Monthly Meal Planning (Part 1)

This will take a few posts to really get it all down, but for starters I wanted to share what  my experience has been like planning a month worth of meals. I started out by looking for recipes our family would like. We LOVE carbs and for us, that is not a weight issues. We balance it out with proteins and produce, especially beef, pork, and chicken along side peppers, asparagus, avocados, zucchini and carrots. I LOVE me some pinterest so I found a few awesome sites with recipes for easy to make meals that are freezeable with little prep. Let's face it: I really don't like cooking after I have been at work all day. I want to play outside with Logan and not worry about heating up the house any more than it already is.

After I had my meals picked out, I made a grocery list. I found coupons online for our local grocery store and gathered the ones I needed. I planned for a $300 budget to also include things we'd need for the long term like laundry detergent and toilet paper. I shopped at our local store and spent exactly $100, saving nearly 20% with coupons. The planning of the meals, the list, coupons and this trip to the store took two full days. I worked on what I could at work and spent an hour shopping. I was exhausted! And only had half of the things I needed. Two nights later I went to Walmart for the bigger items. I aimed for spending$200 and ended up spending $160! I was very happy for the savings, but still, super tired from all the shopping. Then, imagine trying to find a place for all this food in our tiny kitchen!? It was interesting to say the least, but we made it all work out.

On the following Saturday morning, I set out to make as many meals as I could. I started the pork shoulder in the crock pot for BBQ pulled pork, cut up all the chicken and bagged it with lots of veggies to freeze later for stir fry meals. I made meat balls to go with rice and veggies and a taco casserole. The next post will have more details of each meal, but in all I ended up with 12 meals. That is still HALF of what I planned on making. I still have lots of food to prep for more meals, and yet we are very happy with the amount of food that is ready to eat. We have lots of left overs which are great for lunches and the next evening. So far, I would say this has been really successful! I will have photos up in the next post.

If you have done freezer food, what are your favorite recipes? Is this the best way for you to save money and feed your family healthy meals??