Simplified Meal Planning

I have to accept the fact that there are many people, (several close friends of mine even), that are not going to embrace my monthly meal planning no matter how much I promise that it is easy and will bring you greater inner peace, enable you to eat healthier, and spend less time and money on grocery shopping. But, alas, I give in to the resistance and will scale back the monthly menu approach to something I’ve actually been doing lately which is a weekly meal plan. A lot of people plan meals by the week and that’s all fine and dandy but what if you labeled your days with themes? Sounds dorky? Of course it is. It’s just the kind of dorky thing that I love because it makes something mundane fun and efficient. If you don’t see the fun in it stick with me for the efficient part. See, if you have themes for your weekly meals, filling that 7 day meal planning chart goes so fast that it will start to make you think that you could move on to monthly planning and experience that inner meal-planning peace and spending less time shopping and all that jazz.
We’ve been floating these themes around in our house:

1. Soup or Chili Day
2. Separate Day: Meat, veggie, rice or leftover pasta side
3. Pizza day! There are so many possibilities for pizza dinner: Bar-b-q chicken with zucchini, apple and pork tenderloin pieces with blue cheese, roasted veggies, hamburger pizza, pesto with caramelized onions and mushrooms and feta or the plain standbys. With homemade whole wheat pizza dough it really is a healthful meal. Check here for some fun and interesting pizza topping ideas.
4. Taco Tuesday, (includes anything Mexican: enchiladas, burritos, etc.)
5. Left over day, (sometimes 2 days.)
6. Pantry Meal day. You can’t plan this meal. The objective
is to use what you have and not let perishable items go to waste. I look in the fridge and throw something together or search online for new recipes using ingredient search engines. (See www.supercook.com and other recipe sites that have ingredient search tools like allrecipes.com.) I love discovering new favorites this way.
7. Pasta day, (at hubbie’s request.)

If you have a general outline such as this for your 7 days and designate one of these themes for each day of the week, deciding what to have for dinner each day goes very fast. For instance, I start with a chart that looks like the one below, (Yes, I start mine on Mondays.) Every Monday we have soup or stew and every Tues. we have Taco Tuesday and every Friday we have Pizza day. The other pantry and leftover days can be swapped around:

Monday / Soup/Chili Day: Crockpot Vietnamese Pho Soup with Veggie wonton wraps
Taco Tuesday!: Chicken Enchiladas
Wednesday / Separates: Marinated Flank Steak with barley risotto and salad
Thursday / Leftover Day: LEFTOVERS
Friday /Pizza Day: BBQ Chicken Pizza
Saturday / Pasta Day: Eggplant Parmesan
Sunday / Pantry Meal: ????

Other themed meal planning ideas:

Rotating Meats: If you dedicate every Monday, for example, to chicken, Tuesday to vegetarian, Wednesday to pork and Saturday to red meat, you can fill out a weekly menu faster than you can say “well rounded diet.”

Rotating Cuisines: Mondays could be Italian, Tuesdays Asian, Wednesdays Mexican, Fridays new discovery cuisine (try a traditional German or Polish meal for instance).

Movie night theme: If you have a weekly movie night you could pair up a themed meal to go with your movie. I’m not sure that this would make meal planning more efficient but it sure would be fun. You could cheat and do what we did one night which was to order Chinese take-out when we were going to watch Kung Fu Panda.

Saintly Meals: Go to www.AmericanCathlic.org and jot down the Saint of the day for each day of the week and the country they are from. Choose meals that match the saint of the day’s heritage for at least 5 days of the week, (use the other for leftovers, eating out or a pantry meal). See my monthly plan using this theme here. Be sure to read about the saint of the day as you are eating the meal in his or her honor. A kid’s version of Saint of the day can be found here.

Another well orchestrated evening dinner thanks to my friend, Crockpot.

