Now I've done it – meal planning.

I recently read a book entitled Family Feasts for $75 a Week by Mary Ostyn (a homeschooling mom).  This has been my favorite book on cooking for a family in general, but specifically budget cooking.  

I know what you mean about feeling like all you do is feed people. One thing I have found that helps me is anytime I make something I can freeze, I double it and freeze some.  This way I always have several meals always on hand to grab when a day is extra busy or someone is sick or whatever.  I personally don’t like the once a month cooking, because finding a free day to cook all day is hard and stresses me out.

Another thing is I rarely ever cook lunch, because I simply cannot cook 3 times a day. Most of the time we eat leftovers for lunch, but I keep sandwich/wrap stuff on hand too.

For breakfast, I make eggs & biscuits, muffins, waffles/pancakes, or oatmeal.  I’ve found that if I stick with a small number of recipes I can keep these things on hand and they are quick to make because I know these recipes pretty by heart now.  Plus, I can make these things from scratch cheaper and healthier.  I don’t cook every morning as I make extras when I make muffins or pancakes/waffles. I also keep a couple of boxes of cereal on hand.

And the most recent change we’ve done is cutoff pretty much all snacking.  My boys fussed for a about a week, but it’s been totally worth it.  They can have a piece of fruit or raisins in the afternoon, but that’s the only snack unless I know we will be eating dinner late or something like that.  They eat so much better now at all their meals and don’t complain about being hungry any longer.  I also am not getting out snacks or cleaning up from snacks anymore.

Hope this helps! 🙂

Here are the things that, when I do them , help things go better:

1. Have a basic menu plan based on our weekly schedule (for instance, Wednesday night is church – that would be sandwiches, Sunday is crockpot, etc.)
2. Make one meal for us and one for the freezer whenever I can.
3. In my morning routine it says, ‘Think about meals for today.’
4. Do as much food prep as I can upon arriving home from the store or over the weekend (chopping veggies, making patties, that sort of thing).
5. The children know they can get a piece of fruit or a veggie without asking in the morning – everything else takes permission, also having a planned snack in the afternoon helps to keep everyone from making something different. When permission is given for someone to make themselves something different I tell them that they must make the kitchen look like they weren’t even there. Plus, they also know that if a smaller person sees them they will have to clean up after them too, so they have learned to be discreet.
6. Keep a stock of paper plates far from the kitchen for rough days. Far from the kitchen is important or we would use them entirely too much.
7. Having a plan for the leftovers keeps us from dragging everything out of the fridge and having a total smorgasbord at mid-day.
8. I used to have, and I’m looking for some microwaveable plates that we can fill and make our own tv dinner sort of thing. What we had were a couple of Ziplock plates with lids. They were sturdy blue plastic and I cannot find them anymore. They were wonderful to send with dh and I thought a stack of those would be very helpful because then we’d have the leftovers without all the dishes that go with it.
9. I’m sure there are other things, but I seriously do have to go think about meals for today!

This is always a fun topic; I love new ideas.

Blessings,

Cindy

LOL.  Oh, a fun topic.  I have all boys, they all eat like teenagers, even though the youngest isn’t one yet, and the only thing that saves me is that there are only 3 of them.  🙂 

I have tried once-a-month cooking so many times.  I love having all the meals, but I sure do hate the days to put them all up!  Also we get tired of only having, say, 5 or 6 different meals in the freezer.  We’ve done some other things that do make my life easier, though. 

1.  One is having Designated Days.  This really simplifies my meal planning.  Mondays here is Italian night.  Tuesdays are Slow Cooker meals.  Wednesdays are sandwiches.  Thursdays are Mexican.  Etc.  I do fiddle with the schedule if we get bored, but this makes my life so much simpler.  I keep a folder in a binder full of recipes for each night.  When I plan meals, I just pull out one recipe from each folder and voila!  Meals planned. 

2.  I don’t prepare ALL my meals at once all the time anymore, but I do a lot of the “big stuff” ahead of time.  For example, when hamburger or chicken breasts go on sale, I pull out all my crockpots and cook up ALL that meat at once, then package it in meal-sized baggies and freeze it.  I do the same with broth.  I NEVER make an easily-freezable item for just one meal.  If I need 2 cups of rice for a meal, it’s just as easy to get out a Dutch oven and make a big potful of rice instead of 2 cups.  I baggie the rest and freeze.  If I make ONE pan of lasagna, it’s just as easy to make up another one and stick it in the freezer.  Think Ahead is my motto.  If I can use it later, then I make up a bunch.  I don’t eat as much meat as the others, so every so often I make fajitas.  I make up a huge panful of onions, mushrooms, peppers and whatever else veggie I have on hand, then I freeze the reat in little baggies and use it in my own meals to cut down on the meat. 

3.  I keep “mixes” in the pantry for often-used items, like muffins, cornbread, or fruit crisp topping.  I have a big tupperware container full of the dry ingredients so all I need to do  is measure out a few cups, add the liquid ingredients, and I’m in business. 

4.  TEACH YOUR KIDS HOW TO MAKE SNACKS.  OK.  This one is really important.  🙂  When the Teen Bottomless Pit years arrived, at first I just cooked morning til night.  Then I discovered that HE could make muffins or granola as easily as I could.  So.  I taught HIM how to do it.  Now he says “I’m hungry and there’s no granola” and I just smile and point at the oats bin.  🙂 

5.  Keeping a pantry full of staples at all times is really key for me.  I have to go to the store for milk a lot (one of my dreams one day is to have a refrigerator dedicated only to milk so I only have to go once a week or so!) since my kids guzzle milk like crazy.  But for everything else, I plan two weeks ahead and only go to the grocery store once every two weeks.  That saves a LOT of time.  I have a list of what ought to be in the pantry and we keep those things around ALL the time, making notes to replenish as needed at my regularly scheduled stops.  I also have a lot of food in bulk.  I never have to worry about running out of flour or beans or rice or oats, as I have a basement full of big plastic pails of food. 

If you are wanting to get into a plan, and also be eating healthier, there is a free book from a wonderful woman.  Have a look and see what you think.  There are meal plans for 13 weeks including shopping lists and recipies.  There are also recipies for extra things you can make to save money.  (Like making your own yougurt, or your own buttermilk.)

I wish I could say we are using it…  it was just too big a change for my family, although I do want to try again.  It was a huge relief to me not to have to worry about what I would be making for supper.

In the back of A Charlotte Mason Education there is a book list and there I learned about Deborah Taylor-Hough’s book, Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month. I’m going to pick this up at the library this afternoon. I used to cook in batches on Saturday or Sunday for the upcoming week and that made life so much easier….for one reason or another I let that go. I even did it when I was pregnant with both my kids in anticipation of those frazzled early days with a newborn at home. The idea of spending several hours in the kitchen one day cooking up meals that last for a month makes more sense to me than stressing over trying to figure out what to cook everyday and then scrambling in the kitchen daily or running to the story several times a week because you didn’t plan ahead. This concept of cooking ahead and freezing IMO keeps you organized and saves time. And now that my son has taken an interest in cooking, this will be a great way to get him involved.

krw