Menu Planning

Following in the footsteps of my much older (lol), wiser sister...I have decided to start planning our menus. Too often, when I go grocery shopping, I buy-buy-buy...but come home with very little in the way of food to create meals with. Not that I am buying snacks...I rarely ever buy snack-y type food...because, if it's not in the house - I won't eat it. :) But, I'm usually lacking essential indgredients to whatever I'm trying to cook and end up making several last minute trips to the store - that always end up costing a lot of money...because you NEVER end up just buying that one item that you went in for.

Also, funds have been a wee bit on the tight side around the house lately - so, I figured if we were just spending money on food for meals - we wouldn't be wasting money on stuff we really don't need.

So, we decided to make a list of meals for the next 2 weeks. We don't have any "set" days that these will be made - but, just having a list of meals that we have all the ingredients for is making meal time much less stressful. We never have much problem with the "side items" - and we just about always have salad with our meals. So here is a list of our main dishes:

• Grilled Chicken
• Taco Salad
• Meatloaf
• Keilbasa
• Breakfast dinner
• Hamburgers & Fries
• Spaghetti
• Fish
• Sloppy Joes
• Ham & Beans
• Chicken Salad

This will get us through to the next time I get paid - and I will do the whole thing again. I figured I spend about the same amount as the last time went shopping, and that food didn't last us for 2 weeks at all. This will cover us for every night for the next 2 weeks - except for Sunday's...we don't ever eat dinner on Sunday's because we eat a late lunch with family after church.
It's worth a try - I think it will work. I'll let you know in 2 weeks when I make out my next one. :)