Welcome to Meal Planning

Welcome to my life. This 24/7/365 world that never stops spinning. A balancing act, but I feel like I'm juggling too. None of this is surprising, I'm sure everyone feels this way. But my purpose for this blog is to tell people how I get through it. How I keep the plates spinning. 

My struggle today is with meal planning. Yep, I'm a first-timer. Until today, I was making 3+ trips to the grocery store every week, and flying by the seat of my pants once I got there. Strolling down the aisles, wondering what the bf wanted for dinner. Well, my schedule and my wallet say NO MORE! 

I shouldn't say I'm a virgin meal planner. I'm usually the person my friends turn to on a long weekend camping trip, to feed 20 people and keep it cost effective. I just got back from a road trip to Florida, where $130 fed 6 people quite well for 4 days. So I've done this before, just not for myself. 

Challenge #1: I am a vegan, the bf loves meat and cheese. I definitely don't mind making two separate dinners. I'm used to it. Soooo thankful to have a 4 burner stove with the little warmer spot in the center! Really the biggest difficulty here is scaling down recipes to feed one person! Not an impossible task, though. I currently have about 1 lb. of brisket cooking in my baby crock pot. Ya know, the little dip-sized one? I had to make that purchase after receiving a 9-quart one in a Chinese gift exchange this past Christmas. A 9-quart crock pot does an excellent job of scorching the holy crap out of one chicken breast. My next trip to the grocery store yielded the baby crock for only $10! As long as the crock pot recipe can be halved so that it will fit, and you only need to cook it on low, you're golden.

Challenge #2: I'm looking for recipes that can be scaled down for one, and will still be yummy the next day in the microwave. Ever since the bf's job moved farther than 5 minutes down the road, he's been out to lunch on a daily basis. Now, after 6 months of him being able to come home on lunch break, to a fresh cooked meal, this has hit our wallets pretty hard. $200/month just on lunches. Yikes! So I'm desperately searching for yummy things I can cook for him, that won't be slaughtered by the microwave.

So thanks to Pinterest, I've found some recipes to add to my repertoire, and I have my upcoming week nailed down.

Lunches to include:
-BBQ brisket sandwiches
-Arroz con Pollo
-Homemade Burritos with rice
-Shepherds Pie
...and one day of dining out. I know it's nice to be able to get out of the office sometimes, and one lunch out per week is only $40-50/month. 

Dinners look like:
-Broccoli Beef with rice
-Spaghetti
-Grilled Lemon Pepper Chicken Legs with Broccoli Rice and Cheese
-Kebabs (great for us because he eats all the meat and I get all the veggies!)
-Pork Chops with mashed potatoes (2 pork chops fit beautifully in the baby crock)
-Lasagna Roll Ups
-Chicken Pasta

I sat for a while yesterday, staring at the grocery ads, hoping they would give me some inspiration on what to cook. They helped a little, since chicken legs are $.79/lb today, and broccoli is on super-sale as well. Now that I have my menu for the week, I know exactly what I need, and where to get it cheap! This is all looking much easier now.

 The other lucky thing is, I don't mind shopping at 3 different grocery stores to get all the best deals. I mean, I'm no extreme couponer or anything, but they send out weekly sale ads for a reason, right? My goal for the next two months is to basically cut our monthly average grocery bill in half. Obviously I won't count March, because there is less than a week left. But April and May, I want to get us below $200. Over the last 4 months, we have averaged about $350. This is including a lot of beer and wine, and grilling out extra food for friends that don't always show up. But if I budget and shop properly, we can still do all that. So I'm off to peruse the ads, and get my shopping done!