Meal Planning Post "Round Up" and Grocery Budget Stuff

I have gotten several emails in the last few weeks about meal planning, so I thought I'd organize all the meal planning posts and put them in one place



There is no doubt in my mind that planning your meals ahead saves money. Even if you buy everything at the store at the last minute instead of planning ahead, you will spend more money. I find that if I just go to the store without a list/plan, I will spend about $40-50. I don't know why that is- I guess I see things I know we'd like to have, or items I'm pretty sure we need, but doing this a few times KILLS my grocery budget. I have recently increased my budget to $300/ every two weeks, and I have to WORK to keep my spending to $150/week. I include all of my toiletries and paper goods in that budget as well. (Or, as I call it, the "Target stuff")

Another benefit of meal planning is avoiding that awful feeling that occurs when it's dinner time, and you're floundering around trying to make something. Read this post: Menu Making a.k.a. Avoiding the 5:00 Panic for more on the basics of making a menu plan. Also, you can get a look at how totally unorganized my recipe folder is, which will likely make you feel better about yourself!

Here's two posts that actually gives you menus with recipes for a week! Meal Planning Made Easy- A Week of Meals and A Week of Meals

Initially, I was budgeting $250/every two weeks, and I found that nearly impossible to stick with. By adding $50, I found I could keep a few of the extras I really enjoy, and that is important to me. I don't want to constantly feel deprived. Here is a post on sticking to your grocery budget: Grocery Budgeting Tips

So, there it is!! I would love to hear from some of you- what is your grocery budget? How do you save money? What are some budget meals you rely on?

Surviving the "Rush Hour" Without (much) Fast Food or Stress

It's that time of year again!

School starts. The activities begin.

The time crunch of "Rush Hour" hits. You know, the late afternoon/early evening.... you're supposed to pick kids up, drop them off, eat dinner, clean up, get ready for the next day...

....that rush hour.

I have found, over the years, that I CAN NOT survive the "Rush Hour" days without some preparation. Mostly, I have found that planning meals and organizing/setting out stuff ahead of time can make these busy days about a million times easier. Here are some meal ideas:

Use your Crock Pot:
One easy way to ensure that you have a somewhat nutritious meal that is ready to go- use your Crock Pot! This is also a great idea if you have people in the family who need to eat at various times through the evening. Here are some of my favorite recipes:

• Crock Pot Coconut Curry Beef
• Crock Pot Tri Tip with Sun Dried Tomatoes and Feta
• EASY Crock Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup
• Crock Pot BBQ Chicken Sandwiches
• Hearty, Healthy Crock Pot Lentil and Barley Soup
• Make Ahead Meatballs (Various Crock Pot Recipes)
• I also like chicken tacos made in the Crock Pot (this is great because I can have chicken taco salad while the boys have tacos): put 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the crock pot (I throw them in still frozen) add a package of taco seasoning or chicken taco seasoning, then add enough water or chicken broth to cover. I cook on low for 6-8 hours, or high for 4 hours. Shred it up and you're ready!
• A great website for crock pot recipes is http://www.crockpot365.blogspot.com/

Plan, Prep, Make Ahead:
There are plenty of meals that the prep work can be done ahead of time. Casseroles, sandwiches, soups, salads, etc. Even if you have a crazy busy evening, there is usually a little time in the day that you could set aside and prepare for the dinner hour. For example, if I was going to serve Turkey BLT's for dinner, I would cook up the bacon , slice the tomatoes and leaf the lettuce, set the table and lay out all the non-refrigerated stuff, cut up salad or fruit to be served with dinner..... all of this may take a half hour. But usually I'll have that half hour to give in the early afternoon, so I make sure and plan ahead!

Casseroles are a great way to make dinner ahead of time. I will make the casserole to the point where it would go into the oven, then throw it in the refrigerator until an hour or so before dinner, then throw it in the oven! Casseroles are great too, because they make good leftovers, and generally stay warm for a few hours, so it is handy if your people need to eat at different times. Here are a few good casserole recipes:

• Chicken Florentine Artichoke Bake
• Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas
• Baked Mac and Cheese
• Cheeseburger Noodle Casserole
• Easy Baked Ziti (I use ground turkey for the beef in most recipes)

Think Ahead
Many times, a few minutes spent thinking ahead can save you a TON of stress. For example, on the nights when one kid has youth group and another has scouts, I can think ahead to what clothes need to be clean, if I need to prepare a snack, if there are forms that need to be filled out..... and DO those things. Then I set the needed items in a central location, so that I don't forget them. When you have younger kids, simple things like laying out the clothes they need to wear for an activity saves time AND annoyance. There is nothing worse than being 5 minutes late already and realizing there are no clean socks. Or that one shoe is missing. Oh man, those types of situations make me crazy!!

