One or two people have expressed curiosity about my monthly meal plan so tonight I figured out how to share it; click the image below and you should get to a Google doc that is big enough to actually read. You'll see that I made several little notes to myself, like a reminder that the Italian sausage I need for one dish is in the freezer (because we had extra when we cooked sausage for pizza). I try to be efficient with my ingredients and this month especially I tried to use up older freezer and pantry stuff when I could.
We are already a bit off what I planned; we have lots of leftover pasta sauce from our annual Tubaphonium Back to School party last night. So we'll eat pasta an extra night or two; might not eat soup from the freezer this next week. No big deal. It's been nice to look at the plan and know that 95% of the ingredients are in the house and I don't have to worry about when to fit in a trip to the store.
On the topic of efficiency/saving money like you were wondering about, Megan, I think the number one way I'll save money by planning and shopping monthly is that I did the big shopping trip at Aldi. So many staples are so much cheaper there but often in the past I haven't gone because I wanted to go one place and get everything I need. But now I know I can get most things at Aldi once a month, then the stuff Aldi doesn't have in our quick trips to the regular store for milk and produce.
If anybody out there wants to try this kind of shopping, I really recommend going to Raising Arrows and reading her posts about monthly shopping. I made my own master grocery list and despite its massive size, I found it easy to use and helpful for making sure I didn't miss anything at the store that we would need during the month.
1 comment:
I find this all very fascinating. So when you make your master grocery list, do you reference the meal plan chart and write down everything you need? Do you know all these recipes by heart, or are you also looking at a bunch of recipes to note what special ingredients you might need for a particular dish? And is it harder to estimate quantities you need when you are going to be using something in multiple dishes? Also--tell me more about cheesy quinoa bites, pleaseandthankyou!
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