Meal Planning Made Easy

It's no fun trying to decide what to make for dinner every night. Planning your meals ahead of time often saves you time as well as money.

There are many different ways to plan your meals. How you plan yours depends on how much time you want to spend now to save yourself time later.

I plan my meals once a week. Because I have limited refrigerator/freezer space and a small family to feed (3), this plan seems to work best for me. I only go to the grocery store once a week. When I'm getting ready to go to the store, I sit down and starting planning my menu for the next week.

This is a good time to go through this week's grocery ads to see what's on sale this week. I also take this time to clean out my refrigerator to see what needs thrown away and what can be re-used as leftovers in the next couple of days. Cleaning out your refrigerator weekly is crucial in avoiding wasting food that could still be used to make a perfectly good meal.

So after I've cleaned out the refrigerator and scanned the grocery store ads, I start my shopping list. I try to plan around what I already have in the freezer. For example, if I know I have a pound of hamburger in the freezer and I know I have spaghetti noodles on hand, then I just need to put spaghetti sauce on my list in order to have spaghetti for dinner one night.

I've also found that often we don't need as much meat in our meals as you might think. For our family of three, a pound of hamburger can be used for both spaghetti and tacos. If I cook the hamburger all at once, I can just put half of it in the refrigerator for the next meal (a big time savings!). If I already have taco shells on hand all I need is to make sure that the sour cream I have in the refrigerator is still good and put lettuce and tomatoes on my shopping list.

You should always stock up on meat when it's on sale. If you do you'll find that some weeks you'll end up buying almost no meat at all, if any. I also stock up on items like jars of spaghetti sauce when they're on sale. Then I'll always have a quick dinner ready on a moment's notice if I already have hamburger (also bought on sale) and spaghetti noodles on hand.

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