Making a meal plan every week is a life saver with 4 kids, or even 3… or 2…
Having a list of planned meals, buying for those meals and going to the grocery store with a detailed list means that you don’t only save money, but you also don’t waste food. I have following this way of shopping for a few years now and I have never once regretted it. I don’t go to the extent that I plan all of the meals each day, I need some spontaneity. I plan 6-7 supper meals and eat them in the order that we feel like, starting with meals with ingredients that we need to use up more quickly, like meat.
My procedure for planning meals was written here…
To make things easier and to add a bit of variety, I am in the process making a document of Meal ideas at the moment that has all of the meals that we enjoy eating and making by category. I find that looking at a list of meals makes meal planning a lot easier. It also reminds me of things that we haven’t made in a while.
This week our Grocery bill came to about 110$, in my opinion that is not bad at all for a family of 6 (well 5 who actually eat)
- Chicken Tikka Masala
- Pizza (dough here)
- Szechwan Eggplant and Cauliflower
- Meat and sweet potato pie (recipe to come)
- Potato-Leek soup (recipe to come)
- Spaghetti sauce (recipe to come)
- Fondue
Similar meals as us! Of course that’s not a surprise since we talk on the phone almost every day! Did you make the chicken tikka masala yet? Ours was SO good! I’m going to post the recipe soon. I wish we could eat fondue with you guys. Maybe one day when we’re visiting. It is my turn after all.
110$ for a week is awesome!! that’s what we usually get to in the winter (it’s less in the summer). the meal planning has totally gone to the wayside this summer, mainly because we get a farmer’s basket every tuesday and I never know what we are going to get, but I do miss planning the meals, especially when it’s like 4pm and I still have no idea what we’re going to eat!
Yeah, I am pretty happy with that number… I wish it was like that all of the time… lol..
I have been thinking about getting a basket one day and the one here comes on Fridays. If we were to do that I would see what was in the basket and plan my meals around that, changing my shopping day if I needed to.
We still have that 4pm panic at times (if I forgot to take something out of the freezer, soak the day before etc…) but on those days we can usually just fall back on breakfast for supper 🙂
I have tried a couple of the recipes on this website and they were delicious! I hope you do more of these kinds of posts and share the recipes. I can’t wait until the meat and sweet potato pie.
I love the idea of making a document of past recipes you’ve used! I am finding it hard to organize myself enough to make a meal plan lately, because we’ve been so crazy with life. But then it means we’re doing even more work because we’re shopping more, and spending more money and time trying to figure out what to eat each night.
I do try and make extras of meals I know will freeze well and put one in the freezer, which has been working well for us.