I am a work in progress when it comes to meal planning. In reality, I am quite terrible at it, but I try! Some people prefer to plan from what they see in the weekly grocery ad, some make a menu and then shop for those items and some people are able to look at their pantry\freezer that day and make something fantastic minutes before supper time (that might be exaggerated, but I bet those individuals exist and I salute you!)
Personally, I prefer to base my meal plan on the weekly grocery ad, I think its the cheapest option.
A friend and fellow blogger, Betsy, at Life as a Med Student's Wife, has recently started a little blog series about frugality. She is fantastic and inspiring! I offered to share with her my humble attempts at planning from our weekly grocery ad and she was willing to share this on her blog! So wonderful!
This first post is a very vague (and word heavy, link light, I apologize). I envision sharing my entire grocery list for the week, including my coupon deals! But for today, I am only going to list my ideas\menu plan from one of the weekly ads as time escaped me this week and I wanted to have a post done today! I chose the Hy-Vee ad this week and the first meal was basically handed to me off the beginning pages!
In no particular order...
Meal One: NY Strip and Baked Asparagus
--I have never seen NY Strip at this price and I think Hy-Vee meat is fairly good as far as quality. Hubby makes a really great steak! I will coat the asparagus with olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt and parmesean cheese, then bake. I found the recipe on Pinterest and thought it was quite good!
Meal Two: Whole Chicken and Baked Potatoes
--Whole chickens are.79/lb this week! You can get a whole chicken CHEAPER than buying just the chicken breasts! No brainer, right? I like to make a whole chicken for supper and then de-bone the rest afterwards. Since there are three of us, we can usually get two more meals out of the rest. I might add the leftover chicken to soups, quesidillas, tacos, or a casserole. Really, the possibilities are ENDLESS! I snagged a 5#bag of potatoes last week for .88! Easy Peasy! And if I am really motivated, I may just make more chicken stock!
Meal Three: Casserole using leftover Chicken
--I always have pasta, vegetables, cream soups, etc on hand. Using the leftover chicken from Meal Two will make an easy supper dish!
Meal Four: CrockPot Roast w\ Vegetables
--It isn't the BEST deal this week for chuck roast, BUT the last time it was on sale, they were HUGE! I am going to check them out this week and if they are HUGE again, I may cut it in half. Make a roast with one half and then find a freezer meal recipe for the second half, perhaps a stew of some sort. Add the cheap potatoes and carrots I bought from last week and again, easy peasy!
Meal Five: Pizza
--We LOVE pizza in this house! I am not seeing anything that is a steal of a deal for pizza topping this week, but we could easily make a buffalo chicken pizza with the left over chicken again. I am telling you, whole chickens are the way to go!
There you have it fellow readers! As always, menu plans are just plans and sometimes they change! But having a plan in place reduces the temptation to run to Subway for a last minute supper and homemade pizza beats ordering it to go!
I am really hoping to develop this idea of menu planning and getting the most for my dollar. Feel free to share your thoughts\ideas!
I am tossing around the idea of starting a new blog that will contain posts like these and general updates on our life for our friends\family who like to stay in touch and up to date on what is going on in life! Not sure if I will start it before or after baby, but we shall see! Stay tuned!
