Meal Planning

Hey! For the mom's and dads that do meal planning, how do you do it? Do you just plan for a week or do you do a whole month? How do you keep healthy recipes and still come in under budget? We bought healthy a couple of weeks ago and still ended up spending 160. TIA

2 weeks at a time. I plan around sales and what I still have in my pantry/freezer. I buy most of our meat in bulk and portion and freeze.

Quoting A❤T=P+[It's a Girl:" 2 weeks at a time. I plan around sales and what I still have in my pantry/freezer. I buy most of our meat in bulk and portion and freeze."

Nice! I do lover my freezer   I try to buy meat when its discounted and freeze. Do you do a lot of meatless meals? My SO is very picky! I eat just about anything...

I base it on the sales, ads and coupons. I buy bulk chicken and hamburger and put it in freezer bags in family meal size portions. I go week by week but ALWAYS have frozen chicken and hamburger in case I don't get out or something comes up.

I do one week at a time. I go with healthy options. Sometimes we come in under budget and sometimes we end up right at budget.

Quoting 1st Time Mommy-March 8th.:" Nice! I do lover my freezer   I try to buy meat when its discounted and freeze. Do you do a lot of meatless meals? My SO is very picky! I eat just about anything..."

We don't do a lot of meatless, but we don't eat chicken or any poultry, DH has an allergy.

We spend no more than 100$ and we eat pretty healthy, we also buy organic when we can. I meal plan per week, because I find that works best for our family. I try to plan for whatever produce is on sale, and I shop at Aldi and Kroger (Aldi now has a new organic line, so we're getting a lot more organic stuff than what we were getting!)

Quoting sassy chef:" We spend no more than 100$ and we eat pretty healthy, we also buy organic when we can. I meal plan per ... [snip!] ... at Aldi and Kroger (Aldi now has a new organic line, so we're getting a lot more organic stuff than what we were getting!) "

Do you spend 100 a week? I shop at Kroger or on post. But i do love aldi. They actually have some pretty awesome food. I work full time but my SO stays home due to being unemployed. I'm trying to convince him to start couponing but its not going well LOL

Quoting 1st Time Mommy-March 8th.:" Do you spend 100 a week? I shop at Kroger or on post. But i do love aldi. They actually have some pretty ... [snip!] ... time but my SO stays home due to being unemployed. I'm trying to convince him to start couponing but its not going well LOL "

Coupons don't save us a whole lot, we shop mostly store brands anyway.

Quoting A❤T=P+[It's a Girl:" Coupons don't save us a whole lot, we shop mostly store brands anyway."

I do that alot. There only a few things i have to buy name brand..but everything else i dont care. I cant tell the diff between store brand and name brand 99% of the time.

Quoting 1st Time Mommy-March 8th.:" Do you spend 100 a week? I shop at Kroger or on post. But i do love aldi. They actually have some pretty ... [snip!] ... time but my SO stays home due to being unemployed. I'm trying to convince him to start couponing but its not going well LOL "

Right now we're trying to shop for less than 70, which has put a cramp in my style, lol. But yes, 100 every week, I'm usually within pennies of that amount.

Quoting sassy chef:" Right now we're trying to shop for less than 70, which has put a cramp in my style, lol. But yes, 100 every week, I'm usually within pennies of that amount. "

Thats not to bad...Especially since you have a family   Were just trying cut back on spending and get out of debt...and so on and so far so im trying to find ways that i dont go crazy at the store. LOL

I can usually shop on the healthy side for 100.00 a week. Do not give into temptation on things that are "easy" - like bagged salads.I used to buy bagged salads and it really, really adds up! Always buy things like fruit and veggies in it's original form as often as possible - fresh, not bagged or portioned out. A whole head of romaine lettuce will last me an entire week where I can go through 2+ bags of salad a week and it costs 3X the price. Buying a head of fresh broccoli and steaming costs less than even frozen - and don't overbuy. If you plan to have broccoli with 2 meals that week, only buy what the family will actually eat for those two meals, I used to waste a ton of money on overestimating how much I needed.It will take some time to really figure that part out, but it IS a big money saver.

For breakfast, it's always cheap and decently healthy - a bunch of bananas, a carton of eggs, a box of cereal, a loaf of bread and sometimes we get syrup if we want french toast, but I actually make syrup thats pretty good, so thats rare. Less than 10.00 for a weeks worth of breakfast.

I also do things like buy entire chickens and it will last multiple meals. Roast chicken one night, pull off the rest of the meat and use it the next day for quesadillas, soup, caserole.....a whole chicken is cheaper than buying chicken breasts (even though we do buy those, too, sometimes).

Quoting LolaMcKitten:" I can usually shop on the healthy side for 100.00 a week. Do not give into temptation on things that ... [snip!] ... soup, caserole.....a whole chicken is cheaper than buying chicken breasts (even though we do buy those, too, sometimes). "

Holy Crap! Thats amazing! I never thought of buying a whole chicken... I am so impressed by all the women here.   You guys are so thrifty and awesome. I try not to buy bagged salad i like to buy the big bag of romaine. I dont buy fruit precut thats to expensive, someone just thought me a trick to keep cut apples from browning.

Quoting 1st Time Mommy-March 8th.:" Holy Crap! Thats amazing! I never thought of buying a whole chicken... I am so impressed by all the ... [snip!] ... bag of romaine. I dont buy fruit precut thats to expensive, someone just thought me a trick to keep cut apples from browning. "

Oh, share the apple trick! My son will only eat half an apple at a time.

I learned the chicken thing from one of the many,many food blogs I follow. The woman who wrote it went way further and would buy multiple chickens at a time and boil the meat off of it and freeze it to use in meals and while it was WAY cheaper, thats a lot of work for me, so I just modified the idea and I usually buy one whole chicken a week and depending on what meals we make, I can sometimes get 3+ meals from a large chicken that cost me (usually) less than 8.00. I'll do roast chicken, then quesadillas don't take a ton of chicken and neither do casseroles if you beef it up with other things, too. I get less use out of it if I choose to do chicken salad sandwiches or something along those lines where the main focus is chicken.

We've also kind of adopted a more asian philosophy on food - meat as an accent, more for flavoring and then the bulk of the meal is rice, noodles and veggie.