Meal Planning

I have had several friends who know how religious I am about meal planning and have asked me to share my process for choosing meals, making grocery lists, budgeting, shopping, etc. So I have decided to put “pen to paper” and share my process. I am sure there are many different ways to do it and lots of great posts out there about how to get it done. But here’s how I do it.

First of all I do a major grocery shopping trip every two weeks. This schedule coincides with my husband pay day. When I shop I go to three different stores: Costco, Trader Joes, and Safeway. I have found there are a few items worth buying in bulk at Costco and we get our gas from there as well so it makes it worth the trip even if I’m only getting a dozen or so things. After shopping these stores for several years now I have also figured out what stores have better deals on certain items. Anyways so back to planning.

Step 1: We make a list of all the none meal meal related items that we are out of or close to running out of. I enlist the help of my hubby and kids since we all like and eat different things. They are able to tell me what they would like more of and what they have run out of.

Step 2: I make a list of 10-12 meals to get us through 2 weeks. Sundays are family dinner night with my folks so that is at least two meals in two weeks that I don’t have to do all the cooking. We might have take out once or twice in those two weeks and sometimes we have left over night. This would bring us to my 10-12 meals.
From all my years of cooking I have probably 20-30 meals in my repertoire. So I consult my list of meal ideas and I also hit good ole Pinterest of course to try and find some inspiration on at least one to two new meals to try. Once I have all my meals picked out its on to…

Step 3: I go back through my list of meals and jot down all the things that I need to purchase for each meal. Here’s a little money saving tip for you. As you’ll see from this weeks meal list I have chicken something more than once on my list. Safeway sells an almost 3lb pack of boneless skinless chicken thighs for a little over $2/lb. I bring the chicken home divide it up for my meals, put it in freezer ziplock bags and freeze it until I need it. I do the same thing for ground beef as well.

Step 4: I open up my handy Just4U Safeway app. What an awesome idea this thing is. I always wanted to be once of those cool couponing people but for whatever reason never took the plunge. But hey Safeway came through and I can do all my couponing through my phone. So I jot down the prices of things if there is something I normally buy at another store to make sure I’m getting the best price.

Step 5: I go through my two lists and mark what I will get from each store. As you can see from my picture I color coded for each store.

Step 6: Now this is where I get a little cray. I make my list for each store and because I have been frequenting these stores for several years now I know where everything in the store is. So I make my list according to the aisles of the store. This helps me stay focused and on track at the store. It saves me time and ensures that I don’t miss anything on my list. It also helps minimize my impulse purchases.
I’m telling you the effort that goes into the meal planning process totally out weighs the stress that would come with opening the fridge at 5 o’clock and not knowing what to cook or not having enough ingredients on hand to make what I want. It also helps cut down on waste and throwing away food that rots in the fridge because it was never cooked. I hope that you can find this helpful. Please feel free to comment and ask questions. I’d love to hear your meal planning process. What tips and tricks do you like to use when meal planning? What are some of your favorite go to meals?