Meal Planning (And Grocery Shopping) Made Easy

I have been thinking about writing this post all week.  I'm sure everyone already knows how to do these things, but just in case they don't, I'm going to share how I do it for our household.

Here's what I do each week:
1. Check out what you have in your pantry, freezer and refrigerator before doing any shopping.  I take note of what I have and what I'm running low on or are out of.  With this knowledge, I will be able to plan my meals using some of the items I already have on hand plus it will make it easier to fill out a grocery list as you plan the weekly menu.
2.  Keep a running list of items that you need from the grocery store in a easily viewed place.  I keep my list on the refrigerator door.
3.  Check out the grocery ad. I plan my meals around what I have on hand as well as what is on sale this week.  If it's not on sale or I don't have it, we aren't having it as a meal this week.  Even if it's an item I am out of.  Also, I won't buy an item to restock the pantry, freezer, etc., unless it's on sale.  (This does not apply to the basic staples though.  If I need milk or bread, obviously...it has to be bought.)  I should also add that I have been out of bacon for several weeks now.  But, the sale on bacon has not been a good one.  So...I'm waiting to purchase it until I can get a better deal.
4.  Do you have any coupons for the items you are going to purchase?  If so...I make sure you use them.
5.  If you really don't need much in the way of groceries this week for your meals, are there items on sale at the grocery store that are really good buys?  If so, I try to stock up on those items for future meals.  For instance, Easter is coming up and our store is having some great deals on hams.  I have 2 hams in the freezer, but...I'm going to use one next weekend.  Therefore, if I have the money to buy one, I will do it.
6.  Know the basic meals that you make on a regular basis.  I have a file of recipes that I use over and over again.  I can easily pull this file out when I'm planning my menu and this also makes it easier to add items to my shopping list because I don't have to wonder what I need to make something as I have the recipe right there to look at.
7.  Keep a file of any meals that you are dying to try out sometime.  When something is on sale for one of these recipes, I am more apt to buy it then and try out the new dish rather than buying the items for it when they are more costly.  I've tried out 3 new recipes this week using items already on hand as well as items I had to purchase.  But, the items I had to purchase were a can of cherry coke, a box of stuffing, and a bag of hash browns.

That's pretty much it.  It sounds more complicated than it is.  Really.  Once you get in the habit of doing these things, planning a menu is nothing and grocery shopping is easy.

Meal Planning/Budgeting

It's been a really, really long time since I've talked about meal planning/budgeting here on my blog. It's time I remedied that. Especially as I'm needing to cut my food budget yet again. I just can't stand the rising cost of food anymore. Can you believe how much items are costing now? Whew!

Luckily, it's that time of the year when I can visit one of the local farmer's stands and get some good deals on produce. I don't know what I'll do when the season ends. (But I say that every year.) I stopped by one today on my way home and bought two bags of new potatoes for $2 each. Each bag was two pounds. I just weighed them. I also bought a bunch of onions. Three good sized ones for a total weight of one pound. I paid $1.50 for them. Now, the onions are just a bit more expensive than I could have gotten on sale, but boy...do they taste great! We don't have potatoes on sale this week at the grocery store, so a 10 pound bag is $4.99. I didn't do so well here as my four pounds of new potatoes were $4 total. But I'm ok with that. I love these new potatoes and I can't buy new potatoes at the grocery store right now. I wanted to buy some green beans too, but they were out. I am meeting up with the farmer's wife tomorrow, so she's going to bring me a few pounds of them. They are $1.50 a pound.

I broke out the grocery sale ad a bit ago and browsed through to see what's a good deal this week. Here's what I found:

Solid Whole in Cryovac Pork Loins are $1.69 a lb.. (This is the only way I buy these pork loins. I like them to be a bit cheaper, but honestly...I don't know if they'll go any cheaper than this. So, I will be buying one of them. I have at least two lean pork roasts out of this plus a lot of boneless chops. I have my butcher slice it up for me. It's free to do so.)

26 oz. Can Hunts Pasta Sauce is 99 cents.

24 oz. Best Choice Cottage Cheese is $1.99.

7.5 oz. Always Save Biscuits is 39 cents.

4 lb. bag of Best Choice Sugar is $1.89. (This is cheap compared to normal prices)

24 rolls of Always Save Bath Tissue is $4.69. (This is over $1 off normal price)

Always Save Saltine Crackers are 89 cents.

