Time to Plan

It's nearing the end of the month. Do you know what that means? It means that it is time for me to sit down and figure out my menu for next month.

Groceries are expensive, and Jereme thinks that we need to keep our grocery budget way under what I think we need to keep it at. However, I totally understand the need for a budget...so I do what I can to keep our grocery bill as low as possible. I started about a year ago to make a grocery list before I went to the store, and did my best to shop only from that list. Yeah...that didn't work so well. So then I started making a menu 2 weeks at a time, making a shopping list from that menu, and ONLY buying what I needed to make what was on the menu. That helped...but then I decided about 3 months ago to try it a month at a time instead of 2 weeks. So, I started making my menus for the entire next month and I've started only buying what I need to make those meals. It's cut my grocery budget by about a third. When I say a third, I mean a third lower than when I was making my menus for 2 weeks at a time. It's amazing how much cheaper it is to shop for an entire month than one or two weeks! Of course, I do most of my shopping at Target and Sam's Club...but if I watch the ads the week I make my menu I can cut my bill even more. I love Sam's Club because to keep my budget low I make many things more than once a month (or similar things--i.e. chicken noodle soup, beef vegetable soup, and stew all take lots of the same ingredients) and I can buy lots of things in bulk. Obviously, there are things a person cannot buy in bulk or a month ahead because they will spoil, but I do my best to get what I can all at once. I've noticed that not only are soups cheap and easy to make, they go a ways, so I can either make two meals out of them as soup alone, or throw dumplings into them or make stew out of them for day two.

The hardest part of cooking for me is deciding what to make, so making a menu takes quite a bit of my time. I love to cook, and I love to try new things (although that's not always budget friendly), but I really have a difficult time deciding what to cook and/or put on the menu. So, after I put in the time once a month, the rest of the time is so easy. I love being able to go to the fridge in the morning and look at the huge calendar page I have on the front of it, and knowing what is for supper that night.