It’s Menu Planning Month at Kosher on a Budget.
Now, as you know, I am all about saving money through coupons and deals.
But if you only do the coupon/deal piece, you won’t be maximizing your savings.
You have to lay a good foundation for managing your home finances. And menu planning is one of the most important foundational stones.
Even if you NEVER clip a single coupon, menu planning will still save you a huge chunk of change – I’d estimate at least 20% – off your current grocery bill.
But I love menu planning for more than the undeniable money-saving benefits. Planning our meals in advance is also HUGE for Shalom Bayit (loosely translated as “peace in your home”.)
When I make a menu plan, 5 o’clock turns from the witching hour into the winning hour! No more stress, tension, snipping and whining. (Well, maybe there’s a tiny bit of whining still, but much less.)
This month, I will be sharing a number of posts about menu planning, to help those of you who aren’t quite on the menu planning bandwagon climb on aboard.
And if you’re already regularly planning your meals, you might find some new ways to tweak what you do, so that your day can run even more smoothly – and your family can save even more money.
I plan to cover the following topics:
- 4 Ways Menu Planning Saves Money
- How Long Should You Make Your Menu Plan – Weekly vs. Monthly
- Menu Planning for Lunch and Breakfast, Too
- How to Make a Menu Plan Based on the Sales
- Freezer Cooking and Menu Planning
Definitely interested in freezer cooking for dishes that contain vegetables (or are even vegetarian!) that aren’t kugels. The only kosher OAMC or freezer recipes I ever see are kugels, and we’re not big fans. Also, I am only accustomed to using the crockpot for shabbos so I’m used to stuff that cooks for way more than 12 hours. Would be interested to see crockpot recipes that don’t result in burnt mush reminiscent of cholent ;-P
I am also interested in the process people use when they want to base meals around food they already have. For instance, I have rice and polenta and four kinds of canned beans in my cabinet. I only know that if I go looking in my many crowded cabinets. Do you go through your cabinets each time you want to meal plan, or do you keep an inventory list, or what? We are on the kind of budget right now (or trying to be) where we need to use up what we have and buy minimal additional ingredients but I find myself overwhelmed by my cabinets.
Tovah, we reorganized our cabinets recently and got a handle on how much food we actually had in there. A lot, it turned out. (It was also a great opportunity to get rid of stuff that had expired ages and ages ago.) Now we have a Pantry Challenge week once every 6 weeks or so–the idea being to plan our meals based only (or almost only) on what we already have on hand.
Sounds like a wonderful series! I’m a big menu-planning fan, so I’m really looking forward!
We use Google Calendar to do our meal planning (specifically just for meals). I post the recipes inside of the item and this way when I am planning, I can do a search for a specific recipe or ingredient.
I also use http://www.supercook.com that I can put the stuff in my pantry and things that I don’t want included on recipe list. This way I’m not getting anything that has ham in it.
I would love to see “conversion” recipes such as taking the typical chicken/cheese casserole and making it kosher.
Would anybody be willing to share a sample menu schedule?
I would love to see ideas for fish and also vegetarian dishes. Things get a little crazy and I would like to start to get organized more! Also, figuring out what might be good to freeze for the week.
Im new to this blog and so far I am loving it:)
I always want to plan weekly meals and so far it had failed every time. I feel I spent a lot of $$$ at the grocery store being so disorganized. I hope to get some ideas here to try again!:)