Roma Tomatoes are 79 cents per pound.

1 lb. Colorado Carrots are 59 cents.

10 lb. tube of Ground Chuck is $18.90 ($1.89 per pound) (I don't know about this. I prefer leaner ground beef, but honestly...for around here, this is a good price. Plus I could get 10 individual portions of 1 lb. each out of this tube. I would like to stretch my dollar and actually cut it down to 3/4 of a lb. portions.)

10 lb. bag of Frying Chicken Leg Quarters are 59 cents per pound. (I plan to buy at least one of these bags. Hopefully, I can afford to buy a second or a third as well. I portion these out into gallon sized freezer bags with a dump chicken marinade.)

Cook's Supertrim Bone-In Shank Ham Portion is $1.29 per pound. (I would like to buy one or two of these too. At holiday time last year, the cheapest I could find a bone-in ham was $1.59 per pound. I would like to get one whole one and one to be sliced into ham steaks and then I have the end portions for soups and beans.)

**With the purchase of all this meat...the pork loin, the tube of ground chuck, two bags of chicken, and two hams, I would have a LOT of meat in the freezer and would need to do minimal shopping for these items the rest of the month. Here is my estimated cost for these meat items:

Pork Loin (usually around 12 lbs.) $19.08

Ground Chuck (10 lbs.) $18.90

Chicken Leg Quarters (10 lb. bags) $5.90 x 2 = $11.80

Bone-In Hams (estimated at 8 lbs.) $10.32 x 2 = $20.64

Total Cost for Meat (56 lbs of meat) is $70.42 or $1.2575 per pound.

Now, I know I need toliet paper. With two bathrooms and five people, there's never enough of it. So, I will buy 4 packages of it for a total cost of $18.76.

I still have 6 jars of pasta sauce in my pantry, so I don't need that right now. But, if I have any money left over, I might buy 2 of them for stocking purposes. I like to have at least 8 to 10 jars/cans of pasta sauce in my pantry at all times. Total Cost $1.98.

My guys love cottage cheese. So I will buy two of these. Total Cost $3.98.

I hate making homemade biscuits. I also don't have any in the refrigerator. So I will get 8 cans of these for a cost of $3.12.

1 bag of sugar. $1.89.

4 boxes of saltine crackers for a total of $3.56.

Roma Tomatoes 1 lb. at 79 cents.

Carrots 2 lbs total $1.18.

TOTAL GROCERY COST $105.68 plus tax. That's under my budget of $150.00 for the week. (Yes, I know that's a fairly good sized budget amount, but honestly, I've been spending more than $250 a week these past few months.) I will still have money left over for bread and milk and several heads of lettuce for salads. I would also like to purchase a small canister of de-caf coffee for Big Daddy too. I'll let you know if I can swing it.

Now, what meals will I make? Hmmm....there's a huge range of choices with the purchase of all this meat. But, I won't use all of it. Seriously. :) Here's my meal plan for a week's worth of dinner's:

Baked Chicken Leg Quarters with Roasted Potatoes and Onions, Peas (from freezer), Salad *Roast 2 extra quarters for the Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas*

Goulash (made with elbow macaroni and pasta sauce from pantry, a lb. of ground chuck), Salad

Baked Boneless Pork Chops with oven fried potatoes, onions and carrots, Salad

Leftover Night (leftover taco makings made into a burrito casserole and baked in the oven)

Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas with carrot sticks and ranch dressing

Fried Egg Sandwiches or Salad Night with boiled eggs. It depends on the kids and if they protest any over the sandwiches...Small T does not eat sandwiches.

Baked Pasta (the leftover Goulash will be used here. I will add cheese and also extra sauce if necessary.) Homemade Garlic Bread (using part of a loaf of bread) and a Salad

What to do with....

