MENUS

picture credit: Money Saving Mom

MENU PLANNING ADVENTURES

A menu plan will help you stick to your grocery budget. If you have a plan and shop for that plan only then you will be less likely to purchase items you don’t need or run to the grocery store a million times because you keep forgetting ingredients (which turns out quite costly). If you have never followed a menu plan before you may be reluctant to try this concept but if you do I promise your grocery budget will thank you that you did. Now if you are trying this out for the first time or have a very busy family. I would suggest creating a meal plan but have “easy” meals planned too if something fails or someone doesn’t get home in time.

Here are my tips for a meal plan success.

1. Only create a meal plan for one or two weeks. If we try to create a menu for longer than that time frame I tend to notice we sway and forget the meal plan all together. My husband and I are very picky eaters and “craving” eaters. We eat what we want when we want it. The whole menu planning was a hard thing for us to get used to. But I am very thankful that we have trenched through it and so is my wallet. There are days we have something planned but don’t want it so we just switch the days. We also always have pasta, grandmas soup and jambalaya on hand for days were we don’t really want to cook or we have something late into the evening.
2. Try “themed” nights. When I say this it means something along the line of Mondays are Italian Food, Tuesdays are Mexican Food so on and so forth. Personally we don’t menu plan like this because all we eat is Mexican and Italian food but it’s a good way to get started if you are having a hard time coming up with meals.
3. Scan your freezer and pantry. See what you already have and type the ingredients into AllRecipes.com and see what comes out. You can type in a couple of ingredients that you already have and the website will give you quite a few recipes that include those ingredients. It also helps for creativity. You will save more money at the grocery store if you plan around what you have on hand (and store sales.. but we will get into that in more detail later).
4. Think about what your family likes to eat. My husband does not like to eat chicken. Therefore, I am not going to plan 4 out of 7 dinners based on chicken. We do however love pasta. There are some weeks when we will have some version of pasta 5 nights out of the week. But that’s what we like to eat.
5. Check the store sales. I told you we would get here. Grocery stores (in my area at least) run sales from Wednesday to Tuesday. The weekly ad comes out each Wednesday (even though I for some reason don’t get it in the mail until Friday, thanks Ahwatukee Post Office!) in the mail and online.  However, I always make my menu plan on Thursday. Why? You ask. Thursday gives me time to shop my CVS & Walgreens deals before grocery shopping. I also will check the Sunday Coupon Preview to see if there are any coupons coming out I want to use before the sale ends. I will look at the current weeks sales ads and the new coupons then menu plan from there. There are often times I get items in the last 2 days of the sale for cheap or absolutely nothing just for waiting for those new Sunday coupons to come.

Breakfast | Lunch | Snacks | Dinner | Desserts

Need some dish ideas. Here is a list of recipes that my husband and I consistently prepare.

The link will bring you to All Recipes.com Just enter the name of the dish there and it will give you their version.

I will be posting weekly recipes based on our menu plan. If you have something you are dying to know. Leave a comment requesting it.

Happy Eating Adventures!

Breakfast:

Fried French Toast

Stuffed French Toast

Old Fashioned French Toast

Blueberry Muffins

Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Pancakes

Sausage & Gravy Biscuits

Eggs Benedict

Pumpkin Muffins/Bread

Lemon Glazed Scones

Fruit Scones (whatever is in season)

Hashbrowns

Lunches: (we don’t eat a lot of lunches at home because of the schedule so here is our tiny lunch list.. sorry)

Fluff Nutter (Marshmallow Cream and Peanut Butter) Try this toasted!

Hazelnut Fluff Nutter (Marshmallow Cream, Peanut Butter and Nutella) Try this toasted!

Stuffed Chicken Quesadilla

Deviled Eggs

Hot Sandwiches (done in the oven… DELICIOUS!)

Dinners:

Bacon Carbonara

Grandmas Soup

Jambalaya

Red Beans and Rice

Shrimp Pasta

Clam Pasta

Chicken Caccittore

Barbequed Ribs

Japanese Style Pork Tenderloin

Chicken Stir Fry

Roasted Potatoes

Blue Cheese Coleslaw (The only kind I will eat. You may not find this. My husband created this)

Three Bean Salad

Annie’s Homemade Meat Sauce (not sharing… sorry)

Three Meat Lasagna

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Gnocchi and Crab in Vodka Sauce

Bacon Alfredo

Chicken Alfredo

Anything Barbequed

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Tacos (street style)

Burritos

Mexican Rice

Mexican Beans

Chicken Saltumbuca

Potato Pancakes

More ideas are on their way!