This is going to be a short series of posts on menu planning. Menu planning is one of the easiest ways to save money, save time and ensure healthy meals for your family. Menu planning frightens some and most people have an excuse for why they won’t plan meals. Let’s dispel those fears and eliminate those excuses!
Grocery stores are filled with pocketbook landmines. Even with a menu plan and shopping list I fall into the trap periodically. When you shop without a plan, well, those “great” deals become more of a hazard to your wallet. We’ve read the many hazards of end caps and loss leaders. Without a shopping plan these temptations will grab you and cause terror in your wallet. Daily shopping will also kill your budget. Weekly plans are a minimum. You will spend excess money on gas and miss the opportunity of buying in quantity. Shopping for a whole week will save money.
Making out a menu plan and shopping list takes some time. The more time you spend making a menu plan, the less time this will take. I will also give some hints and tricks to reduce the amount of time you spend making a menu plan and shopping list. For me the key here is efficiency. I spend a bit more time planning my menu and organizing a shopping list. This process saves me time and energy in the store and on a daily basis. I don’t have to worry about what we are going to have for dinner at 6 pm. I organize my shopping list into store aisles, grouping like items. This limits back tracking in the store. I can feasibly shop for a week in 30 minutes from the time I enter the store, until the time I am actually pulling out of the parking lot.
When pressured we take the easy way out. Without a meal plan, we default to fast food, takeout and delivery. Even if we don’t go that far, how many times do we eat Hamburger Helper – esque meals because we don’t know what to serve last minute? Boxed meals might as well be McDonald’s. That is not home cooking. If a complex meal for you is Hamburger Helper you need to pick up a cookbook. I recommend Teens Cook: How to Cook What You Want To Eat by Meghan, Jill and Judi Carle.
Now this sounds all peachy keen right. You know that planning a menu will saving you time and money, but it’s not for you because, you are: too busy, single, a couple, broke, wealthy, competent, incompetent, etc. etc. etc. I call bull hockey on all of it. You don’t have to come up with a new, exciting gourmet meal for each day of the week. You can recruit your family, make them tell you what their favorite dishes are. We can all save some money and a menu plan will do it.
A few non-traditional menu planning ideas that may help you take on this task. Some families have a theme to guide them. Monday’s are Mexican food, Tuesday’s are Italian, etc. They can change recipes throughout the week. I personally make a month long menu plan and I just repeat a two week section. It doesn’t become stagnant and I save some time. Popular amongst couples and singles is to list a week or more worth of recipes and chose meals from the list at random. If you still hold to your excuses, I recommend Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely. Check out her website www.savingdinner.com. All your menu planning and shopping list organization done for $5 a month.
