Meal Planning Newb

I still don't know how I was in the dark about meal planning, but boy am I glad it's now in my life! There are varying degrees of meal planning: the simpler end of the meal planning spectrum is to plan out meals one week at a time. The more complicated end of the meal planning spectrum belongs to those folks who plan out an entire month of meals. It boggles the mind, right? I don't think I'll ever get to the latter, so for now I'm sticking to the weekly meal planning level.

I prefer weekly meal planning because:

a) It's been a very easy transition from absolutely NO meal planning to weekly meal planning

b) I like anticipating the Sunday grocery deals, and using those as my inspiration

c) I like going to the grocery store(s) in general, so I like being able to go every week

d) I have visions of me and a grocery cart full of a month's supply of food and other stuffs, and it scares me

So how do I form a plan of attack? Thought you'd never ask!

Analyzing Sunday Deals

I now get reeeeeally excited for the Sunday paper. My husband now also gets excited for it, and we usually "fight" over the ads. He wants to quickly get his foods added to my list for consideration (usually items like Pop Tarts, pizza rolls, and Coca Cola :) ). I read through all the grocery ads and start writing up a list of stuff per store by hand, including the prices. At this point I usually don't know what I want to make for the week, but the deals serve as my inspiration later on.

Getting Nerdy With a Spreadsheet

Once I have all the items written down that piqued by interest (due to good prices and/or something seasonal that looks great), I turn to le computer. I created a very simple spreadsheet (thanks, Open Office!) that I use to keep track of the week's meals, and it includes a section where I list out all items per store and their prices. This lets me see the potential grand total, and tweak items if they don't work with the desired total. Let me emphasize that this spreadsheet is SUPER simple. It's just meant to help me develop and stick to my "food schedule". It keeps me sane, for reals. Want to see it? Mk, here's a simple template version!

Research

Fun research, I swear! After starting to add to my simple spreadsheet, I give my pantry, freezer, and fridge a once-over to figure out what I already have. Then with that knowledge, and the deals I've written down, I go to the internets to look up recipe inspiration. That lets me finish my list of items that I want to buy for the week, and it lets me fill out my meal schedule for the week!

Money Cap

I mentioned desired total. This is obviously going to be very different for me. Regardless of your financial situation, setting an amount you will spend (whether it's a total per week, per month, total per category - food, gas, etc....) really holds you to a number, and helps you save so much more money. I really wish we had been doing this even when I was working and our combined salaries were very comfortable. We would have a lot more money in the bank! Alas, hindsight. Aaaaanyway, the way I have set my desired total is a more complicated explanation than I'll go into at this time, so I will simply say that I have decided how much I want to spend TOTAL per week. This includes food and other household stuffs.

Making a Shopping Date

I henceforth declare Monday as: The Day to Shop. Well, for me anyway! :) I just decided that I'd make Monday the day to haul my daughter off to a few stores in the morning after breakfast, and we get 'er done for the week. It feels great to get it all done in one day! Every now and then, I have to run out later in the week to get a few supplementary items, but I try to avoid that as much as possible.

Coupons. Argh.

I should also mention the coupons. I love coupons, and hate them. They honestly stress me out a little bit, which I think is partly to due with the fact that I can't figure out a good way to organize them so that it's easy to go through them on demand. I don't rely on coupons to make the weekly meal plan; for now, I see them as a bonus. After I have my list of things to buy, I go through the coupons to see if anything matches up to my list. Or if I have time, I'll see if any of my coupons match up to anything in the weekly ads. But I don't spend loads of time on this, because it's pretty darn time consuming, and there's lots to do, y'all!! If anyone has any good couponing tips, please share!! I don't know how those Extreme Couponers do it. :S

That's what I feel like sharing for now... I hope this is inspirational / useful for at least one person. :D

The Next Undertaking: Food

I have two big challenges when it comes to food:

1 - My husband, Zach, is the chef, and I'm the baker. I'm so lucky that Zach loves cooking and is truly a great chef. I've been his sous-chef for ten years, so my cooking skills are lacking. It's just been so convenient to rely on his cooking initiative!! But it's time for me to step up and cook, to help with the next challenge...

2 - Leaving my job is a huge hit to our income. So we now stick to a tight budget, which means no more froufrou foods and no buying food just on a whim. To date, grocery shopping has meant buying whatever looks good, whether it's on sale or not. Which means this new frugal life style is a BIG change for us!

Getting Started

I've been trolling the internets for ideas about how to eat more frugally, and for fun recipes to get me excited about cooking. Again, Money Saving Mom has been a treasure trove of info, and I've found a few other sites with useful information. With the info I've learned so far, I'm going to focus on three food-related efforts:

1 - Meal Planning
2 - Smarter Grocery Shopping
3 - Freezer cooking

1 - Meal Planning
Zach and I almost always made our dinner decisions last minute, which often resulted in unhealthy quick dinners. It may sound funny, but I hadn't heard about this meal planning concept until coming across some ideas on Pinterest a couple months ago! But it's total common sense: Plan your meal for the week and you know exactly what you need to buy. No extra unnecessary grocery store trips, and no take-out dinner slip-ups. Plus it sounds fun to be able to show your family a menu of what to expect during the week! I'm going to work on easing my way into meal planning.

2 - Smarter Grocery Shopping
This ties into #1 - Meal Planning. I rarely paid attention to grocery sales when both Zach and I were working. Now I'm constantly on the hunt for a deal. But, I'm going to work on tying these deals into meal planning. Based on what I've been reading, the best thing to do is sit down over the weekend with grocery store sales fliers, and plan the week around the sales as much as possible. Factoring in any pantry items that may be reading and waiting! I'm assuming this will get easier with practice.  :)

3 - Freezer cooking 
Over the last couple years, I've frozen cookie dough balls and banana bread; that is the extent of my freezer cooking and knowledge. Little did I know that people put so much effort into cooking and freezing entire meals and/or key pieces of a recipe, to save time later. Genius! But, kinda intimidating. However, by sheer coincidence, Money Saving Mom's May challenge is just that: freezer cooking! The challenge is calling "4 Weeks to Fill Your Freezer", and she designed it to ease her readers' fears about freezer cooking. It involves cooking and freezing one meal type per week: "breakfasts the first week, lunches the second week, dinners the third week, and snacks and desserts the fourth week." Perfect!! I'm going to start the challenge next week...

What's Next?

This is a really busy week for my family, so I don't have much time to do anything other than more research to better prepare for my food challenges. I'll share what I learn as I start tackling them!

Freezer Cooking Mini Test: Silver Dollar Pancakes
I did do a mini breakfast freezer challenge today, making silver dollar pancakes. Annabel is a carb fiend, and loves her some Eggo frozen french toast sticks and silver dollar pancakes! As I was nuking her li'l pancakes yesterday I thought... $3 for 40 of these teeny things?!? Could I make the equivalent? And how much will it cost?

So today during her nap (and after my cleaning tasks), I did just that. I used my go-to super simple Better Homes and Gardens buttermilk pancake recipe (so fast to put together!) and made 50 silver dollar pancakes (well 51, but I had to taste test... right??).

I'm going to do a taste-test with Annabel tomorrow morning, to see which pancake she prefers. :) Then I'll post the results and more info about how I made then froze (and finally reheated!) them.