A few questions came up regarding my first post "Organic on a Budget" that prompted me to write this one and possibly another coming soon!
My previous post provided a few tips on how I look for ways to purchase organic meat while staying on a tight budget. Some of the best tips I've seen for how to save lots of money on your groceries is to PLAN YOUR MEALS! Seriously, this is a great way to stick to a budget.
Raise your hand if you've heard about Meal Planning? It's all over Pinterest! Now here's the reality to meal planning: it's very very time consuming until you get the hang of it. So here are some tips:
Use a Meal Planner
I found a really simple organizer/template for meal planning by Googling it but here is a wonderful resource for seven day, two-week, one month meal planning templates and grocery list templates. They are FREE and PRINTABLE! I would suggest finding a template or creating a template that will work for you.
Take Inventory
Look in your cupboards, refrigerator freezer, and spice racks/drawers. You need to know what do you already have, that you won't need to buy, when you choose your meals. These are usually staple items like your spices, frozen vegetables, meats, fruits, dry items like beans, rice, chickpeas, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, soups, etc.
Gather Recipes
This is part one of the time-consuming-ness of meal planning. It's so much easier if you can organize your recipes. So when you sit down to plan out your meal for whatever length of time you choose (7-day, 2-weeks, 1-month), you aren't wasting more time flipping through cookbooks, magazines, online going through Pinterest boards and pins, etc. AHHHH! It drives me crazy just thinking about it!
Now for some Pinterest is organized enough, for me I have one board with about 150-200 pins of dessert, breakfast, dinners, slow-cooker recipes, and drink mixes. (Follow me on Pinterest!)
My suggestion is to organize your recipes by how you usually decide your dinners. Do you choose your protein first or is it more by the mode of cooking, like baked, grilled, slow-cooker?
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NOW HERE'S WHERE MEAL-PLANNING TAKES A FORK ;)
You can choose to pick your recipes then go shopping for those items you don't have OR some people like to choose recipes based on what goes on sale at the store. The latter is more for 7-day planning, since sales run a week at a time.
I prefer to choose recipes then shop for the things I need! Though I haven't tried the other way, it may be easier to save money, but I don't care to look through sale ads to decide what I need to buy.
Plan your Meals
Okay so here's the thing, you need to consider what your family's lifestyle and flow is like because someone whose family only gets a short amount of family time together in the evenings, then any meal that takes longer than 45 minutes to prepare and cook is not going to work very well. Also, the more ingredients a recipe has (the more fun IMO) the longer the prep time. Just something to keep in mind.
- Is there a day or two that your family normally eats out or orders in? Schedule that in to your meal plan!
- You want to give yourself a day or two of leftovers. I personally found that when I planned out my meals, some meals lasted that night and some stretched three days.
- Make it easy on yourself. Plan your family favorites! Spaghetti, Chicken & Rice Casserole, Breakfast for dinner, you get the point.
Make your Grocery List
Look at the ingredients for each recipe, what items don't you have already?
- Make a list and organize by store aisle (this takes time at first, but you can ask Customer Service for a map of their store aisles!)
- Look to see which items are on sale or in season; which items you have coupons for (unfortunately coupons are a rarity for the healthy/organic stuff); and which items you can buy in bulk. (Future post on buying bulk/whole foods)
- Can you get any of it at your local Farmer's Market? This is a great place to get fresh, organic, and local meat, produce, and dairy for a decently low price.
Stick to Your Budget!
What is your budget for groceries? I can tell you, if you stick to your grocery list and have tried to find sales/coupons, you will come very close to meeting your budget, you may even have some money left over! It's the other items that get ya, like toothpaste, toilet paper, detergent, etc. (Future post on saving on those other items)
Don't feel like you need to follow your meal plan strictly to what you planned, use it more like a guide that relieves you of that 3 o'clock in the afternoon decision to figure out what the heck you're going to make for dinner, and you realize that you didn't take anything out of the freezer or you just ran out of this or that! I HATE THAT FEELING, DON'T YOU?
If you have a love/hate relationship with your freezer ;) then try to plan for more slow-cooker meals that you can prepare the night before or in the morning. There a lots of recipes where you just throw in frozen ingredients and 8 hours later, VOILA!! My FAV!
Please please share any tips or experience you have Meal Planning!
How do you maintain your diet of organic and non-dairy food while living in an environment where most of the food in the pantry is typical American conventional grocery-store items?
Well the obvious answer would be to just buy your own groceries. And yes that is exactly what you should do, BUT if you are also trying to live on a strict budget, hence why you are living with said person in the first place, it's a bit more of a challenge.