Wednesday night, I had to pick up my 1st grader from school at 4 pm, drag all of the kids to drop off dinner a a friend’s and attend a preschool open house. Once we got home I needed the 1st grader to complete his homework and dinner by 6:30 in order to get him to basketball on time. Millions of mothers, I am sure, have similar if not more hectic evenings on a regular basis. For my evening I planned on using my trusty crockpot to get me through. Fish packets is a regular meal in our house but I had never thought to cook them in the crockpot until I read a smiliar recipe on the Crockpot Lady’s Blog. When I first saw her recipe that takes 3-4 hours in the crock I thought how helpful is that? I am a crockpot purist who thinks of crockpot recipes as being convenient and delicious only if it cooks for 6-8 hours but I figured I would try this short-cook idea.

I thawed the fish for our fish packets at 3:00, in cold water and cut up the veggies, (onion, tomato, mushrooms, zucchini, peppers). Once thawed, I made the fish packets by placing each of the fish fillets on the bottom of a piece of foil and layering them with veggies, olive oil, minced garlic, basil, chopped rosemary and seasoned salt. I folded each of the layered piles up in individual foil packets and placed all the packets in the crockpot. The prep took less than 10 minutes. My husband doesn’t eat fish so I made a chicken packet for him. (So far, the kids haven’t noticed these replacements for daddy but he’ll have some explaining to do about a made-up allergy when they do figure it out). I placed them in the crockpot on high and they were warm when we rolled in the door at 5:20. Perfect! I cooked the tumeric rice in advance and warmed it in the microwave. Perfect. There was no rushing and dinner was delicious and ready to go. Thank you Crockpot!

There is still plenty of winter left to enjoy the convenience of Frozen Meals!

In case no one actually reads the details of my monthly menus (is anyone really spending time doing that?), I will brag that for the first couple weeks of December I never cooked a meal and for about 10 meals in January I will provide my family with delicious whole food meals that I simply take out of the freezer and pop in the oven. Today I made six batches of shepherd’s pie for my next Freezer Friends exchange. One of the six we had for dinner. I have organized a second group of Freezer Friends and thankfully got my dear friend Jen to join today so that I won’t have to be cooking for two groups. Thanks Jen! After talking with her I got to thinking that most of the women in the new Freezer Friends group have not been in the habit of doubling or tripling or quadrupling meals they make to be frozen but they are interested in trying it. I haven’t seen any emails yet about what they will be making for their first January 29th due date so I thought that a list of freezer friendly meals might get some ideas generated. Here is a list of things that I have doubled/tripled/quadrupled for freezing or have received in a Freezer Friends exchange. There are so many more possibilities but this is a good sampling:

Chilis, stews and soups of almost any kind

Chicken Entrees:
Chicken tortilla soup
Chicken tex mex (rice and such)
Chicken Cacciatore
Chicken pot pie Chicken Divan
Mexican chicken lasagna
Chicken Cordon Bleu
Rosemary Rasberry Balsamic glazed Chicken
Creamy Chicken enchiladas
Chicken Burritos
Baked Pasta w/ chicken sausage & spinach
White Chicken Chili
Beef Entrees:
Shepherds pie (pot roast shredded or ground beef)
Taco pie (biscuit type topping)
Moroccan Beef
Burgers (turkey, mango chutney turkey, southwest beef, bbq pork, bacon wrapped, momwiches, etc.)
Beef enchiladas
Meatloaf (many variations)
Stuffed Cabbage
Stuffed peppers
Beef Veggie soup with many variations
Meatballs (turkey or beef)
Lasagne
Stuffed Shells
Misc:
Poppy Turkey -
Creamy Cajun shrimp pasta
Eggplant parmesan
Spinach pie – a lot of egg in a spring form pan w/ phyllo on top
3 bean chili
Calzones
Gumbos (many variations)
Pasta Sauce with meat or veggies
Pizza (homemade and ½ baked can be frozen and popped in the oven)

My latest goal is to start freezing crock pot meals. Two conveniences combined! Does life really get any easier?

Day Before Meal Prep

An excellent time-saving mind-easing good habit to get into is looking at your meal plan every night before you head to bed. I am usually too tired to do any real meal prep at night, in fact I hardly do much of anything productive after the kids go to bed, but I do take a peek at my menu to see what needs to be taken out of the freezer for the next one or two days’ meals. It depends on what the food item is as to how many days prior to a meal it should be taken out of the freezer. A 3 lb pork loin is going to take at least 2 days in the fridge to thaw whereas a flash frozen salmon steak will only take one night. I try to anticipate all frozen items that will be utilized in a meal when making my monthly menu and I make notes in my monthly menu calendar in blue (blue signifies frozen to me) on the days that frozen items should be taken out.

