Tell me about meal planning websites!?

[heartsy77]

We are under contract for our dream home and I need to cut our grocery bill. We spend a lot of money on groceries; and I need to stop doing that!

I have tried the ez mealz before and after a week I gave up! I see Relish! is one too but I don't know if the recipes will fit my family. My dd and I don't eat pork chop etc. My husband won't eat any seafood or any pasta with Ricotta cheese or cream sauce; he's a meat and potatoes kinda guy!

I have tried sitting down once a week and going through recipes my self but I just don't have the time!

HELP!

 

[Leshaface]

We are under contract for our dream home and I need to cut our grocery bill. We spend a lot of money on groceries; and I need to stop doing that!

I have tried the ez mealz before and after a week I gave up! I see Relish! is one too but I don't know if the recipes will fit my family. My dd and I don't eat pork chop etc. My husband won't eat any seafood or any pasta with Ricotta cheese or cream sauce; he's a meat and potatoes kinda guy!

I have tried sitting down once a week and going through recipes my self but I just don't have the time!

HELP!

I'm with you! It's very difficult to sit down and plan out meals.

What I usually do is 2 or 3 dishes that are tried and true a week, and 3 or 4 new dishes, to keep things exciting.

This is how my paper looks:

Monday - chicken and broc fettucine w/salad
Tuesday - Shrimp Scampi with brown rice and Salad
Wednesday - Buttermilk Pecan Chicken (5 Ingred Fix), Chessy Shells, Green Beans
Thursday - Johnson Family Date Night (once a week my mom takes the whole family out for dinner, no cooking for me! )
Friday - Happy Accident Chicken (Bethenny Frankel), Brown Rice, Veggies
Saturday - Linguini with Bell Peppers (Bethenny Frankel) with Salad
Sunday - Red Wine Braised Short Ribs (5 Ingred Fix), Cream Cheese Mashed Potatoes (le cellier) and aspargus

If I see a recipe in a magazine or on tv, I write down the source of that recipe (i.e. which is why I put 5 ingredient fix or Bethenny in paranethesis so I know where to look for the recipe at)

On the back of the same paper, I write out the grocery store list for this week (including any things for lunch, breakfast, snacks for the week)

And after the week is up, I SAVE this piece of paper. Why? So that whenever I am stumped for a future meal, I can go through ALL my papers that I have accumulated for easy ideas. I need to compile all these papers soon..I have one for EVERY week this year since it was my new years resolution to make and stick to a meal schedule. I've done pretty good so far.

I also have a binder that holds any recipes that i've printed online or photocopied from library cookbooks and I put all of them in here for easy access. Anything new I see (online or cookbook) I make a copy of it and put it in the sleeve in the front of the binder as "New Recipes" to give it a try at some point in the future.

Hope this helps!

 

[bigbabyblues]

We like a lot of the recipes on eatathomecooks.com

 

[Leshaface]

We like a lot of the recipes on eatathomecooks.com

I second this. Love her website!

And allrecipes is awesome too!

 

[jacksmom]

I just signed up for meals by the week, but so far not impressed! Not stuff we would eat! I would not reccomend it!

 

[GottaLuvMickey]

I use MealsMatter.org - I am going to school right now to become a registered dietician and have found that this website is the easiest for meal planning for myself. There are a lot of recipes on it and it also lets you actually put together a full menu. I also use AllRecipes.com to find the recipes, put them in the recipe box feature on that site and then add the name of the recipe into my menu on Meals Matter. All Recipes allows you to put in the ingredients that you want to use and then it searches for matches using those ingredients that you're looking to use.

 

[kimberlym322]

We are under contract for our dream home and I need to cut our grocery bill. We spend a lot of money on groceries; and I need to stop doing that!

I have tried the ez mealz before and after a week I gave up! I see Relish! is one too but I don't know if the recipes will fit my family. My dd and I don't eat pork chop etc. My husband won't eat any seafood or any pasta with Ricotta cheese or cream sauce; he's a meat and potatoes kinda guy!

I have tried sitting down once a week and going through recipes my self but I just don't have the time!

HELP!

First congrats on the contract for your new home.

I would say because you know you need to cut down and you know your food bill is big I would say there are a few things you can do.

1. Tack an invatory of everything you have on hand right now...like what is in the cupboard, frezzer and what spices you have.

2. there are sites to get a list for weekly meal planing. Print some off and start planing your meals for the month. On the weekly planer just put things like roast, potatos, green beans, then on another sheet of paper you will write down what you need for each day to cook. Like the day that you do roast, if you are doing it in a crockpot (i will tell you how I do mine so that it makes scents) you will need the roast, beef onion soup mix, beef base and water, you will need say 10 small-med red potatos, and a can of green beans. Do this for the whole month then you will have your shopping list for each week.

3. Now that you have #1 and #2 done, take the shopping list and the invatory list and see what you don't need at the store. Like say you put that you need beef onion soup mix for the roast and you have 10 boxies in the cupboard then you do not need to buy it.

4. One of the biggest ways that will help you is start buying on coupons. Even if you only get .55 off something that is still .55 you save. If you don't have a coupon then don't buy it.

