As we head into the New Year, I’m personally dealing with some meal planning challenges–maybe you are, too? My ultimate goal is to feed my family healthy meals within our budget ($550/month for our family of five). I’m feeling a little burnt out, however, with coupon shopping, multiple stores, trying to fit cooking around evening activities, cooking when I’m tired or sick, etc. So I’ve spent a little time this week thinking how I want to approach my goal in the New Year. My three big strategies will be:
- Utilizing freezer and crockpot cooking to avoid stress between 5-7pm.
- Keeping up with what I have on hand in the pantry/freezer so I can shop for groceries only once per week.
- Set limits on couponing/multiple stores (I think I’ll set a time limit and only shop once per week, since I’m not willing to give it up completely).
On the short-term, my goal this week is to fill us up with vegetables to counter all the sweets we ate over the holidays, so I chose simple recipes off my Master Meal List that are veggie-heavy:
Sunday–Slow Cooker Tortilla Soup and cornbread
Meatless Monday–Greek Pita Pizzas on whole wheat pita bread
Tuesday–Chicken Sausage sauteed with veggies over angel hair pasta
Wednesday–Slow Cooker Beef Stew and homemade bread
Thursday–Chicken Fajitas in the DCB, wheat tortillas, black beans and brown rice
Friday–Crustless Italian Spinach Pie and salad
Saturday–Pork Roast, baked potatoes and green beans
What are your meal planning challenges as we head into the New Year?
Linked up to Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.
Gina – Have you looked into Washington’s Green Grocer? I’ve been using them for the past year, and it takes care of 75% of our produce needs, is always super fresh and I find it to be a comparable value to shopping sales at the grocery stores. http://www.washingtonsgreengrocer.com/catalog/our-boxes/index.htm . I too was feeling burnt out with the multiple store shopping and found this to be a great use of my time and money. With the boxes you get an email each week with what your box will include, and you can make substitutions if there are items you don’t like or don’t want for the week. Then a BIG box shows up at your door on your assigned delivery day. Good luck with your new approach to menu planning for the new year!
That Italian Spinach Pie looks fabulous. Could show up on my menu soon! January is always a time for me to reevaluate my grocery strategy. Things are just so uncertain this year, I think I’ll stick with what I’m doing and change as changes hit. Too hard to predict budget numbers. Unsure of future available hours. Shopping with cash helps, and keeping a running tab on my grocery list so I’m not surprised at the register. I’ve had to consciously make myself purposely stop getting so many deals. Since we eat nearly every dinner as a family, we’ll be continuing that, but for some reason, appetites seem to be difficult to predict. ?! Visiting from Menu Plan Monday. Happy New Year!
I also like to evaluate, and your tips are really helpful. I decided I only want to shop twice a month, so I’ve started freezing a lot of ingredients or meals, even milk and cheese, to carry our family of 6 for the two weeks. Produce tends to stay well (we have pretty fresh produce in California and I’ve frozen some from our garden) and I can buy some fresh foods when I’m running the kids around.
I’m visiting from Menu Plan Monday, too!
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Not sure about other states, but in Southern California the 99 cent stores have really great produce. I’ve found it’s fresher than at the regular markets and a fraction of the price. baby watermelons were 99 cents vs. $3.99, a full sack of apples for 99 cents instead of getting 2 apples for the same price, asparagus 99 cents vs $2.99, etc. The only down side is they don;t have as big of a variety – they seem to always have tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, a choice of 3 or 4 other fruits, and 3 or 4 other veggies. So I buy what they have that we like, then hit the regular market for anything we need they didn’t have. They also have canned goods, milk, eggs, bread, boxed goods, etc. We’ve cut our monthly grocery bill by 30% by going there before the regular market.