I am a big list maker, and have been known to put sticky notes on my steering wheel or on the front door if I think I will forget something. This way you can avoid the panic of "Oh crud I forgot the juice I was supposed to bring....it's still in the fridge.." when you get to scouts. Notes and lists are your friends.

Cut Yourself Some Slack Sometimes:
There are some days when things just go sideways. The whole day is stacked with unexpected events. I have learned that sometimes, it's ok to just take a deep breath and announce that we are driving through and getting dinner on the way to some activity... or I'll feed the kids breakfast for dinner. Or I'll make PB&J sandwiches. Sometimes you can't plan for every situation. The good thing about purposefully planning most of the time is that when you have days like that, they're isolated events rather than patterns. And we all know that happens. Life happens.

To sum it up- a little planning goes a long way. Try it and see how much more smoothly your "Rush Hour" operates. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Meal Planning Made Easy- A Week of Meals!

I have written a few posts about menu planning, as well as freezer cooking. I am a huge fan of planning ahead when it comes to meals. I just feel like we eat well and I am less tempted to eat out when I have something planned. Plus, it helps so much in saving money at the grocery store!! You can read about how I menu plan in this post: Menu Making: AKA Avoiding the 5:00 Dinner Panic and freezer cooking in this post: Freezer Cooking 101.

So in the interests of encouraging you to meal plan, I am going to post a week of meals, that is, a meal plan. Sorry, but you have to do the cooking.

Day #1:
~Grilled Chicken (I usually marinade boneless, skinless breasts in lite Italian dressing)
~Brown Rice
~Frozen Corn

Day #2:
~Chicken Caesar Salad- cook and dice one large chicken breast. Toss with chopped Romaine lettuce, bottled Caesar dressing, Parmesan Cheese, and croutons. I used these homemade croutons
~Quick and Easy Cornbread
~Watermelon

Day #3:
~Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwiches (made with turkey bacon)
~Strawberries
~Green Salad

Day #4:
~Spaghetti with Marinara Sauce (Trader Joe's)
~Macaroni Grill Rosemary Bread
~Green Salad

Day #5:
~Crock Pot Tri Tip with Sun Dried Tomatoes and Feta
~Mashed Potatoes (from a box)
~Asparagus

Day #6:
~BBQ Chicken Pizza
~Orange Slices
~Green Salad

Day #7:
~Gnocchi al Forno
~Green Beans
~Buttered Bread

So there you have it!! Now you just need to make a grocery list and you're set! Plus, the extra added benefit of cooking dinner is having leftovers for LUNCH!!

Happy Cooking! (...and happy eating!)

A Week Of Meals (Now All You Have To Do Is Cook Them....)

I have had several people ask my for my "meal plans". As in, the recipes I am going to cook for the week.

So I am going to give you a week of meals. Well, ok, not really. I am going to give you a week of recipes. You have to make the meals. (You know, the whole "give a man a fish" vs. "teach him to fish" thing......)

Now, I am not going to assign days to the meals, because I don't like people telling ME what to eat on a certain day. (I also don't like when people take food off my plate without asking first. The people I run with will attest to this. When I'm hungry after a run, it is downright dangerous to take food off my plate. You could DIE.)

So here they are, your week of meals, in no particular order (except that I assigned numbers to each of them........ I can't help it. It seems tidier that way. I have problems, I know....)

Day #1

• Baked Lemon Pasta
• Green Salad

Day #2

• Quick and Spicy Tomato Soup
• French bread, Focaccia bread (I know where you can get a good recipe...here) or rolls

Day #3

• Crock Pot Salsa Chicken (I usually omit the black beans, Wade isn't a huge bean fan)
• Tortillas (here is how to make your own)
• Fresh Fruit

Day #4

• Chicken, Cashew, and Red Pepper Stir Fry
• Steamed Rice

Day #5

• Baked Potatoes with toppings (beans, broccoli, salsa, sour cream, cheese, bacos, leftover shredded chicken)
• Fresh Fruit
• Green Salad

Day #6

• Grilled Chicken (I like to season mine with olive oil and Mrs. Dash or Emeril's Essence before throwing it on the grill)
• Steamed Brown Rice
• Roasted Asparagus (Put one pkg. frozen asparagus spears on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast at 400 for about 15 minutes)

Day #7

• BBQ Chicken Pizza
• Green Salad
• Fresh Fruit

Well, now that's it! Oh yeah, except for the cooking part, but you've got that covered! :)

Have a happy Friday!!

