Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budgeting. Show all posts

Friday, April 24, 2009

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. :)