Meal Planning

Meal planning is a huge part of my weekly life. From deciding what to fix from week to week, to using my coupons and different websites to get the best deals at the grocery store. We are a family on a budget and it helps save time and money!! I know of other families that meal plan and enjoy it as much as I do. I have recently been inspired to blog about the meals I plan each week in the hopes that it may help someone else who is living on a budget and trying to save money like we are!
First I will lay out how I meal plan in this blog and our meals for this week, and then each week I will post a blog of meals for that week.

We LOVE pasta, fish, and chicken. In order to try and include these into a meal each week, I came up with a standard plan for every week. This is based on our work/Cary's school schedule so it does change sometimes.

Monday-pasta meal
Tuesday-leftovers (Cary usually closes these nights)
Wednesday-pizza night (always homemade)
Thursday-pb&j with chips and salsa or veggies and dip (Cary has class these nights)
Friday-fish meal
Saturday-chicken meal
Sunday- small group-we all bring an ingredient and fix dinner as part of our small group time.

Like I said, this is just a basic schedule. It just helps me to plan better.

Now for specifics:
Our fish meals consist of a fish recipe*, rice, and veggies. We buy our fish frozen and stock up when it is on sale and I only have to buy it every 2-3 weeks, and sometimes only once a month.

Our chicken meals consist of a chicken recipe*, potatoes, and veggies. We also buy our chicken frozen, but if it is on sale for a really good price, I will buy it fresh and freeze it until I need it.

*when I decided to do this, I went through all of my cookbooks and wrote down, recipe titles and page numbers of pasta, fish, and chicken meals that I thought we would like and I use that as a reference each week to decide what to fix. This will make more sense once I start listing the meals.

As for pizza, I used to buy pizza crust for our homemade pizza, but my mom found a bread machine for me for really cheap, so now I make the crust at home to save more money. We just buy a jar of our favorite pasta sauce, which I only have to do about once a month, shredded moz cheese, and whatever toppings we want. We usually stick to veggies like onions, garlic, tomatoes, and bell peppers most of the time. Every now and then, we will put some chicken sausage on it as well!

We also buy our veggies frozen most of the time and again, when they are on sale, we stock up. We like the California style, which consists of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots.

As for other meats, pork chops, steak, etc., we only buy them when they are on sale, portion them out, and then freeze them. That way, when we want something different, we adjust our meal plan accordingly.

Here is our meal plan for this week

Monday-chili (it was leftover in the freezer and needed to be used)
Tuesday-leftovers from the weekend
Wednesday-steak, baked potato, and veggies (Cary found some steaks on sale last week!)
Thursday-pizza (classes have not started yet, but once they do, this will switch to wed. nights)
Friday-Grilled fish with garlic and herb seasoning, rice, and veggies
Saturday-homemade chicken noodle soup (same as the chili)
Sunday-small group meal

This is just our dinner meals that I plan out. When it comes to lunches, we have grilled cheese and salad, BLT's, pizzadillas, and Cary takes pb&j to work most of the time.

I hope this is helpful and if there are ever any recipes that you want just let me know and I will gladly post them or email them to you!!