In addition to thinking about your next day’s meal the night before, it is best to make sure that you have all your ingredients for tomorrow’s meal (and the day after that’s meal ideally) the day before. In a perfect world, if you are meal planning and shopping for everything well in advance this isn’t a problem. However, we have all wanted to make some specific meal and went to the grocery with the best of intentions only to find out that our grocery store is completely out of an essential ingredient. To celebrate Saint Dominic of Silos day (which was yesterday but we are moving that meal to today) I decided to try a new Dominican stew which would introduce two new ingredients to our family. One new ingredient was a plantain which was easy to find. The second was yucca. Our local grocer does not carry yucca and when I inquired I was lucky enough to speak to the produce manager who had worked in produce for nearly 30 years and was familiar with every fruit and vegetable known to man. He suggested trying another store located in a more Hispanic community. After 3 phone calls I sent my visiting brother-in-law to hunt down a yucca. Of course I didn’t have to do this, this dish is more of a fun experiment and I had help from a visiting family member so we went for it. But we did it yesterday not today, the day we are cooking the stew.

I know people who think about what is for dinner in the early afternoon. Then they realize they don’t have everything they need and they head out to the grocery. If you don’t have a gaggle of young kids or if your schedule permits these multiple grocery tips maybe it works for you as long as your meal does not require a lot of cooking time. That would be disastrous in our house so a little day ahead preparation out of pure habit makes meal prep a breeze.

Our Simple Thanksgiving Menu

This year will be different than last year. We are on our own along with my Mom and Step-dad, who will be driving a little over an hour to visit with us. I'm keeping the Thanksgiving menu simple while adopting a couple of the favorites from our more elaborate feast of last year. Last year, my sister-in-law put our fabulous menu together and we had fun cooking together for our family plus four out-of-state family members. We ran out of oven space we cooked so many dishes so we called our next door neighbors who were away visiting family and they allowed us to use their oven. It was fun going back and forth with our oven mits. But, this year I will be the only cook so I've scaled it down.

Brined Roasted Turkey
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_8389,00.html
My son went to the store with me to pick our turkey this year. He picked a 20-pounder -- I'm hoping to freeze some cooked turkey meat for many many turkey dishes to come.)

Gravy
I am no gravy expert. I'm going to try to do this by whisking the scraps from the roasting pan with flour and chicken broth as it should be done.

Cranberry Pear Chutney
http://www.marthastewart.com/cranberry-pear-chutney?lnc=369ad9e51c2ee010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=photogallery_thanksgiving_holiday_thanksgiving_p5
Last year we added some candied ginger to this recipe and it was delicious.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes
I just roast a head of garlic at 400 for about 40 min. and squeeze the cloves into our mashed potatoes. I'm just going to throw the other ingredients in as I usually do: butter, salt & pepper, cream cheese and milk.

Corn: just straight up frozen stuff.

Stuffing: just plain with sauteed celery, onion, mushrooms and seasonings. Nothing fancy.

Apple Pie
This is in the freezer just waiting to be baked.

Pumpkin Roll: the first one I have ever made. Can't wait to eat it.
Pumpkin Pie
I asked my mother to bring this and dinner rolls.

Apple Cider

What more do we need really? I am hoping to have time to make some more of those browned buttered frosted pumpkin cookies. We decided against a salad because it seems unnecessary with all the other food and our holiday being just a few of us. No one eating with us likes sweet potatoes or squash. So hopefully the turkey will be the showcase.

I'm also looking forward to reading our Gratitude Jar. This is the first year that I remembered that I wanted our family to do a Gratitude Jar. The day after Halloween I put a lidded jar on our dining room table and each day (that I remembered) I asked the kids to think of something that they are grateful for, however small or however big. I wrote what they thought of on a piece of paper with their name and we will read them all before our dinner prayers on Thanksgiving. Mom, if you are reading this it would be nice if you and Dad thought of some to share on your drive up. I hope to make our Gratitude Jar and annual tradition.

