge as well, so we can note things during the week that we need.
We also started going to Costco every 6 weeks or so to stock up on hamburger, which we package up into meal-size freezer bags to freeze. We also get frozen chicken breasts, frozen Atlantic salmon, and lasagna from Costco.
Below is a sample week's menus:
Monday: Fajitas
Tuesday: Pork Chops, pasta
Wednesday: Salmon w/rosemary, green beans
Thursday: Pizza (Survivor nights are always pizza!)
Friday: Spaghetti
Saturday: Soup and home-baked bread
Sunday: Pot Roast
It's been really helpful, and I believe it's saved us around $200-$300/month in groceries and eating out, just by planning.
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3 comments:
We do this too, but don't actually assign days to the meals. We determine how many meals we need each week, then come up with the meals, then we have a choice each night of which meal we want (until Saturday, when there's only one meal left).
I'm probably not as disciplined as you! I've found that we have to assign days to the meals...otherwise, we get distracted or decide to go out to eat instead.
Sample convo when we didn't plan:
Me: What should we have for dinner tonight?
Ray: I don't know...what could we have?
Me: We could have chicken, or pork chops, or maybe some fajitas?
Ray: Is any of the meat thawed?
Me: Uh..no. It's all in the freezer.
Ray: Hmm...maybe Applebee's tonight?
Me: Yum!
Hey! That conversation was supposed to be private!!! :-)
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