Meal Planning

How-To: Monthly Meal Planning Guide

For the past few months I've been using a homemade calendar to plan our meals for the month.  I usually go out and buy most of the ingredients (the ones I can freeze or are canned) and then go out every week and a half and buy the perishable items needed for my recipes.  This has worked out fairly well and it helps me keep a low grocery budget every month.  I go to Costco once a month and buy the bigger things that we'll need along with most of the meats I'll need.  When we get home, I'll divide up the meat (mostly ground beef) into ziploc bags consisting of either one or two pounds.  We also buy the big bags of Perdue chicken (my favorite)  and one bag can usually last us between 45 and 60 days.  

Most of our monthly grocery budget comes from my trips to Costco.  Since I buy in bulk I pay a little more, but the food I do buy lasts me a lot longer than going to the regular grocery store.  And it's nice to go to the grocery store and only have to buy a few things at a time.  I used to coupon (and sometimes I still do if I find a really great deal), but I found that I don't really save that much doing it.  Maybe it's because I go to Costco and buy in bulk or maybe it's just because I'm not that dedicated to couponing.  Whatever the reason, I've found that it's just not for me.  I can keep our monthly budget low without them and I'm happy with how little money I spend on food.

Below is our July Meal Planning Calender.  Most of these recipes are new to me (I'll let you know how they turn out) but I try to do at least a few new ones each month.  My husband is a bit of a picky eater so when I find a recipe he likes, I usually jump on it.  

All the recipes in green are cooked in the crock pot.  There are also recipes that have a red star next to them which means they are new to us.  I always run the recipes by Chris to make sure he'll actually eat them (this can get frustrating sometimes) but in the end we're both happy with what we'll be eating.  I also try to give us one or two days where we budget for eating out.  I know that at least one day this month we'll be going out with our friends.  I also have a lot of blank days during the week because we always have leftovers after I cook and we do not like to waste anything.  So...we usually eat something for two days before moving on to the next meal.  But if we don't have any leftovers, I just skip to the next recipe and continue from there.  We're pretty flexible.  

I'm going to leave you with a few of our favorite recipes.  Please visit this site to find them and feel free to use the recipes for your own family!  

UPDATE: You can only view the files if you have a google account.  If you don't have one, you can download it to your computer and view it that way!