How to Create a Monthly Meal Plan 101

A few people I know have said that they would very much like to stop running to the grocery store so often and would like to try a monthly meal plan. I will also say that several other people I know just think that monthly meal planning is plain crazy. I love it for so many reasons but regardless of my reasons I’m probably not going to talk anyone into doing it if it does not appeal to them. I can guarantee you that monthly meal planning will save you time, money and get your family eating healthier and more of a variety of foods. Don't think that it is inflexible. It totally is. You will have the ingredients to make anything on your menu for a week. It is not so different than planning weekly in that regard. So if you don't feel like having hamburgers tonight, if you've planned for the month and shopped your produce for the week then you probably have several dinners to choose from.

(1) So the first thing to do to get started is to list all the meals that your family enjoys regularly. Of course you will want to do this in word document on your computer. Under each meals list all the ingredients that you would shop for that make up that meal. I call this my “Master Entrée Ingredient List.” I like to organize my entrée list by beef, chicken, pork, seafood and vegetarian categories so that when I am filling in my menu I can easily find the dish that I am looking for. This step may take several nights after the kids are tucked in bed and an hour here or there but it is worth it because it will save you SO much time in the end. This is the step that takes the most time.
I also like to make the produce or parishable food items on each meal ingredient list in green type at the top. That way when you go to make your grocery list from your Master Entrée Ingredient List you will easily be able to pick out your weekly produce runs and once a month shopping trip items.

I haven’t updated my Master Entrée Ingredient List in a few months and I have several new recipes that are keepers to add to it but here are several pages of mine to give you an idea:

(2) Once you have a list of several meals with their ingredients you can pull up a calendar to start planning your month. I download the free calendars at http://www.calendarsthatwork.com/ and then save it in a folder for menus. Or you can save it wherever it makes sense in your word document file list so you can retreive it later. That calendarsthatwork website only allows you to get one month in advance for free so I just use one I have and change the numbers on it if I want to plan more ahead. KWIM?

(3) I have found that it is easiest (if you want to get a variety of foods in your family’s diet) to label each day of the week with a kind of dish like chicken, pork, beef, etc. That makes plugging in your meals easier. For my fellow Catholic folks, this meal planning technique also makes it quite simple to revert back to pre-Vatican II practices of abstaining from meat on Fridays which is an added bonus on many levels. Then you simply start plugging in your meals in the squares of your calendar and copy and paste from your Master Entree Ingredient List on the second page (3 or 4 columns at 8 pt font so it fits on one page) to make up your corresponding grocery list. Be sure to break out your regular calendar to look at dates for things like Christmas concerts or sports activities and such. This way you can be sure to plan a meal that either cooks fast, travels well or is done in the crockpot for those days. You can also double or triple freezer friendly meals on days that you know you will have time to assemble them. Also be aware of meals that require you to defrost things from the freezer. In my calendar I type the items that need to be removed from the freezer in blue one or two days before I need to us them.

(4) If you find that you do not have enough meals initially to plug in a 30 day calendar don’t be discouraged. It’s difficult to come up with 30 meals off the top of your head in the beginning. As you do this month after month it gets easier and faster because your list gets longer and then you find yourself wanting to try new recipes. We always fill up the calendar with one leftover day per week and at my husband’s request a pasta meal once a week. This not only fills up the calendar but it is also budget friendly. Other ideas to fill up a calendar when you are struggling is homemade pizza or a breakfast for dinner night.

I also try to get everyone in the family involved in the menu planning. I fill up our calendar as much as I can and then I start asking everyone for ideas. Last month Carter came up with fish sticks when I told him I needed a seafood dish. I never made fish sticks so I tried a new recipe and Carter loved it and was excited that he had come up with our dinner idea that day.

(5) Once you have a monthly menu with the shopping list on page two, print two copies out, each with the calendar on one side and the shopping list on the back. Keep one in a handy place in your kitchen and the other stick in your purse. Before you shop, be sure to look to see what you have on hand in your pantry and cross off the things you do not need to buy.