DINNER TONIGHT:

Leftovers (sad and boring, but true......)

Menu Making (aka: avoiding the 5 o'clock dinner panic...)

So, let's talk about dinner. We all need to eat, right? (some of us  more than others..... you do NOT want to see me when I need food. It's ugly....)

I have experienced that feeling you get around 5 o'clock when you realize that the people in your house are going to want to eat again, soon, and you don't have anything thawed, prepared, or ready to cook. Do you go to the store and get a frozen lasagna? Try and pass off pb&j (which you had for lunch) as dinner? Hope that someone will come over for a surprise visit and bring a pot pie with them? (I have thought all of these things at some point....)

Well, simply put, you can pretty much avoid that with a little planning. I plan my menus two weeks at a time, mostly because I don't want to interact with grocery lists and meal planning more than twice per month. You could totally do every week if that works better for you. Plus, then I only have one big shopping day every two weeks. I still run to the store for milk, produce, TP (you can only make do with the other paper products in the house for so long....) etc. when I need to, but I don't have to be running out at the last minute to find something for dinner.

So what I do is collect recipes. I find them online, from friends, in magazines. When we were first married, I used to go to the library and check out cookbooks every week to find different recipes that we liked. A few really good sources on the internet are http://www.allrecipes.com/ and http://www.eatingwell.com/ . I really like those websites. My favorite magazine for recipes is Cooking Light. They give the nutritional value of all the recipes, which is nice if you are doing calories or Weight Watchers, or you just want to know how many calories there are in what you're eating. (If you don't want to know, just hold your hand over that part of the recipe so you can't see it ha ha)

So I have a file folder STUFFED with copies of recipes. Here it is:

My husband is always trying to get me to organize my recipe file so that it is easier to find recipes, but I resist organization. I LIKE sifting through the recipes and being able to take out the one I want and hold it and set it on the counter and spill stuff on it. I know I'm weird.

I usually use a few cookbooks from my huge collection too:

(note the messy, stained file folder in the background)

So then I look at the recipes and figure out what I'm going to make. For two weeks, I generally plan 11 meals. I figure there will be a few days where we eat leftovers, or eat at a friend's house, or eat out. If I'm using a recipe from a cookbook, or from the internet, I note, next to the dinner, what cookbook and what page it's from ,because I'll forget! As I'm doing this, I have my grocery list going too. As I find recipes, I get up and go check the pantry to see if I have some of the items I need, or if I need to buy them. (This way you don't end up with 12 jars of pasta sauce, or 17 packages of linguine. It's also cheaper if you're using what you have)

So at the end of this process I have a page that has a list of meals, and another page that is my shopping list. Then I walk around the house to all the restrooms and see what toiletries, paper goods, etc we need so that I can only buy what we need, and not have 22 bottles of hand soap. I try and do this a day or two before grocery day. I also keep a running list going on my fridge so that I don't forget that we need vanilla, or foil, or something that you don't realize you're out of until you NEED it. I encourage the members of my family (or some friends who are LIKE family) to write things on the list if they use the last of something. (...and by encourage I mean- if I see them use the last of something, I holler "write that on the list!!")

So then I make a dry erase board (it's small) with a list of all the meals and put it on the fridge. I used to assign certain meals to certain days, but I have found that I don't always want to eat/cook what's assigned to a certain day. It's easier if I can just look at the list each morning and decide what I am going to make for that day. If there's a meal that has an ingredient that will go bad quickly, I try and make that first in the rotation. Also, for days that I know I will be super busy, I plan simple meals, or something for the crock pot. Here's my dry erase board from this last menu. I just cross off the meals after I cook them. If there's any left on the board, I "forward" them to the next grocery day meal list.

So that's pretty much it!!

I have several menus that I have put into document form that you can just print out and use if anyone is interested! I will be happy to email them to you! Just email me at sharitodd@hotmail.com if you would like them!

Question for you all- do you have a "staple" meal that is pretty much on your table a few times a month? If so, what is it??