I will say though-- menu planning each week is a HUGE money saver for us. First of all if I've taken the time to buy ingredients for a particular meal, I'm mush less likely to go "ahh, who cares" and order take-out instead. Secondly, it cuts way down on impulse purchases at the grocery store. Thirdly, it helps me to remember on the days that I need to start prepping the meal early (to get the crock pot going, or to marinate something, or my nemesis- remembering to defrost meat in time).
In the past I've tried a couple of different meal planning services- e-mealz and Dine Without Whine. While they were a great starting point for me, I found that most of the recipes they offered were things my kids (or I!) would never eat, so I've gone off on my own. Every week I try to plan meals based on what's on sale that week, and what we have on hand and in the freezer.
I love looking through Menu Plan Monday at Organizing Junkie.com where literally hundreds of people post their weekly menus. I get some great ideas there!
So with all that said, here's our planned menu for the rest of the week, in no order whatsoever...
-Baked Ziti (Tom made this for Game Night at church on Sunday and it was so good, we want it again!), salad, garlic bread
-Individual Meat Loaves (last time I tried an Ina Garten recipe but this time I'll just wing it), peas
-Macaroni & Cheese (Tom's specialty, made on Thursdays when I'm at gymnastics with Charlie in the afternoon)
-Salisbury Steaks, mashed potatoes, salad
-Huli Huli Chicken (from America's Test Kitchen's Slow Cooker Revolution), asparagus
-we usually get pizza Saturday night
-one night of leftovers!
Do you plan your meals every week? Or are you thinking of trying? I'd love to hear about it!
6 comments:
I am going to try those new sites you posted, Rachel. I use allrecipes.com (you can save recipes to a shopping list and even add your own recipes- AND they have a featured "recipe of the day" which is usually highly reviewed), Google calendar to lay out the meals for the week, and the grocery ad to see what meat's on sale.
I LOL when you said you forget to defrost meat in time. I do that a lot, but more frustrating is when I shop on Fridays, and by Wednesday I realize the meat I was planning to use has gone bad. WRATH! I'll get it all figured out one of these days! LOL
Supper used to be 1. getting frozen chicken out of the freezer 30 minutes before my husband came home from work 2. thawing in the microwave 3. pouring some kind of sauce on it and 4. throwing it in the oven. :)
Not only does meal planning save us money, it also saves me a headache at the end of the day. :)
P.S. LOVE the new site design! :)
Hey Rach -
Just wanted to say I have been reading and enjoying your blog. Go you!
Also, we work really hard to meal plan for the whole week. Of course some times it just doesn't happen but I am getting better at it despite loathing the process like you. When I go back to work soon I am thinking of trying to do two weeks at a time (not groceries, just meal planning) so I won't have to do it as often.
Here's an idea that I had that I am going to try to implement. Get a binder and page protectors. Photocopy all recipes we regularly make and enjoy from the cookbooks and put into the page protectors. Then it's easy to add magazine pages (Real Simple has great recipes usually) and when we do meal planning we can use the binder and pull the pages to find out what we need and even put them in order of the nights we are eating them. Well, I thought that was a good idea but now I feel like an organization freak. :)
Amy
Amy, we do something similar, just without page protectors. We have a recipe binder and any time we like a recipe that was printed out from the internet I make notes on it, 3-hole punch it, and put it in the binder. I'd never thought of putting magazine pages in there too though!
Vanessa- thanks!! I love it myself ;)
Christine- I used to have the same meat issue until I forced myself to either use or freeze any meat within 48 hours of bringing it home. It's annoying when I make myself do it, but then I never have the problem of the meat going bad anymore so it's worth it!
The thing I like about the page protectors is that they are splash-proof. I noticed that our favourite recipes are totally stained the cookbooks. But I guess you can just reprint.
We menu plan every week. It allows us to always put something new in the mix. With that said we have a foundation of "types" of meals we have each night--that way we are eating meat every night or having soup twice in one week...
Mondays: baked (or grilled in summer) meal
Tuesdays: tacos
Wednesdays: soup and salad
Thursdays: for years (like 8) this was quesadilla night...lately it's been an Atkins savory supper meal.
Fridays: vegetarian
Saturdays/Sunday: one left over night. One night out or with the grandparents.
Btw, love the new design!!
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