Some other things I have found helpful since I started monthly meal planning is making sure that the first two days of the month have meals with items that I already have on hand or that are quick and easy. I do my monthly shopping usually in two days at the end of the month when we get paid. For the best prices I hit Sam’s Club first, then Aldi’s for whatever Sam’s didn’t have and then Giant Eagle (similar to Piggly Wiggly, Stop & Shop or Krogers elsewhere) for the items that Aldi’s does not have. Dragging little ones with me is no fun so I usually do one or two stores over a two day period. So I don’t want something on my menu on December 1st that I will have had to hit all 3 stores in order to make because I might not have made it to Giant Eagle yet, KWIM?

Another very important tip is to start your monthly meal plan EARLY. It's too difficult to get a whole month together in two days. I get sick of looking at it and take a few days break and then I look at the month fresh the next time I sit down with it and come up with new ideas. It's better to do it a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Eventually you will find that you sometimes have TOO MANY entrees and your ideas will spill into the next month.

I also try to plan my meals that use produce that parishes quickly at the beginning of the weeks and meals that use produce that lasts longer at the end of the week so that I can do my weekly produce runs successfully. That is really for advanced menu planning, but something to keep in mind. Scallions for instance may not be in the best shape for Sunday if you purchased them on the Monday before.

It's also good to keep seasonal produce in mind when creating a meal plan. I put the seasonal items at the top of each of my menus for meal planning purposes and for when I am shopping for a veggie at the grocery. In season produce is usually what is on sale and travels less. Produce that travels less is most nutritious.

To best utilize an ingredient that you may not cook with very often (and is not likely to be completely used with one recipe) it can be useful and economical to plan another recipe to use the leftovers of that ingredient. For instance in October I wrote about how we used ½ can of pineapple chunks for two different meals and the pineapple juice from the same can for a third marinade recipe.

There are always ways to improve a menu plan I am sure but in the beginning you just want to get it together. Improvements can be made later. Happy monthly menu planning!

Oh, and if you want to see my October and November Menus just find "Monthly Menus" on the articles list or click here: http://jennshomework.blogspot.com/search/label/Monthly%20Menus

Empty the Pantry Dinner Entrees

Being as the December menu is during the Holiday season, I thought it would be a good time to institute a pantry dinner entrée. About 7 years ago as a novice cook I wanted to branch out so I started seeking out recipes for ideas. It has been a good learning experience and I have certainly broadened our horizons but now I use recipes as a crutch. I can throw some simple things together but ultimately I rely on recipes too much. So in the sake of saving some extra cash for Christmas I thought that trying to throw together an “empty the pantry meal” every couple weeks might not only save some money but also get me back to “creative culinary genius” as I like to call it. The best meals always used to come out of my kitchen when stuff was just thrown together. My husband misses those days but he forgets how annoying it was when he would ask for the same meal again and I couldn’t replicate it because it was just thrown together. Now of course there are a lot of great resources out there on the web to give you some ideas. Here are a few I have come across:

http://www.supercook.com/
http://www.foodieview.com/
http://www.recipematcher.com/

Most recipe websites will allow you to search recipes by ingredient:

http://www.recipeland.com/search/by_ingredient/
http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx

And yes, the December menu is almost done!

I don’t even care if it tastes good!

I love having dinner cooking on the crock pot. I just love it love it love it love it. I love it so much that I am cooking two crock pot meals two days in a row and I wish I was doing it every day for the rest of the year. AND, since I’ve been under budget with groceries for two months in a row (planned so that we could replace our DVD player that the 1 year old broke by repetitively pounding on buttons unsupervised) I am also going to purchase ANOTHER crock pot if possible. I would like a larger one with more cooking options. Get this, in December I am planning a couple meals that require TWO crock pots cooking simultaneously! CRAZY!

Tonight I was trying a new turkey chili and my afternoon went so smoothly not having to cook that I thought to myself that I didn’t even care if it was good or not. It just made me so happy that dinner was cooking away on my counter and I did almost nothing to prepare it. As it turns out it was pretty good. Jim and I thought it was a little on the bland side but it could be spiced up a bit with tobasco or more chili powder or loads of garlic. The corn bread recipe I tried was excellent. I’ve been looking for a good one for quite some time and I think this one is a keeper: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Grandmothers-Buttermilk-Cornbread/Detail.aspx . I’m still searching for a moist sweet corn bread recipe with corn in it but for now this one satisfies.

