Please Feed the Animals

We like food in this family. I am actually rather grateful for that fact as I have friends with picky husbands and/or children and that would drive me crazy. (In fact, I have warned Briana to consider how picky a man is when choosing a spouse so she won't try bending over backwards to appease a husband's limited appetite. chuckle) I enjoy cooking, but get bored making the same things over and over and my family is always open to trying my new recipe adventures. I am also lazy enough that the thought of making two (or more!) meals for varied palates doesn't appeal to me. And I'm also impatient and intolerant enough that dealing with picky eaters simply would make me crabby. These weaknesses (boredom, lazyness, impatience and intolerance) are probably my problems, I realize that, but I'm grateful for an adventurous family, nonetheless!

So, to get to the point of this post, I am cooking for seven people now which is a demanding job. I have always tried to "manage my home" in the area of meal planning and grocery shopping, but I'm discovering a need to buckle down and learn more. Just today I purchased the Grocery University resource (which is on sale for less than half price through today!!) and I'm looking forward to having time to learn and implement some of these tips. I saw a great review of this product about a month ago and have been debating investing the time and money to improve my techniques--the sale ended my indecision and procrastination!

This post will highlight my current methods and you can hold me accountable to see what new methods I implement from Grocery University. Something you need to know about us first: we don't buy meat (or at least only very little) at the store. As a matter of fact, we currently have two freezers full of beef, pork, and chicken which were all raised on our own little hobby farm (and may I add this is a very good feeling?!). This affects two areas: 1) we eat a wide variety of meats/cuts of meat and 2) our grocery budget doesn't extend to the purchase of meat (instead we have a separate budget category to cover feed and processing expenses).

When I sit down to make a meal plan, I have developed a few strategies and tools. First, I always start supper and have yummy smells wafting through the house. This has proven beneficial as it makes everyone hungry. In the past, I got frustrated that I had to come up with all the meals myself. By manipulating, er, wisely applying my family's hunger pangs, I get lots of suggestions for meals that appeal to everyone.

Secondly, I have created a list of "Food Ideas" which is divided by cuts of meat and has a list of recipes I frequently make with that type of meat. It's not terribly fancy, but it works nicely to get my brain working. This is useful as I can consider the cuts of meat I have available at the time. For example, we frequently have pounds and pounds of hamburger in the freezer. Hamburger bores me. No matter what I do to it, it tastes like hamburger. But my handy dandy sheet lists 27 different things to do with hamburger.
Thirdly, I collect three or four cookbooks (or cooking magazines--Taste of Home is my favorite) and spread them all over the table. Now that Briana is older, I hand her one or two of them to browse through and see if anything looks good and fun to try. This adds a little variety to our menu and allows me to experiment in the kitchen.

I am not a strict menu planner--I don't figure out what we're having for lunch on Monday and supper on Thursday and so forth. Instead, I make a general list of meals to have within a certain amount of time. I've done this different ways--sometimes meals for a week, sometimes meals for a month, other times I organize by meat for a month (all the chicken meals in one column/list, all the beef meals in another, etc.) Recently I have started planning for five weeks at a time. I found weekly planning to go by too quickly, and monthly planning was nice, but the "new month" always seemed to catch me off guard so I would have a week of chaos before I sat down and made a plan for the current month. Five weeks at a time is working much better for me as it rarely coordinates with the flip of a calendar.

I wish I was some guru with charts and computer graphics, but I'm not. Simple seems to work best for me, so here is an example of my five-week meal planning chart. The first column lists the date of the week, the second column is where I can list ideas for side dishes, the third column has room for dessert ideas (I typically make two desserts per week), and the fourth column is for lunch ideas. We used to mainly clean up leftovers for lunch, but Destry is a garbage disposal these days and we very rarely have leftovers. We got tired of frozen pizza and PB&J for lunch when I didn't make a lunch plan and had no leftovers, so now I plan at least 3-4 lunches per week. Next is a column in which I list items specific to a recipe that I need to add to my "usual" shopping list--such as green peppers for fajitas or "taco fixings" or shrimp for jambalaya. The last column is for me to make a note of where to find the recipe if it's something from a cookbook or magazine that I don't frequently make. (Yes, this feature was added because I have made a list with a meal on it, then I couldn't find the recipe when it came time to make it!)While I'm planning menus, I also use my permanent shopping list, which is an idea I got from donnayoung. I've adapted her shopping list to our family so as we use the last of something, we mark a need for it on the list. I keep my pantry stocked with many staples. I think this is something that helps me keep the food budget down as I can stock up when there are sales and I don't have to buy things when prices aren't good when I've previously bought several on sale. Living where we do (25 miles from a store with decent prices), I have to plan ahead and buy the ingredients in my every-other-week grocery trip, both for convenience and for good stewardship.
One last tip I've learned in menu planning is the idea of cooking once, eating twice. I try to group things together so I make extra that can be turned into a different meal later. For example, bake a chicken for a meal, and also have chicken noodle soup that week to use the broth and leftover meat. I am sporadic in applying this technique, but find it works best for me to do some extra cooking on Saturday evening to make things easier on myself later in the week. For example, one Saturday evening we were having something with fried hamburger in it for supper. I had Destry fry four pounds of hamburger, used some of it for supper, and had the other as tacos for one meal and spaghetti for another meal throughout the week. I also put two roasts in the oven that night and we had roast for Sunday dinner and used the leftover broth and roast later in the week to make beef and noodles and hot beef sandwiches. It wasn't a lot of extra cooking on Saturday evening, but it really made things easier the next week as that evening of cooking resulted in six meals. This last Saturday I boiled a chicken and we had chicken pesto sandwiches Saturday night, we'll have chicken noodle soup tonight, and we'll use the rest of the chicken in a chicken and rice dish for lunch tomorrow.

Now, per Corin's request, I'll share our planned meals for this week:

ham and beans with cornbread
chicken noodle soup with breadsticks
homemade pizza with fruit and raw veggies
chicken and rice casserole
sloppy joes
hot beef sandwiches
taco ring
spaghetti
baked potato bar

What tips help you with planning meals for your family while staying within the budget?