Specifically, we are living with my mother-in-law! I know what?! Living with your hubby's mom has got to be dreadful! So far, a week in, it's not been too bad. I think we are definitely gaining a greater understanding for each other's way in the home and we still aren't trying to step on each other's toes. I realize it's her house, her stuff, and she is gracious enough to allow her son's young family to stay with her until we can afford to move on, but I do not want to compromise my own lifestyle preferences for the convenience of space or money (money to an extent, I mean we are trying to SAVE EVERY PENNY)
I nurse my wee little babay, who is 8 months old this month. She tends to be extra fussy and spits up a lot when I have dairy of any proportion, so I have been dairy-free now for a few months. Easy peasy right? Well yea, sort of, if you don't want to eat out anywhere. I mean you may not realize how much dairy (milk) is an ingredient of until you are trying to avoid it... now I did find this amazing blog that has TONS OF RECIPES where you would use breast milk in place of dairy milk. This is interesting and may cause you to cringe just thinking about drinking breast milk, especially someone else's!
I like this idea, though I don't think my mother-in-law or step-dad-in-law would appreciate not knowing or as I would expect if they knew, not even try it. But I don't blame them! It's only because I was curious what it tasted like that I even took a few sips of my own after I pumped some one morning. It tasted just like cream, with a light and subtle sweetness, definitely a sticky feeling if on your fingers, but I think it's a great use for the stored breast milk if I don't end up donating it. Well that was a tangent huh? :) Unless I get the courage to start using my own breast milk in my meals, I will continue to purchase non-dairy items like rice milk, coconut creamer, Soy-free, Dairy-free Butter, and Almond milk and ice cream. This is where the budget comes into play. It's almost $4.00 for a half gallon of Rice Milk, we use it for our coffee, my husband goes through cereal like he's not eaten a meal in days, and for those recipes that call for milk. So price shopping is necessary for staples like this.
And next, she is used to eating meat purchased straight out of the meat cooler, whatever's on sale. Personally I don't care to eat non-organic meat for my weekly meals I prepare at home. I may not be able to get organic when I go out with friends to dinner at a nice restaurant or stop at Taco Bell while on a road-trip, but those times are few and far between. Especially while I'm nursing, and therefore everything I eat, my babay eats, I'd prefer to keep myself pesticide-, hormone-, antibiotic-, and corn-fed-free 99% of the time. Well I decided to just be the woman my hubby married, I stand up for myself and say what needs to be said, I offered to buy the family's meat as a deal with the grocery-shopping. I mean we are trying to save every penny and buying all of our own groceries, organic meat and all, gets pretty expensive. So we'll see how well this set-up works out for our pocketbook and our health!
Here are a few tips I use when I purchase organic meat:
- Look at the price per lb, anything $3.00/lb or less is a great deal.
- Look for whole chickens and cook it whole in the slow cooker. (I cook mine dry lightly salted and peppered on LOW for about 6-8 hours) You can get at least two meals for a family of four depending on how you prepare your leftovers.
- I find buying the larger portions when on sale are the best bang for your buck. Whether it be a large roast or loin, even a large filet of fish. Divide it into smaller portions when you get home, and freeze the individual dinner portions. Then thaw only what you want to use, leaving the rest for a another day, another meal, while keeping a few extra dollars in your pocket!
So there ya have it! If you have any tips you want to share, let me know! I'd be happy to see what else I can do to save save save!
GREAT NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are finally back in our sweet sweet home state! We are smitten in the Mitten! What a crazy whirlwind of events occurring right now... living in this limbo world of are we or aren't we is finally over! Now we can settle in a bit and let our roots start to take hold.
Our families are beyond excited to have us home and especially now that we have our little babay they can watch grow up, they can now be a part of her memories first-hand. I can't tell you how much that means to me and her daddy. We just couldn't stand the thought of her grandparents not being able to just watch her for a few hours while we go out for a date night or that she wouldn't have a close-bond with her cousins.
So here's the story:
The hubs has been waiting for a call from a school district he applied for back in June, he called last Tuesday, and they still hadn't decided! On Wednesday, a teacher at ANOTHER school quit that day, leaving an immediate opening. The hubs got wind of it and emailed the principal right away. Interviewed Friday and came back with the job! He said they both knew before it was even over that it was just a "perfect match"! This new school is WAY WAY different than what the hubs is used to... A smaller private school academy with a completely different approach to teaching and learning for students of average to above-average intelligence diagnosed with having Autism, Asperger's, and/or ADHD.
My last words to the hubs tonight as he went to bed were...
"Empty Your Cup"
With AN OPEN MIND and a desire to BE CHALLENGED, I think we are on to a whole new beginning in so many ways! Many more posts to look forward to! :)
