A Womans Blog

Are you looking for ways to squeeze more money out of your paycheck? Is the rising cost of gas and groceries putting a dent in your monthly budget?

For me, feeding a family of five in this economy has been a challenge. I’m stuck between wanting to provide healthy meals and wanting to keep the tab for them at a minimum. But, I’ve found four tips that have really helped me trim the excess fat, if you will, from the cost of it all. In fact, one month I saved $200 from our budget and am finding that I am able to continue saving money through stretching these four tricks as far as I can.

First - Plan A Monthly Menu. It sounds simple and it is, but taking the time to plan ahead has allowed me to save on groceries. No more question on what’s for dinner, no more last minute trips to McDonalds because I ran out of options. No more last minute trips to the store (i.e., more impulse buys) because I knew ahead of time what I was going to need.

I’ve been using menus since the beginning of the year. Honestly, the first month was more work but after a while I worked the kinks out of the process and have gotten it down to 10 minutes or less to plan an entire month of meals. I’ve also found a few tricks along the way to make the planning process more efficient. For example,  plan at least one or two nights a week where you eat the same meal. For us, we have family nights on Friday and splurge on pizza. (More on how we pay less for pizza in a later article).  So, I know that every Friday I have pizza. Saturday for lunch I know we will have a meal of fruit, cheese and bread  and Sunday evening is a simple Sandwich and Soup combo of some sort. While it may sound repetitive, it doesn’t really feel this way. Having a menu has actually expanded my repertoire of dishes I prepare and has forced me into a level of creativity in my cooking. And, having a few standard meals, actually builds a sense of tradition in my family while giving me a break a few times a week with having to come up with something. For fun, I have added an ‘international cuisine’ night. It’s not nearly as fancy as it sounds. On Tuesday evenings, for instance, I plan Chicken Paella one week, Enchiladas the next, Sheperds Pie another and so on. Then, as we eat dinner, we discuss what Ethnicity or Nation we are ‘visiting’ gastronomically. It’s not an intense sociological discussion but it does help, I think, in some way open my small children’s eyes to a greater world outside of themselves.

Having used the menus for 6 months now, I’ve found I can recycle them. Sometimes, I use an entire menu from a previous month. Other times I use parts and modify them slightly. I’ve saved each menu on my hard drive (i.e., January.doc, February.doc, etc.) and am able to recall what we’ve eaten in the past year.

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss a second method that has helped me save money while feeding my family. Until then, here is a link to a sample menu. Note that because of health reasons, any ground meat or sausage used was Turkey - and we use strictly whole wheat products, brown rice, etc.

Part 2 - The List -
Part 3 - Once a Month Cooking

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