Week 1 of the Great Meal Plan - it's a go!

This whole meal planning project has been enormous. I know that when it's all finished I will be a much, much happier person. Until that day (when my originals of everything are all printed out and sorted in a three ring binder), I will be a nutcase. I sat down on Thursday last week, my one day of sanity left between moving into/setting up my new classroom and the official back-to-work date set by my school district, to finish my weekly menus. I had already painstakingly typed up my own versions of recipes found in cookbooks along with the necessary ingredients for my weekly shopping lists for weeks 2, 4, and 1. Why that order? I have no idea. But they were finished and I was ready to type up weeks 3, 5, and 6.

Or so I thought.

My laptop gobbled up my recipes for Week 1 AND Week 4, particularly upsetting because Week 1 included, among no-brainer recipes for spaghetti and hamburgers, a detailed recipe for delicious Pulled Pork and a really long recipe with instructions for making pizza dough!

I was in a tizzy, to say the least. So I did what any logical girl would do. I started over. Now, I have, for the moment, skipped the recipes I know by heart. I will add them back later. But it was imperative that I get my grocery list together so that I could shop on Sunday.  The result was more than incredible.

I made a chart for my recipes that included several columns. One for each of the 3 stores near my home (so I can put aisle numbers in later - helpful when asking my hubby to run to the store for me), one for checking off when I actually have the item in my house at the moment (helpful in not having hubby upset that I bought things we already have), one for when I've put it in my cart at the store, and another for the Sale Price/Location when I have the time to check on those things beforehand. Today, I did not. But I did all of the above today before I ventured out to the store.

Since I had already determined my ingredients list, all that I needed to do was alphabetize and put them into my chart.  On my chart, I left room for a few extra items that we need around the house.

Following the sorting, I printed my list and went to the kitchen to check on what we already have. From my list of 23 ingredients, I only needed to buy 8. EIGHT!!! The hubster and I added 8 more before I left. I highlighted the 8 original items and their blanks so I'd be sure to check them off when I went. Highlighting gave me greater focus.

While there, I cut down greatly on impulse buys and focused instead on items on the list or items that would easily supplement our planned meals. I picked up some Capri Suns for our lunches this week and some peaches for our snacks. This means we're healthier and hopefully happier.

I also managed to cut down our grocery bill from $125 to $67 by buying the items I needed that were on sale instead of buying items just because they were on sale. Buying items just because they were on sale in the past led the V household to throw away items that weren't actually used.

I still haven't told you the BEST part, though! My actual in-store time was 30 minute. That includes having the butcher cut out the bone in my pork shoulder, the wait as the cashier rang up my items, and asking the customer service clerk about whether or not they have a store map/list of items by aisle (I was at Tom Thumb today - they don't have these at my store anymore)!

I am so happy knowing that now I have an entire week's worth of meals ready to go and can't wait to see how much easier my year is going to be now that I have a plan.

Happy eating, everybody!

Meal Planning, Phases 1 and 2 done!

Last (school) year, I didn't eat well. Getting married to a fast-food and TV dinner man kind of messed with my nightly routine of eating something that took a little longer to prepare. In addition, we moved further away from work leaving me exhausted at the end of the day, unwilling (most nights) to venture out to our neighborhood Tom Thumb. Also, being underfed or nourished left me too tired to properly deal with the challenges of teaching a more difficult group of teenagers than the ones by whom I was previously blessed AND it made me crankier than I like being. (By a show of hands, who, honestly, likes being cranky? Not me! Seriously!)
I had to take action. I am a firm believer that if you have a problem you aren't willing to go about solving or at least make an effort toward solving, you revoke your right to complain about it. So I decided that this summer, I'd come up with a 6 week meal plan that would rotate throughout the semester (maybe even the year) so we wouldn't get bored, we'd always be fed, and I'd have only one trip to the grocery store per week, making all of my necessary purchases at one time so I'd be ready to go Monday through Friday!

I broke my project into three distinct phases. Phase One included identifying all of our favorite recipes, asking friends for other recommendations, and typing up the titles of the recipes along with the ingredients I'd need to have on hand.  This was necessary as Phase Two involved comparing recipes for similar, perishable ingredients, matching them up and sorting them into weeks, determining how many times we can get leftovers out of each, and putting them into a sort of calendar. That calendar is below.

Now that the first two phases are complete, I'm onto Phase 3: Recipes and Shopping Lists by Week!

I am in the process of typing up all of the recipes I've collected tweaking them to fit our family of two, and adding the grocery lists beneath all of the recipes. Each recipe gets its own page in the file as does the grocery list. I'll be saving an additional, editable grocery list file which will include columns for where I should get it, extra spaces for other things we need (toothpaste, trash bags, popcorn) and, of course, the ability to cross through it for a week if I'm all set on items.

If I find that I have time or am exceptionally bored in my final days before I go back to school (yeah, right!), I'll make a master list of items I can get for all five weeks that won't go bad.

I know I didn't really leave room for us going out or anything fun. It doesn't happen a ton during the school year according to the way we've been doing things. I'm hoping that it will change this year with the new system and other changes I'm trying to make in my life. But in the event of something special going on or our date night happening (we don't have one set night, especially during high school football season when games are often on Thursday nights), we will not eat the leftovers that night. Maybe they'll be on my much simpler, soon-to-come lunch calendar instead!

Finally, I'd like to say that I am totally inspired by my friends who are going natural and making so many things on their own. I am hoping that once I get into a rhythm of dinner-making, I'll be able to do fantastic, healthier things like make my own jars of diced tomatoes. Until then, I am going to be proud of my accomplishment in planning for five weeks at a time. It has taken a lot of out of me and tested my sanity at times but I think that the rewards will far outweigh the frustrations and the result will be a healthier, happier me (and Mr. V)!