Hi, everyone! Sarah here, and I thought it would be fun to share with you how I menu plan. This spring the amount of money I could budget to spend on groceries was greatly decreased so I had to figure out how to meal plan and grocery shop in a way that worked best for our family. Since we live about 30 miles from the grocery store and it’s not always easy for me to get there, I began shopping for two weeks at a time.
My first step to meal planning is to look at the sale ads and mark down anything that is an amazing deal. I also make sure I know what staples we are running low on so I can add these to my list. At this point I don’t really do any further planning. I take my list and hit the store. I’m mostly shopping for meat, produce and dairy as I keep a good stock of grains and other staples in my pantry. One of the reasons I don’t menu plan before I head to the store is that I’m often able to find unadvertised specials on these three categories at the store I shop at most often. I want to take advantage of these specials as much as possible so I wait until after my grocery haul to plan out my meals. I also stock up on frozen produce when it’s on sale since I’m often low on fresh produce by the second week. I downloaded Gina Miller’s Family Organzer Binder Kit: Pack 2 since it has ample space for me to plan out my dinners as well as place to add items you need from the store. You’ll see why this is important to me later on in the post.
Once I’m home I begin by listing out all of the meats and produce I bought as well as anything I may have in my freezer and I begin building my menus from this as well as other ingredients I may have on hand. I printed out the menu planning sheet from Gina’s kit and placed it in a page protector clipped to my freezer door so that I could use dry erase markers and reuse the planning sheet. Usually for the first week the meal plans are fairly simple to create since I have a fridge and freezer full of food as well as a stocked pantry. I begin planning based on food that will spoil the fastest. If I have ground meat I usually plan something with that toward the beginning of the week and then place the extra in the freezer. If I have produce that looks like it’s not going to last until the next week I make sure to plan to use that all up during the first week. For this week since I knew we would be going into town on Saturday I began to make a list of things that we needed for the following week on that day’s shopping list. This isn’t something that I always get to do since my husband is usually on call the second weekend and since we are a once car family getting to go shopping isn’t always an option.
Either Saturday night or Sunday morning I plan out the next week’s dinners. Luckily my husband works across from a grocery store so if there is something that I absolutely need he will stop and pick it up on his way home on Monday. This is where I have to get creative, since my budget is mostly spent on the initial shopping trip, but I do have some wiggle room. As I plan out my meals I add any ingredients that I might be missing to the shopping list for that day. I text the list to my husband on Monday for him to pick up. The list is naturally short since I’m usually trying to eek out the best meals I can with the funds I have left (of course using the current week’s groceries ads).
For me shopping and menu planning this way has helped me save serious money in the food shopping department. I’m able to take advantage of the best deals and by limiting the amount of time I spend at the grocery store, I cut down on impulse purchases. I also love how flexible this is for me. I’ve found that by creating meal plans after I’ve done my shopping I’m no longer finding myself struggling with what to do when the store is out of fennel or the zucchini that I had planned for Tuesday’s meal was already shriveled up in the bin. How do you meal plan? I’m always looking for helpful tips when it come to our weekly menus.
Linda says
Sarah,
This is awesome. Very inspiring.