Interested in Starting up a Freezer Friends Group?

I have had a couple people tell me that they would be interested in doing a Freezer Friends group. I am willing to participate in another group or at least put some people together to make up 5 Freezer Friends. If you are interested email me asap and I’ll see if I can bully . . . I mean get some additional people for a new group. If you are having a baby soon, (ahem, you know who I mean) or if you are so busy that you are struggling to get dinner together every night (YOU also know who I mean) or if you would just love to have some new meals ready to go in the freezer let me know asap so you can get started before the winter season is over.

Just to entice you, I have received 4 meals today and 1 is coming tomorrow:

Chicken Lettuce Wraps
Chicken Spaghetti Casserole
Soulful Stew
Rolled Chicken with Pasta


The sooner you contact me the better! And if you don’t think you have recipes that freeze well to offer I can help you with that.

Oh and if you don't live near me and would like to start a Freezer Friends group, just email this to everyone you know:

Hi Friends,

I would like you to join me in a Freezer Friends
group. Basically we need 5-6 people to start a Freezer Friends
group. As a member of the group all you have to do is multiply a meal that
freezes well that you are already cooking for your family by 5 (or the
number of members we get to join) and package the meals up in 5 individual meals
and freeze. At the end of each month (or a date that we agree on) we will
designate someone's house to meet at to exchange our meals. You cook and
freeze your meal at your convenience anytime during the month before the due
date and in the end you will receive several different and new meals for your
family to enjoy. If there are dietary concerns we can make sure that we
decide what we are cooking well in advance so that we can accomodate those
issues if possible. The winter season is the best time for a Freezer
Friends exchange so please reply to my email as soon as possible!

Can't wait to share my favorite recipes and try your favorites!

Freezer Friends Swap Today!

I’m so excited. Today is our first freezer friends swap of the season here at my house. We have added one person which makes our group 6. I have always thought that 5 was perfect because when you cook a meal you want to multiply it by 5 so that you are left with one meal for your own family and then 4 for the freezer friends. Multiplying meals by 5 was challenging enough so we will see how 6 goes. I am so excited to get five new recipes in the freezer. This time around I made Creamy Cajun Shrimp Pasta to which I was shocked that there were no objections. I can’t believe that out of 6 families there is no shellfish allergy, seafood dislikes or whatnot which makes me really excited because I think this dish is potentially one of my all-time favorites and it’s so fun to share something with others that you think is so delicious.

Here it is, Creamy Cajun Shrimp Pasta:
1 (8 oz) angel hair pasta or penne pasta
¼ cup butter
1 lb shrimp, peeled & deveined
1 clove garlic
½ t black pepper
1/8 C all-purpose flour
2 T Cajun seasoning
2 cups cream
¼ t salt
¼ cup parmesan cheese

Melt butter in large heavy skillet over medium heat. Saute shrimp for 1 minute on each side. Stir in garlic, and cook for 1 minute. Remove shrimp with a slotted spoon; set aside. Stir in flour and Cajun seasoning. Cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Gradually whisk in milk, then cook until thickened. Add parmesan. Remove from heat, and season with salt. Return shrimip to sauce, and spoon over cooked pasta.
This recipe found its way to me through a freezer friends group of two years ago. Thank you Rachael!

A Spontaneous Leftover Day!

Each week I schedule a leftover day. It prevents us from getting burned out on the same food two days in a row and is quite fun to have a completely bizarre variety of food in one meal. I need not tell you that it keeps the grocery budget down as an added bonus. In the event we do not have leftovers (which rarely happens), I’ll throw something together that I have on hand or if we have minimal leftovers that don’t quite make up a meal then I’ll supplement it with something. Last night it was obvious that our fridge needed a leftover day. Somehow I missed a leftover day last week so our leftovers were bursting. Another bonus about the monthly menu planning is that there is no guessing as to how old something in the fridge is. As I switch up the menu I will mark it up so I always know when we had what when I go to clean out the fridge. No fear of eating mysteriously aged food and no risk of wasting food that is only a few days old just because we can’t quite remember when we had that particular meal last.

