Successful meal planning is not difficult but is vitally important for keeping you and your family well fed and healthy. Planning meals for the coming week saves time and money. It is important to go food shopping only once a week — with a list. Going every day or every other day causes you to spend more money than necessary. It also wastes time you could be spending with your family. Avoid shopping after work when you are so starving you want to buy-and eat–everything in sight. Also, you are more likely to eat unhealthy highly processed foods. Planning for the week ahead will make mealtime much easier and you are more likely to choose healthier options.
When planning a meal, go through the sale flier of your grocery store to see what items are on sale. This will help reduce your overall grocery bill. Note which items you normally eat during the week. For instance, if you always have pork tenderloin, notice if that is on sale or if some other pork you like is on sale. Remember that the store will also have in-store only sales that are not featured in the flier. These sales are sometimes related to what the store advertises in their weekly circular.
Once you have done this, search for recipes that have the sale items as the main ingredient. The best way to save on money is to not make complicated meals with a lot of ingredients that you have never heard of before. This will cause you to have a lot of leftover ingredients that will spoil. When you want to try something new, only choose one or two new food items. This will keep you from spending money on foods that will eventually go bad.
When searching for meals always keep in mind the plate method–fill half your plate with vegetables, a quarter with protein, and the last quarter with a complex carbohydrate/starch. Using the plate method can make meal planning simple. For example, a possible dinner could be a grilled chicken breast, ½ cup of brown rice with toasted almonds, and a steamed vegetable such as broccoli.
Once you have your desired recipes, make a grocery list. Note which items are on sale, and how much you are required to buy for your recipes. This is an extremely important step; not having a list with these specifics will cause you to buy more food than necessary. Without a list, you could forget what you really wanted to buy or get a bunch of unrelated items.
Once you have done your shopping for the week, plan out which recipe you will make on what day of the week. For example, you plan to make the chicken breast dish on a Monday. This type of planning makes the rest of the week run smoothly, reduce your stress level and you can feel good about serving healthy meals to your family.
Source:
E-How, How to Build a Weekly Meal Plan on a Budget, http://www.ehow.com/how_4501880_build-weekly-meal-plan-budget.html, Accessed on June 14th, 2009
