Meal Planning for Our 30 Day Challenge

 My sweet 12 year old daughter and I went shopping today for our last minute shopping before our 30 day challenge begins tomorrow. While driving, she helped me to finish up the dinner menu for the month. This was a little challenging as I usually do not do an entire month of meals at a time.

We decided to make things simpler we would have a breakfast menu that consisted of having the same thing every Mon, same thing every Tues, etc. We put oatmeal on the menu a few days a week as it is cheap and our family loves it. I do vary the taste on occasion by putting freeze dried fruit and sometimes pureed frozen fruit in it.

As for dinners, a few years ago I made a folder with a list of 25 dinner recipes in it, all vegetarian of course (SO much cheaper). With each recipe is a list of the ingredients needed for the recipe. We make a 2 week menu up and shop according to the ingredient list. I know some people may say, "What a pain." or "Who has time to do that?". Well, let me tell you that the 10-15 minutes it takes to prepare the menu it saves me a lot of time, money, and frustration on figuring out what to buy, what to make 15 minutes before dinner should be on the table, and it also helps to avoid the pitfall of impulse buying.

This is a sample of one of the pages in my family recipe book.

I plan on doing a post in the near future with a list of 20 things you can do to cut your grocery bill drastically!