I especially like an unscheduled spontaneous leftover day because it is a day that I normally would have to cook but didn’t have to. It also means that I can shift everything on the menu forward a day which makes us ahead on the meal planning game because the longer it takes to use up the food we have the happier our budget is.

My favorite Day of the Month!

Today was it. It’s not my favorite day of the month just because it is pay day, although that helps, but it’s really more what pay day triggers for me that makes me happy. Today is:

1) Pay day which means budget allocation day & bill paying day (which used to be my LEAST favorite day before I budgeted)
2) The beginning of my two day monthly grocery shopping
3) Monthly grocery shopping means huge Sam’s shopping trip where I “play the game”

I won the game today by the way. I add everything up in my head as I go through Sam’s Club and have the kids help me remember numbers as we get distracted. The bigger the number and the closer I am to the total at check out the giddier I get. I often do a mid-month Sam’s Club run but it’s the first on of the month that is always a pricey run because I get all of my grocery items that will last throughout the month in one trip. For this trip I was really out of a lot of meats and I have committed to a shrimp dish for my Freezer Friends group so it was a big number. Being the dork that I am I really like to tell the cashier my estimate before the total is rung up. Today I said $332 and it came up at $329 and change and she said, “you won!”
My poor husband has to hear about this for a couple days at least. Now if I had guessed $329 he would be hearing about it for at least a week so he should be ok with just a couple days. He tries to be a good sport but really he just rolls his eyes and by the 10th time I tell him how superbly wonderful his wife is at budgeting and totaling groceries and such he’s had it and must ask me, “how much longer are you going to go on about it this time?”

So anyway, I also hit Walmart today and tomorrow hopefully I’ll hit Aldi’s and then Giant Eagle (compare to Stop & Shop, Piggly Wiggly or Krogers). I keep a price book which I will share at some point where I have compared prices of various items that I purchase on a regular basis. In general I have found that I get the most for my money buying bulk at Sam’s (even better than sale prices at Giant Eagle) and then the best bargains are found at Aldi’s and then Giant Eagle (especially with coupons which I am trying to be better at). So I shop the stores in that order, generally. So whatever I did not find at Sam’s will be bought at Aldi’s and whatever I don’t find at Aldi’s I get at Giant Eagle. That leaves me with nothing but produce runs at a much smaller local store, Heinen’s, which has wonderful produce and a great lunch meat that we like in our house ($5.99/lb or $4.99 on sale), milk runs at Aldi’s ($2.39-$2.69/gallon whole milk), and the bread outlet twice a month ($1.29 loaf or $1.03 on sale). Trader Joes is right by my gym and there are a few things I get there exclusively. It is easy for me to stop in at Trader Joes after the gym but it isn’t a regular monthly stop. It sounds like a lot of trips but I swear to you it isn’t. Before I monthly meal planned I felt like I was always running to the main store, Giant Eagle, and I was paying more than necessary if I had consolidated my trips to other stores and I would swear about the produce quality regularly.

My budget/”envelope system” has been in place for nearly a year and a half now and it feels so good to deposit little bits of money into my pretend envelopes and see goals get nearer and nearer each pay period. Budgeting the money for what we really need it for truly is a better feeling than going out and replacing our broken DVD player without having saved for it first or having a new sweater. I am a simple nerdy budget person and I love it! So happy budget day to any budgeters out there.

The Top Ten Most Significant Things that Make My Household of 5 Tick

This list may change from time to time but for the moment this is the list that appeals to me at the moment:

10.Feeding my Sugar/Caffeine Addiction
9. Working out at 5:30 am
8. Laundry Daily
7. Day(s)-Before Meal Planning (I will explain in another post)
6. Simple Dinnertime Rules
5. Monthly Grocery Shopping
4. Budgeting
3. Monthly Meal Planning
2. Freezer Inventory

The Number One Item on the Top 10 List:
1. Freezer Real Estate