Our food budget was recently slashed by more than half. Before Bubee and Little Lady were born, I use to cook on one day for a whole month and spend about $150 on dinners. I decided to try this again and see if it was possible to feed my family of 5 the same way... Praise God: I can still feed all 5 of us for $10/ day (That's Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snacks). If you're doing the math that's a FULL month of meals for 5 people for $300. While I will share this month's menu with you here, I also want to give you all the tips I've used over the years so you can build your own menu at any time.
1. Start with what you've got. I know this seams obvious, but when you first get started you want to use what you have to make meals. Build a menu around what's in your pantry. Have a few cans of Cream of Mushroom? Use them! Got a frozen lasagna or pizza in the freezer? That's a whole meal you don't have to plan! After a few months of monthly cooking you won't have too much 'left over', but every little bit helps. ;)
2. Shop the Sales! Each month I build my menu around what's on sale: especially the meats!
3. Have Breakfast and/or Pizza each week. Each week one of our dinners is Frozen Pizza or Breakfast. That can be pancakes, omelets, or even cereal. The kids really like this and it really does save a lot.
4. Plan to Spend one FULL Day Cooking. This may seam overwhelming, but it's totally worth it. You save so much by buying in bulk. There is SO much less waste. And best of all: you don't really have to do any food prep the rest of the month.
5. Plan, Plan, Plan... But Remain Flexible. Start with a calendar and mark any dates you'll be gone. This month my family and I had 2 birthdays and a wedding that I knew we'd be eating elsewhere. Also try to note any night you may be busy and need a quick cooker, grab and go dinner, or maybe something the spouse can handle on their own. ;) Then plan around these activities however, remain flexible: you never know when plans will change, meals don't work or (as I experienced this week) your child grabs the wrong meal out of the freezer to thaw.
6. Plan Meals that use Similar Ingredients. No you don't want to have Tacos every night, but if you find a good deal on ground beef and diced tomatoes try having Tacos, Spaghetti, Chili, and Hamburger Soup. All meals are different, but you can buy a huge can of diced tomatoes and ground beef to divide between the recipes. All Recipes has a great search that you can use to look up recipes by multiple ingredients.
7. Keep Notes. Did Tommy not like the Tacos because they were too spicy? Note on your recipe to use a mild salsa next time. Cooking for a full month you don't always remember from cooking date to cooking date how you want to tweak a recipe.
8. Cook Every Meal Twice. When I'm cooking for a month, I'm usually only making a double serving of 12-13 recipes. This way we eat each recipe twice in a month and fill in with pizza and breakfast. Most of the recipes I can double up and then just store in 2 containers for 2 separate meals. Saves time and money.
9. Keep Breakfast and Lunches Simple. Breakfast is usually something simple: Cereal, breakfast bars, or eggs. Lunches are usually leftovers, sandwiches, soup, salads or hot dogs. Keeping breakfast and lunch simple and enjoying dinners together saves us a lot!
Below is our meal plan for this month and all the recipes can be found HERE. As you can see I actually have 34 days planed because we had 2 days (5th and 18th) that we were going to be gone (one for our trip to the Fair and one for our church's Chili Cook-off).
| 1 Pizza | 2 Corn Dog Muffins | 3 Texas Stuffed Burgers | 4 Saucy Stuffed Peppers | 5 FAIR | 6 Seven Layer Tortilla Pie | 7 Breakfast |
| 8 Pizza | 9 Leftovers | 10 Oven Chicken Fingers | 11 Four Cheese Lasagna | 12 Oven Omelet | 13 Cheddar Beef Enchiladas | 14 Breakfast |
| 15 Chicken and Dumplings | 16 Leftovers | 17 Corn Dog Muffins | 18 CHILI COOK-OFF | 19 American Shepard's Pie | 20 Seven Layer Tortilla Pie | 21 Breakfast |
| 22 Cheesy Vegetable Chowder | 23 Leftovers | 24 Oven Chicken Fingers | 25 Four Cheese Lasagna | 26 Oven Omelet | 27 Cheddar Beef Enchiladas | 28 Breakfast |
| 29 Chicken Dumplings | 30 Leftovers | 31 Cheesy Vegetable Chowder | 32 Saucy Stuffed Peppers | 33 Texas Stuffed Burgers | 34 American Shepard's Pie |
The first 2 days are always something simple (Remember I just finished spending ALL day in the kitchen. I prefer to have something simple to serve.) Our plan is ALMOST a week plan that is doubled up. It's just tweaked to fit our schedule. We have breakfast the same day each week because that is date night (When either my husband or I take Rosey Posey out for some quality time without siblings).
Day one: PLAN. Search sales to help you decide what ingredients to use. Search recipes that fit those ingredients. Search you schedule to make the best meal plan for your family.
Day two: SHOP. To get the best deals you will probably need to go to several stores. It usually takes me 4-6 hours to do ALL my shopping. You will be doing a lot of math to make sure the bulk packaging is really a deal and figuring out just how many cups of shredded cheese are in that 42oz bag.
Day three: PREP. I try to plan which recipes to fix first by what equipment and ingredients they use. Most recipes store best in Ziploc bags or casserole dishes (wrapped with aluminum foil and plastic wrap).
Day four through thirty: THAW AND COOK. Most of the recipes I prepare are like pulling a Stoufer's Family Meal out of the freezer and cooking it or putting the Ziploc bag full of prepped veggies and ingredients into the crock pot: SIMPLE!
By following this plan I have spent less than $300 on groceries this month and feed all 5 of us easily! Other than a weekly trip to get milk, eggs, and bread, I only have to shop once a month. I love how much time and money I've saved.
How have you saved on your grocery bill? Have you ever cooked for a whole month? What did you find were the benefits and troubles?
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