Meal Planning 101

Over the years I have had numerous people ask me HOW do you menu plan? And further WHY? It seems like so much work with very little reward. But here’s the thing: When I plan my menus I save money.

I like money. A lot.

When Jefe was in Law School we had ZERO money and I had to learn how to make things stretch. I had $200 to last an entire MONTH! That’s $50.00 a week, people. FIFTY DOLLARS.

Seeing that amount now seems absurd,  but you know what? I did it. I had to. There was no choice. I did the best that I could and I had to be organized and I had to plan. When I didn’t plan, I spent WAY more than what we had. When I planned I always came in under because I could always stretch two more meals at the end of each two week period.

I learned how to make four meals from a whole chicken. Five if I boiled the bones and made a broth for chicken soup. I actually became a very good cook, and once I figured out how to plan my meals, we ate well.

Here’s how:

1. Get yourself a Calendar. I used to print one off each month at printfree.com. Now I prefer to use Google Calendars because I can have that emailed to me and hot synched with my phone.

2.  Next, take 1 hour and write down all of the meals that your family will eat. If you only come up with seven—then hey! That makes your life a lot easier!

3. Write down on the calendar what you will eat for dinners. In the Summer I also include Breakfast and Lunch because I need to shop for those meals.  Realize that you can be flexible with this calendar once you are done—especially if you use Google Calendar. It’s simply a function of drag and drop.  In the past if Meatloaf comes up (My kids LOVE meatloaf. Weird, huh?) and I don’t feel like Meatloaf, but I know that Pasta is on the schedule, then I just change it up.

I use allrecipes.com for all of my cooking. I have favorite recipes that I have gathered from family cook books and other books, that I have taken the time to type into my profile. Literally all of my families favorite meals are housed in my online recipe file. I always include a link in my Google Calendar so that when my meal for the day is emailed to me, it comes with a link to the recipe.

4. Once your list is made, go through and write down all the ingredients you will need to make each item.   After you do this a few times, you will get fast and will be able to remember what you have in your pantry and what you need to purchase.  If I use the last of something, I write it down on the grocery list I keep on the chalk board.

I usually purchase two of everything so that if necessary, I would be able to make two of all the meals scheduled for that time period.  It’s how I do my food storage—in a lazy-don’t-freak-me-out-sort-of-way.

5. Go grocery shopping. I plan my meals around what my family likes AND what is on sale. I haven’t mastered the whole coupon thing (2011 is my year), but I do do the price matching thing.

I use Deals to Meals to find where all the good prices are on all of the items that I need, then I merely write down the lowest price and have Mall of the Wart price match it. Yes. It’s time consuming—but it generally saves me about $100.00 when I take the time to price match.  That’s TOTALLY worth it to me.

6. Make your meal first thing in the morning when you have the energy. You are more likely to eat crap if you haven’t planned and executed your meal plan in the morning. Besides, from about 3pm-8pm I call those hours the witching hours at my house. Everyone needs something and I am expected to at the top of my game. Making dinner ahead of time eliminates one of my biggest stresses.

For my working friends: My girlfriend who is a working professional does this as well. She plans her meals to be strictly crock pot meals. She has found you can make pretty much anything in the crock pot so she whips it up, usually before she goes to bed, and then plugs that in first thing in the morning. Now, I’m too tired at night to do that, so I would totally be willing to get up earlier to get that chore done. But, my working friends, you can do it, too!

Watch for some more menu planning ideas on my other blog, MMB Community.