A couple of months ago I posted about meal planning and put up a meal plan schedule of what types of meals we made each week. We tried it out to see if we could save us more money by having specific meals on specific days (i.e. Mondays were pasta nights and Fridays were seafood nights). I tried to pick out meals that would make leftovers and that I only needed a few ingredients for since I stock up on staple items with coupons when they are on sale. Most of the time I was able to do this, but I was cooking almost every night and not getting as many leftovers out of the meals. Since school started back up, life has become a little busier these days. I have now figured out a way to get more out of our meals and spend less time in the kitchen. We are still using our meal plan schedule to a degree, but we are not sticking to it as strictly as before.
Now that Fall is FINALLY here, I will start making soup again. We will eat soup periodically throughout the year, but mostly during the fall and winter months, especially since I can make a big batch, freeze some, and have some for leftovers during the week. Here is a "newer" version of our meal plan schedule
Monday- soup leftovers
Tuesday-leftovers from Saturday
Wednesday- Homemade pizza
Thursday- PB&J for Cary and and any remaining leftovers for me
Friday- Soup night
Saturday- Pasta or casserole night
Sunday- Wepod dinner (this is our small group)
I have been doing this meal plan for two weeks now and both weeks I have come in under budget on my grocery shopping! Before that I was either using all of our grocery money or coming in a couple of dollars over budget, which I know doesn't sound like much, but if I did that every week, it would add up pretty quickly.
I feel much better about this meal plan and I know it will save us more in the long run. Once the spring hits I will probably revamp it again to correspond with Cary's class schedule and with spring and summer type meals and I will try to keep cooking only two or three nights a week.
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