Grocery Shopping

I'm starting a new grocery trend and so far 1st week has gone well.  Our family has dwindled back down to the two of us and our fur babies... more on that another time.  So as usual we eat out often and go grocery shopping maybe every 4-6 weeks.  Bad, I know.  So basically you can guess we live off frozen, non-perishable food items.  Produce isn't seen very much and it's unfortunate as this type of lifestyle isn't helping our weight/fertility issues.  So now that I've had a brief time playing "mom", I've learned to appreciate cooking.  I'm taking a small step to help us eat better, and save more money.  Back in my couponing days, I grew fond of a particular site foodonthetable.com  It is a site that matches up things that are on sale at your local grocery store with recipe ideas.  That way, if you enjoy saving a few bucks, you can plan your week's menu accordingly.  Problem was at the time 1) I wasn't much of a food planner 2) I was always on some sort of diet 3) I didn't really cook and 4) I had better things to do.  Now that I've cooked my fair share of dinners, and now that we're trying to pinch pennies until the end of the year, I've decided to change things up a little.  I've been looking at a few blogs about menu planning for both grocery shopping hauls and losing weight and now I think I'm ready for the challenge.  So here's what I've been doing for the past two weeks.

We live pretty close to 3 major grocery store chains (2 of which give us fuel points when we shop there, so these are the stores I prefer to shop at... might as well save money on gas too!)  So I first go to foodonthetable.com and search for my local store's sale items.  I go through the list and jot down any items that we are in need of (including non food items) or that we eat regularly.  Anything else that pops out, looks interesting, or is a really good sale I jot down too.  So I usually end up with a list of about 2 dozen items.  Then I grab the list off the fridge of the things we need to get (regardless of sale) or running low on and I write those items down too.

Next, I search for recipes on the website of foods that I have "extra" of (i.e. can of beans I have sitting around, pack of rice I need to use, the shrimp that needs to be cooked, etc).  Then I match those recipes with any other items I had listed down and... VOILA!  There's dinner!  For instance, I had a can of coconut milk sitting in my pantry, and half a bag of rice... I type in coconut milk and up pops up Thai chicken with basil and coconut milk!  MMMMM.... So then I see that the chicken is on sale and so I highlight it.  On the back of the page I number 1-7 (7 days a week).  Next to #1 I put Thai chicken and rice.  Another example:  I have two cans of navy beans I need to use.  Search pulls up navy bean and ham soup.  Ham is on sale and so is the celery (another ingredient).  List that down on #2.  And so on.  I continue until I fill up 5 lines worth of dinner meals.  Line 6 and 7 is "extra" considering it's just the two of us and we usually eat leftovers one or two days out of the week.  Also, if I'm too tired to cook one day, there's always a spare pizza or frozen pasta dish in the freezer.

Anything left on the list that I haven't paired with any menu item gets crossed off the list.  I usually rewrite this list and organize it a little more according to store aisle and BOOM there's my grocery haul for the week.  So far so good!  I haven't calculated our savings yet as we have just started this trend and when we first went shopping our refrigerator and pantry were almost empty, so it was a big haul.

When we get back from the store and put up all the groceries, I write on the magnetic memo board on our fridge the menu for the week.  I don't like assigning meals to certain days as maybe I'm too tired to cook or I don't feel like that food that day.  Having a list of meals makes it look like a restaurant menu and so I can pick what I want to eat or hubby can pick what he wants to make on the weekend (We have an agreement he cooks on the weekends if I don't offer).

If I am craving anything or I run across something interesting while searching recipes, I'll jot it down and make note for the next week. 

And that's about it.

What about lunch and dinner you ask?  Well, for lunch it's usually leftovers and I cook enough to last for about 3 days (damn these family recipes) or we always stock up on frozen microwave meals (hubby prefers these since there is a plethora of choices and since he doesn't have a fridge at work, the frozen meals keep till it's time for his lunch).  And breakfast?  I eat breakfast on the go, so that means a cup of yogurt, a piece of fruit, a microwave breakfast sandwich, or just plain ole coffee.  So those are always a staple in our home.  Hubby usually does cereal, or leftovers from the night before.  So as you can see, not much planning needed there.  Maybe when the weight loss thing needs to get more serious, that'll change (it always does).

So there you go.  My grocery shopping and menu planning in a nut shell (yeah, right)