I wrote just the other day about getting back into the habit of a weekly dinner menu plan. I started with making a list of our favorite meals, then went from there. But there is more thought that goes into our planning than just, "What sounds good this week?"
With a large family, our grocery bills could be astronomical, but we buy almost all of our groceries on sale, in bulk from Costco and other warehouse type places, or from a produce coop. We buy lots when the prices are good then store the extra in our freezer and cold room. We buy grains like wheat, oatmeal, and brown and white rice in 50lb bags, then bring them home and store them in 5 gallon buckets. We can and freeze fruits and vegetables in the fall. We budget our food money so that when caselot sales come around we can stock up. My husband and I always take these trips together and we fill the back of our van, then bring it home and have the family help date the cans and get them down to the cold room. We only buy meat when it is on sale and then we try to buy more than what is needed for the week, so that we can use it in future meals.
Another way we save money is by buying "real food." In other words, we don't buy much prepackaged, processed food. You pay for that extra packaging and processing and the end result is never as nutritious as the same food that you make yourself with whole food ingredients. For example, we buy potatoes and carrots and onions and stew beef on sale to make our own beef stew, as opposed to buying a can…or 6, which is probably what it would take to fill up our family. We buy oatmeal and chocolate chips, flour and sugar and eggs and make our own cookies that, while still considered a dessert, are still more nutritious than a packaged cookie. I make jokes that one of our oatmeal cookie recipes is healthy enough to eat for breakfast. It is light years more nutritious than much of the ultrasweet "breakfast" cereal on the shelves.
Anyway, back to what I originally wanted to write about.
When I sit down to plan our meals for the week, I first look at the grocery ads for our closest stores, and determine whether or not a trip to Costco will be in my plans for the week. Then I plan our meals based on the sales and based on what is already in my pantry, freezer and cold room. I also decide which sale items are a good enough deal to buy extra for the pantry or freezer. Because we buy lots of "ingredients" on sale throughout the year, our pantry, cold room, and freezer are pretty well stocked with the basics. When I plan, I can count on already having things like tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, peanut butter, tuna, green beans, dried beans, olive oil, a variety of grains, canned fruits, applesauce, condiments, and pasta because they are already in my cold room. I can count on having a variety of meats and whole grains, frozen vegetables, frozen fruits and nuts in my deep freeze.
Shopping and planning this way also gives variety to our meals that my budget couldn't handle if I was just buying groceries one week at a time. The pantry, freezer, and cold room give us many more options at a price we can handle. There is another added benefit. When finances are tight, or unexpected expenses come up during the month…which in our family seems to happen almost every month, we can still manage to eat pretty well, with just buying minimal amounts of produce.
So…buy on sale, store what you can, and then plan your meals around what you already have in the house, and what is on sale that week.
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