5. Go's with number 4. Look for sales. If you have #1 and #2 then you will always know what you need and what you have. If say this week they have onion soup mix on sale and this month you have that you will need it for 4 diffrent things, but it is on sale say for 1.00 and BOUNS you have a coupon for 1.00 off 2 and your store will let you use 5 coupons that are the same. So really you would be getting 2 for 1.00--2 X 1.00=2.00-1.00 (coupon)=1.00 for 2 of them. So if you used 5 coupons you would be getting 10 boxies of the soup mix for 5.00. So because you bought them on sale you paid 5.00, BUT you needed 4 any way, AND you got 6 boxies to have on hand if you need them the next month.

6. Go's with #1. There is a site (forget what one) that you can put that you have say chicken and it will give you recipes that include chicken.

7. Look at the libary for recipe books and on line for recipes. There is also a swaping web site that you can go to that do diffrent recipe swaps all the time. That would get you some new ones. You can also do a google search for things like chicken recipes. Also look in mags. there are good ones in there. I found a few that I have tried out of mags and by just doing a google search, some were good and others not so good. But I did try them and it they were good I used them again.

8. I would say sometimes you would just have to sit down and come up with your own recipes. I mean every recipe out there someone had to sit down and say okay lets try chicken stuffed with ham and cheese. And now look people all over the world eats it. You could also stuff it with stove top stuffing also.

9. See if you can buy something in balk that you know you use a lot of. I mean take flour for an example. You use a cup of that a day, so every week you are buying a 5 lb bag or maybe even 2 5 lb bags. Why not look into seeing what it would cost at Sam's, BJ or Coscos for a 25 or 50 lb bag? Say each week you use 5 lbs of flour and that 5 lb bag costs 3.99 at the end of the month you used 20 lbs of flour at a cost of 15.96, but at Sam's you can get a 25 lb bag for say 18.00. Because you got 25 lbs at one shot you paid .72 a pound and not .80, that is .08 in savings on each pound. Look into doing that for things like sugar, flour, spices, even noodles. Also if you use a lot of potatos and onions, look into getting them in a 50 lb bag. I know the place where my father gets them for me the potatos are like 17.00 for 50 lbs. That is awhole lot better then paying 4 or 5.00 for 5 lbs.

10. You also want to factor in a sweet treat to the budget. And don't forget about lunch on the weekends for everyone, and breakfast for everyone each day.

11. Don't be scared to buy the store brand of things. Try the store brand and if you don't like it then you know not to buy it. Most of the time you can't tell them apart. A fast story, my cousin is a name brand snob...when he was 10 they had some off brand of cheerios and he would not eat them because they did not say cheerios they said toasted o's. Well his mom put them in a tuperware container and put the tab off a cheerios box in the container so that you knew they were regular cheerios (in this case toasted o's) and he ate them. So from then on his mom would buy the toasted o's and would not let him see the box and what she was doing. He ate them with her doing that well into his 20's.

Good Luck!!!

 

[SandrA9810]

I love all recipes, it's great for finding new ways of cooking the same ol same ol, and while I can cook a chicken a hundred different ways, I'm stuck on potatoes. Ok, I can mash them, bake them, roast them, but I'm just tired of potatoes in general. So coming up with something new all together is frustrating when trying to complete a meal. Veggies were fairly simple when I was growing up, boiled till soft, a bit of butter and salt. That's how I eat almost any cooked veggie. My bf on the other hand... nope, he hates veggies, except when it's in soup. I can get him to eat anything if it's in a soup. He loves beef stew, chili, jambalaya, no matter how many veggies are tossed into it.

I've been finding other people's blogs on their "year of cooking", one of my favorites is "year of slowcooking".

Most people blog their entire dinner menu, from entree to sides. Which is really nice when trying to find new things to eat. My biggest hang up... finding a really good recipe and then making it a lot. I found a really good bread blog, but I still wind up making the same bread all the time and occasionally I'll make a different one.

Most the time, you'll find people using some of the same ingredients in different stuff. So you're not going to be buying new things for every meal. Like buying tabasco sauce just for one dish, soon enough you'll see it pop up in a few more recipes, just because they use what's from their pantry as well.


You also should look at what you buy most often and see if there's alternatives. Like buying fresh produce in season and then freezing it for later cooking. I do this with onions, celery, spinach, peppers, green beans, peas, and the such. Other things I'll buy with the seasons, and be disappointed when it's out of season. Seasonal cooking is a big money saver, because out of season, you're looking at $3-4 a lb for something that costs 50 cents during the season. Sweet peppers and tomatoes on the vine are so pricey out of season, and so cheap when it's in season.


Check you meat department for clearance. I love Safeway/Tom Thumb for this. As long as you get it home and freeze it, it's good for another 6 months. Other than that, it has to be a really good sale for me to buy meat.

 

[holycow]

You want a great meal planning sight look up

Food Nanny...it is a show on BYU TV She has a GREAT site where you get 2 weeks worth of ideas. You put in what you want to eat...your or hers.

Then it prints up your list! And you get a calendar of the 2 weeks.

Such a great site.