First, I sit with a calendar and write down a daily planning list for each day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I add things like church potlucks and leave off meals when we won't be home. In the beginning, I only focused on dinner, but planning out the breakfast and lunch helps me to be more creative and healthy with our daily fare. My hubs is always asking me what's for dinner, so he can look at the chart and find out. It saves him an exasperated answer. I try to rotate favorites with new recipes to keep things fresh. If I find a recipe that's a hit, I take the time to write it on an index card and add it to my recipe box.
Next, I fold a piece of lined paper into 6 squares. I think about the layout of my grocery store and label the squares in the order that I walk through the store. At Wegman's, my labels are: Bakery/Deli,
Meat, Produce/Bread, Dairy, Frozen, and Dry/Canned. As I go through my recipe plan for the week, I add ingredients to my list (this saves so much time in the store with little peeps tagging along). This also helps prevent those $30 emergency runs to Target or Wegman's during the week.
Some awesome resources I have used in the past are Menus 4 Moms and Emeals .These services are for a nominal fee and give plans for weekly menus and grocery lists. Lately, I've been using the menu plan from a site called The Better Mom . The meal plans are healthy and everything I've made is delicious!
Give it a try and let me know if it saves you some money and time!
Posts
