Menu Planning and Shopping Lists

We are having leftovers for dinner, not much to say or post about that, so I figured y'all might like to know how I menu plan and take care of my shopping list. I am a huge planner. I hate not having a plan, no, hate is an understatement, I LOATHE not having a plan. Dinners are no exception. I usually menu plan on Thursdays and shop on Fridays because that is what works for our one car family right now. Once the Hubby is done with school and has a real job, that is liable to change, but for now, it works.

My budget is about $100 a week. It is all SNAP benefits. We are super blessed to have such a seemingly large budget after living on $25 a week when there were just three of us. I am grateful every day that we can feed our boys healthy food and not have to worry about where our meals are going to come from. I'm also grateful that one day I will be able to feed them healthy food without needing government assistance. Anyway, not that I am off that tangent, let's get back to the good stuff. I keep my latest grocery receipt so I know exactly how much I have left for the month and that helps me make a meal plan that keeps me on budget.

As you can see by my super fancy dinner board, I am all about the latest technology. In all seriousness though, I've had this white board since high school and it always serves me well. I like being able to check what we are planning on having as easily as walking into my kitchen. It also helps keep the Hubby informed which reduces "what's for dinner?" Now I only hear it from the almost 4 year old, aka, the Bean. We do have a sort of theme for a few nights a week. Fatty friday, Seafood Saturday, Slow-cooker Sunday, and Meatless Monday. I also try and include breakfast for dinner once a week because it usually goes over well with the picky littles.

I have a plethora of cookbooks. My favorites are definitely Budget Bytes and my flowery binder full of magazine pages and printed recipes. Seriously, if I had a dollar for each time I have told people about how much I love Budget Bytes, I would be rolling in lot of money. Sadly, I am not getting paid, but I will keep sending people there anyway. I use her recipes frequently and have not disliked one yet.

But of course, my favorite menu planning resource is my Pinterest. I love Pinterest. Organization and delicious food all in one place? Oh yes! It can be hit and miss sometimes, but I almost always go to my food boards first when it comes to menu planning.

Before I start, I always ask the Hubby what he wants for meals. Sometimes he has ideas, sometimes not. He is a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but thankfully he will eat just about anything I put in front of him. Once I get, or don't get, ideas from him, I get to looking for recipes. I check what I have on hand and try and make recipes that can use what we have in the chest freezer and pantry. I can't pass up a good meat sale, so I usually have meat portioned and frozen already. Once I settle on proteins, I head to Pinterest and my cookbooks. I jot down my ideas on whatever scrap paper is around and then transfer it to my super fancy whiteboard.

Once I know what we are eating, I go meal by meal and find out what I need to buy. I use the Wegmans app to make my shopping list because it sets everything up by aisle. It is awesome. It also shows the price per item and rough total. Huge blessing! Once all my other weekly staples are on the list, I double check it and I am set to go shopping the next day. So, if you've made it this far, bravo! This the end of my novel about menu planning and shopping lists.