@Damita, I think it’s a matter of MAKING it work. No slacking. Just grocery shopping along seems to have been a bit cheaper by sticking to a plan.

@Carrie, thank you for your article! It really helped us in creating a meal plan and we even purchased a few dessert and breakfast items as well to round things out.

@Lisa Marie, how do you figure out WHAT to make during the week?

@Cheryl, Keith has been doing a lot more of our food shopping at the WalMart SuperCenter too, he says the prices are really good, we also do some shopping at Aldi. What drives me crazy with WalMart is they don’t have a food sales flyer (that I’m aware of).

@Noelove, our biggest issue is what to make, sometimes we have the groceries for one or two different meals but they don’t sound appealing at all for any of us so we end up getting take-out. How do you make baked brown rice?

Also as a general question, do any of you have a favorite meal you use your slow cooker for?

I then figure out exactly how much they eat, for one meal and buy accordingly. Take a bell pepper. I’ll buy the tri colored ones and use them twice during the week, once sliced and sauteed for dinner with quesadillas, and then the next day or day after sauteed for breakfast burritos.

I’ll also make a big batch of baked brown rice and measure out 1/4 of a cup with each meal. The baked brown rice can last up to a week.

I try to achieve my variety in form, so I usually end up with a salad night, a wrap or quesadilla night, a pizza, a pasta dish (which gets eaten 2 nights), and a meat-centered meal (which also gets eaten 2 nights). Note that the 2 night meals don’t get served 2 nights in a row — I put a 1 night meal like salad or pizza in between.

I have my recipe binder organized so that meat recipes are together, vegetarian recipes are together, and so on, which speeds up the process a bit. I tend to pick the meat meal first and then see if it needs ingredients (like a particular cheese or veg) that might not get fully used in that recipe, and then I keep those items in mind when I’m picking the other recipes for the week.

When I’m doing the process, I also pull potential recipes for the following week, although I don’t always use them right away.

It’s not a perfect system, since there’s a lot of flipping through the binder and scanning recipes, but I haven’t come up with a better system yet. :-)

Usually I start the meal planning on a Sunday for the week ahead. I write it out on a dry eraser board so that everyone knows what’s for dinner that night. Then I make my shopping list on my phone. I usually do it according to aisle. Like baking, produce, etc. So this way here I don’t walk all around the market looking for this and then back to the other side for that. It’s easier and less time consuming that way.

I also try to stick to a budget and try really hard not to get what’s not on the list. I like to stick to the list. Doing so usually means I don’t go over the budget.
.-= {Lisa Marie´s shared blog entry… St. Louis} =-.