15 lbs. of lightly seasoned taco meat. You are probably wondering why we have so much of it. Monday was the CAC District Music contest here at our school and as I'm the band booster president, we ran a concession stand to try and make some extra money for the band program. Part of the food we sold were Walking Taco's. You make them by opening up a bag of snack sized Frito's, adding taco meat to the bag, plus shredded cheese and taco sauce. My friend Vicki organized everything since we were gone in Mexico, but she and I both donated 15 lbs. of meat for the walking taco's. We didn't end up selling it all, so we now have leftovers. Here is what I'm doing with ours over the course of the next several weeks:

Meal #1 - Taco's
Meal #2 - Burrito's
Meal #3 - Sloppy Joe's (since the meat is lightly seasoned, we will warm it up and add sloppy joe mix to it for this meal)
Meal #4 - Mexican Casserole (in a large casserole dish, put homemade burrito's, refried beans, salsa and shredded cheese. Bake until warm. Then top with lettuce, onion, tomato, more cheese, etc..)
Meal #5 - Mexican omelets (use the warmed up taco meat in the omelets...top with salsa and cheese....they are quite good)
Meal #6 - Taco Salads
Meal #7 - Nacho's

Normally, we would cook about 2 to 3 lbs. of taco meat up when we have taco's as the kids would eat the leftovers for snacks the next day after school. The rest of the meat is placed in freezer bags and frozen until we need it. The portion in each bag varies according to what we will be making with it.

This weeks dinner menu.....so far

I thought I would post this week's dinner menu (so far). I am going to work backwards from today as I won't remember it otherwise. It's been a weird week for meals as we are trying to clean some odd bits from the freezers so we have room for the hog that is now ready to be picked up at the butcher's. Between the whole beef and the hog, we have little freezer space left for the necessary items like chicken, fish, and any frozen veggies, etc..

Thursday - Shake and Bake Chicken Breasts, cornbread dressing/stuffing, brussel sprouts
*This was a treat as we've not had anything shaked and baked in ages. We did use the store brand instead of the expensive name brand stuff. Doing so, saved 74 cents per box and we used two boxes.

Wednesday - Leftover night and also the night you could microwave anything out of the freezer that was in an already opened box or package. Like burrito's.

Tuesday - Baked pork chops, Rice A Roni (generic), a bag of frozen carrots thrown in with a partial bag of frozen California Blend veggies.
*The pork chops were a treat as we've not had any pork for several months now. I refuse to pay the price for pork in the store when we can get it so much cheaper through the butcher's. But, they weren't doing hogs at the butcher's until January, so we had to wait. But my hubby couldn't wait any longer and he bought the chops at the local store. Yikes! Very expensive....2 packages for a total of $20. One package might have fed the 7 of us, but we use the leftovers for lunches, etc., so he bought and cooked two packages.

Monday - Baked chicken legs, thighs, and a couple of leftover boneless, skinless breasts, Four Cheese mashed potatoes, Peas and Carrots.

Sunday - Fettucini with Garlic Butter sauce and fresh steamed Cauliflower and Broccoli mixed in.

Adventures in Meal Planning

As some of my friends know, I have taken a different approach this month to feeding my family. I'm a late bloomer in doing some of the things that many women do, but I've taken a lot of advice to heart and started planning out my meals. I do this in a two week block. It has saved me both time and money. Both are important to me, but saving money is a really big incentive in itself. This month alone, I cut our food budget from almost $1200 (in July) to around $600 this month. Included in my food budget is also dog food for our dogs plus toliet paper, paper towels, laundry soap, etc.. I am feeding my family of five plus my sister and her son. So I think I'm doing pretty well this month.

I am including a sample of this week's menu for those that might be interested.
Sunday - turkey, mashed potatoes, turkey gravy, noodles, stuffing, and 24 hr. salad
Monday - "salad night" of chef salads
Tuesday - beef hot dogs, chips (This meal was requested by the kids)
Wednesday - "leftover night" of hot turkey sandwiches served with mashed potatoes and gravy and side dishes of noodles, salad, and stuffing
Thursday - sloppy joes, cole slaw, brownies for dessert
Friday - "breakfast for dinner" night of eggs, sausage links, and hashbrowns with onions
Saturday - hot ham and cheese sandwiches, cole slaw, chips for those that detest cole slaw

I have to say that it's been a week of several sandwiches and I try not to do that very often, but my kids lead a very busy schedule and sometimes that is all we have time for. Plus, sandwiches are very portable and can be eaten on the run when necessary. I've even put my sloppy joe mix in a thermos type container and taken it with us for dinner in the past. So I say, whatever works, works.

As for the menu, I have also let every person in the house suggest meal ideas as well as choose a meal each week. That way everyone has something that they like fairly often. So far, it's working out great for us all.

I will try to post each week's menu for anyone that is interested. And yes, I do shop the sale ads whenever possible to save even more on the groceries.