Meal Planning 101: A Guide for the Lost
January 8th, 2010
Today is pizza day and I just put the dough in the oven to rise under the baking light. While the yeast works its magic, I thought I would talk a little bit about meal planning.
Last night I was perusing a selection of frugal cookbooks and all of them hyped meal planning, but none of them actually told readers how to do it. So here’s how to meal plan, according to moi. (Please add your tips, tricks, and techniques in the comments.)
1.List out every recipe you make regularly and that your family likes. Hopefully, you come up with about 14-20 recipes. Here’s my list…
1.Pizza
2.Calzones
3.Steak
4.Italian chicken
5.BBQ chicken
6.BBQ pork
7.Hamburgers
8.Unstuffed cabbage casserole
9.Haulshki (E. European recipe with cabbage, bacon and noodles)
10.Vienerschnitzl with pork chops
11.Kielbasa on the grill
12.Kielbasa in the slow cooker with veggies and kraut
13.Goulash
14.Chicken Soup
15.White Chili with Chicken
16.Red Chili
17.Bean and bacon soup
18.Zuppa Tuscana soup
19.Split pea and ham soup
20.Julia Child’s butter lubed chicken
21.Pepper Steak
22.Meatballs and spaghetti
23.Asian lettuce wrap salad
24.Roast turkey breast w/ veggies
25.Roast chicken w/ veggies
26.Frozen ravioli
27.Frozen cheese tortellini
28.Chicken enchiladas
29.Tacos or taco salad
30.Roast beef with veggies
2.List out recipes you would like to master but haven’t had a chance to try for one reason or another. This step gives you and your family some variety and this is how you’ll discover new family favorites. Here are some I would like to try:
1.Honey spice chicken
2.Chicken Piccata (I keep trying and it just doesn’t want to turn out for me)
3.Lemon chicken
Now between 1&2 you should be able to create a rotational menu. Since I have over 30 recipes, I could, in theory, plan out a month’s worth of meals at one sitting. Typically, however, I only plan out 2 weeks at a time because real life doesn’t respect menu plans and has a way of mixing things up.
For example, last night I overcooked the steak. I found it delicious still, but my husband wouldn’t touch it so he ran out for a quick burger. Life happens and because of that I don’t bother to try and forecast meals too far into the future.
3.Don’t forget to check the sales ads before finalizing any meal plans. If it’s buy-one-get-one chicken week at the grocery store, you would, of course, want to take advantage of those savings.
You can also visit couponmom.com and see what deals they show for your area. Couponmom.com is free and if you have several grocery chain stores in your area, it can be a quick way to find the best deals. It doesn’t work so well for me because, as I mentioned in another post, we only have 1 chain in the area which limits the comparison shopping.
4.So now you have a list of recipes (I hope! If not, time to hit the cookbooks for inspiration) and you know what is on sale right now this very moment at your local grocery store. Between these two facts, create a menu plan that accommodates what you know how to cook well (and what your family will eat) as well as taking into account the lowest available prices on food.
5.This is an optional step, but one that I think is important. Once you have a set repertoire of recipes, it’s time to bulk buy common ingredients and keep them handy in the pantry and freezer. This article on food storage calculation gives a simple formula on how to do this.
6.The other important component of meal planning is ‘feeding the freezer’. I try to take 1-2 servings of all my casseroles right off the top, before serving anyone else, and put them in the freezer. This freezer stash is your new ‘take out’ menu for days you can’t cook or for when illness strikes (don’t forget to freeze some chicken soup!).
Sometimes I even include a meal to make just for the freezer as part of my menu plan.
And that’s it. The core basics of meal planning.
Now please realize it takes time to master meal planning. You are going to make mistakes. Over buy, under buy, pay too much, forget to freeze, forget to thaw, get in a rut and try a new recipe that ends in disaster etc… Learning from your mistakes is what improves your meal planning skills so don’t get too frustrated.
In a way, cheap meals aren’t cheap. They may cost less money, but they tend to take more time. Especially when people are first learning how to cook and shop more frugally. Once you are past the worst of the learning curve, you should see substantial savings and things will run much more smoothly in the kitchen.
Tags: cheap meals, meal planning, meal planning 101 recipes, menu plan
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