Since I have become a stay at home Mom, we eat out WAY less than we used to. I mean WAY less. In fact, besides the Wegmans sub that we SPLIT for dinner last Friday night (and our stops to eat to and from Maine last month), I couldn’t tell you the last time that we actually ate out. I don’t mind, really, I love to cook. Fortunately for me, I have two children that are not terribly picky eaters. Don’t get me wrong, I get the “I don’t like that” and “I’m not eating that” from my 4 year old every once in awhile, but for the most part, they don’t complain.
I started getting serious about planning our meals when James was stationed in themiddleofnowehereville, NY. We did have a small grocery store just across the street from our little apartment, but I really did not care to shop there. I mean, to get a gallon of milk, fine, but to do big grocery shopping there was the pits. And it was expensive. I had to travel 25 minutes to the closest Wal-Mart, which at the time was the next ‘best’ thing. Economically, it made sense to me to plan a trip there twice a month. So, I began planning our meals.
I started receiving the Kraft Food and Family magazine while we were living in said nowhere town and it served as my inspiration. They sometimes have a section called “1 bag, 5 meals”. Usually, one of the meals consists of a DiGiorno pizza, but hey, they have to get their advertisements in there somehow, right? The magazine used to be free, but now you have to pay for it (yuck!), but you can go online and browse the archives for free. Anyway, the recipes are quick, easy, and generally require very few ingredients (not only that, but ingredients that I can pronounce and that I typically have on hand).
The night before ‘grocery shopping day’, I take out my magazines, and other recipes I have collected, and start making a list of meals that we will eat for the next 2 weeks. Typically, I plan for about 10 meals. We usually eat leftovers a couple of the nights in between, or I concoct something from whatever we have remaining when we start getting close to my next grocery run. I then make a list of everything I will need to make those meals. We, of course, run out of things like bread and milk in between my bi-monthly grocery trips, but we are fortunate to have a plethora of grocery stores to choose from where we are now.
I grew up eating ‘generic’ foods. Most of what my Mom had in our pantry was from Hannaford (at the time, Shop-N-Save). I am always willing to try generic, and for the most part we have mainly generic foods in our cupboards, but there are some things that we just like to buy name brand. As I said, we have a large selection of grocery stores from which to choose from in our area, but I mainly shop at Aldi (to save tons-o-money) and Wegmans (both stores also have recipes on their websites). I buy a lot of our ‘dry foods’ (cereals, granola bars, etc) at Aldi and go to Wegmans for fresh produce and the things that we just have to have in their name brand glory. By the way, I do like the Wegmans brand items!
I have found that planning our meals not only saves us money, but it also helps us to waste less and even to eat healthier. This week, when I did my grocery shopping, I spent a total of about $180 (and that includes diapers and toiletries that we were running low on). I think that is pretty decent for 2 weeks worth of meals and other necessities. I’m sure there are some Moms who can do better than that. I know some people have some mad couponing skills. I have not found that I am that great at it (nor do I think we live in a very coupon-competitive area).
Here is a look at our list of meals for the next couple of weeks:
Layered Mexican Bake
Italian Meatball Soup (a recipe I copied from American Baby magazine when Ryan was an infant)
Homemade Chicken tenders and sweet potato fries (my own concoction)
Tuna Cakes (not so sure about this one…will be the first time I ever tried it!?)
Spaghetti (doesn’t everyone have spaghetti night?)
Homemade pizza (see this post for my favorite crust recipe)
Side note: I do not plan meals for breakfast or lunch, but buy the typical items that one would for such a meal.
For those who love to cook, I hope I have provided you with a new recipe idea! I realize meal planning is not a new concept, but I just thought I would share that it works for us! I’d love to hear a favorite recipe of YOURS! Feel free to leave it in my comments section! I might need one to replace that tuna cake meal…still not sure we’re going to like that one!!
