Meal Planning

What's for dinner this week? If you do not prepare a meal plan, you may even be asking yourself what's for dinner as you stop at the local fast food joint one more time. Or perhaps you are even thinking of what you could cook as you scramble through the grocery aisle dropping miscellaneous expensive food items in your cart before rushing home to cook a meal.

Meal planning in advance of shopping can be a major contributor in keeping the grocery bill under control. Meal planning can be completed for a week, a two week period or a month. The meal plans can be based on freezing food ahead in a style similar to Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) or can be based strictly on meals being prepared from items on hand or purchased in the latest grocery trip.

Your plan may cover all meals of the day or may just be for the main dinner meal. Meal plans can be used to incorporate a new diet plan such as a Low Carb meal plan or a Diabetes meal plan. When developing a meal plan, consider items on sale for the week in order to reduce grocery costs.

The menu preparation does not need to be complicated. It can be as simple as developing a box of index cards of the family favorite meals and choosing five for a week night meal plan or seven for a full week plan. Meal planning may seem like a cumbersome chore but once it has been accomplished on a regular basis for a few weeks, the bulk of the work like establishing the needed grocery items or deciding what can freeze ahead has already been done and can be applied to future weeks of plans.

Making a grocery list in conjunction with meal planning reduces shopping time and insures needed items are on hand for preparation.

Low Cost Meals

Link through to the following pages for instructions for low cost casseroles, meats, and side dishes which can be added to your weekly meal plan.

Meat Based Meals:

Meat based meals can either consist of a single cooked piece of meat per person or can incorporate meat into a casserole or as a supplement to a starch for a lower cost meal. If you are asking yourself, what can I cook with hamburger, try these resources for something new:

Vegetable Casseroles:

A vegetable casserole makes use of lower cost vegetables and are exceptionally effective in reducing grocery budgets during the growing season when some of the vegetables can be grown in the home garden. Meals do not have to include meat to be filling. For ideas on answering the question of "what non-meat meal can I serve tonight?" visit these Mahalo pages for answers.

Noodle Meals: Noodles form the basis of many lower cost meals. A pasta recipe may use a meat in conjunction with the noodle or may concentrate on the sauce instead. If you need new ideas on how to serve another pasta dish without sending your family over the edge, check out these ideas: