Plan A Monthly Dinner Menu to Make Your Nights Easier
Steps to Start A Monthly Dinner Menu: #5 is the most important step
Do you want to start a Monthly Dinner Menu? “What’s for dinner?” I get asked this every day my kids get home from school. The second they walk through the door. I would find myself telling them to whatever you find, leftovers or an all over favorite, some kind of pasta. I would hate thinking of something for dinner. If and when I would think of something, I wouldn’t have everything I would need to make it.
A little over a year ago, I saw a Pinterest post about creating a monthly menu. I thought to myself, that sounds crazy! Who could come up with 30 meals all at once when I could barely think of something for one night. Between the kids schedule and our own schedule I couldn’t imagine being able to plan a whole month of meals and on top of that do one big grocery haul to get every ingredient I would need for each meal.
I jumped right into it though. I started out with basic, go-to meals like spaghetti, nachos, meatloaf. Those of which I still use on a monthly basis because they’re simple and everyone loves them. I would throw lunch meat sandwiches and salads in because those were easy things that I didn’t have to really get anything out in the mornings for. Figuring out enough meals for the whole month was hard. Finding different meals with different kind of meats wasn’t easy. Thinking of things that all 4 of my kiddos would eat was difficult.
After I would come up with about 25 meals, I would go through and make a shopping list of all the things I would need for each meal. Meats, dairy things, potatoes, cheeses, any type of noodle that I would need, down to spices that I would need that I didn’t already have. Before I knew it, I was ready for my big haul!
The very first haul I did, I think I got 90% of my list at Sams Club. I thought it would be less trips, one store and get everything I need in one. I would be close to $400 just in one store and look at my list and realize I still had half my items to get! I was so lost and confused and ready to give it up the first month. I wanted to start this not only to take the guess work out of what’s for dinner, but to hopefully save some money. The first couple months I didn’t feel like I was saving any money but spending more. I want to add though, when I first started out, I was going to Sams with my list in hand and then also spending a good $100-$150 on snacks for the kids and random other things I would find, and a week or two later all the snacks would be gone because 2 teenage kids and a 4-year-old eat a lot!
I had to rethink how I was approaching it. I had to look at different stores. It took a lot of trial and error. A lot of shopping at different stores to figure out how I could save the most and get more for my money, even if that meant making trips to multiple stores, even on separate days.
We’re fortunate to have a discount store that’s a little bit of a drive for us, but we can get a heaping cartful for less than $150. It’s a Mennonite store and you can find almost anything you’re looking for. So now, I start there. I’ll take my list and try to get as much as I can. Canned goods, noodles, sauces, spices, condiments, lunch meat and cheese, any frozen things that I could find. The nice thing about this store is I can get 2 weeks’ worth of snack foods, breakfast and lunches along with my needed items. The most I’ve spent at this discount store might have been $170 but that was with us getting whole boxes of things that were super cheap and I crossed about 75% off of the things on my list.
Do you have any local butcher shops around you? Or any small business shops? I just started getting my meat at a store I never stepped foot in before. I don’t like going into new place, I don’t like trying new stores. I get comfortable in how I do things. I joined this business’ Facebook page and would always see weekly sale posts and would scroll right by it. I happened to be scrolling one day and come upon one of their posts with their weekly deal on meats. One of my big goals was to save us money. When I tell you I saved almost half on a 10lb tube of hamburg, I went from spending around $42-$43 on 10lbs at Sams Club to spending $27-$28. I was mind blown. We get a 10lb tube every month.
Chicken is our most made and eaten meat in our house. It’s our go-to. There’s so many different meals you can make, everyone eats it and it’s healthy depending on how you prepare it. Buying boneless chicken at Sams, I would need 3-4 packages, easily spending $60-$75 on just chicken for one month. Back to the small business, I checked out their sale price on their boneless chicken. $65 for 40lbs! We decided to try it out, brought it home, separated how I would normally separate it for the month and ended up with 16 meals in the freezer! We usually have about 5-7 meals a month that need boneless. We got almost 3 months were of chicken for the price that I was paying for one month!
When it comes to anything that I couldn’t get at the discount store or the small business I would get at Walmart. Mainly because we would need other small things like diapers, wipes, dish soup, laundry detergent and that’s where we shop for those things. And most of the time I’m only left with a small handful of things that I still need for the month. I’ve also taken advantage of the grocery pickup at Walmart where my fiancĂ© can go after work and it saves me a trip.
Things like, produce, milk, eggs, bread or anything that would go bad before we would need it, we pick up that week or he gets it on his way home from our local Dollar Store. About every three weeks I’ll make a trip back to the discount store for snacks or anything that we might have ran out of or unexpectedly needed because having 4 kids you never have anything!
If you’re looking to start a monthly menu and planning one big haul, don’t go to one store. Look around your area, check out different stores. Even if you have to drive a little. Check out stores Facebooks and their sale ads. Try that little shop that you pass daily and go in and see what they got. Don’t settle for the big chain stores if you’re trying to save money. Spread your shopping out through a couple of days because it will be a lot at first. Figure out what works best for you and your family.
Here’s the steps I took to get to 25 meals planned with 2 leftover nights a week, shopped for, separated and froze and planned out on the calendar.
Step 1:
Start your meal planning. Write down what you love to make or something you know everyone will enjoy. Ours is spagetti or goolash, meatloaf, nachos and breakfast bake. Almost every month those ar thrown in the menu somwhere. They’re easy meals when you just don’t feel like cooking, or if you don’t have a lot of time at night and just want to get everyone fed. Meatloaf and breakfast bake you can prepare in the mornings and then just pop it in the oven when you’re ready. I like to try to do one big meal a week like, chicken pot pie, chicken and waffles, fried chicken and homemade macaroni and cheese, roast and potatoes, stuffed chicken with noodles and veggies, lasagna or stuffed shells, we do homemade strombolis and pizza where we get to do it together. We also add in hoagie night, hamburg BBQ, breakfast, BLT sandwich’s, we did fruit waffles one time. You’ll wanna add it left over night at least once a week. We do 2, leftovers or free for all night we call it where the kids can eat whatever they find. That helps get rid of the leftover food instead of just throwing it away. It also helps when you have a busy night or you just don’t feel like cooking.
Step 2:
Start your shopping list. I start with counting how many chicken meals I have, and then hamburger, any sausage, bacon, porkchops and write down how many I’ll need of each. Then I go down my list and write down what each meal will need. How many packs of shredded cheese, how many bags of veggies, the different kinds of pasta and how many spaghetti sauces. What do I need to wait for to buy. Go through your pantry and fridge to see what you already have so you don’t go out and buy more. Use what you already have. Figure out what store makes most sense to get each item, where you can save the most money. I go through my list about 3 or 4 times before I’m ready to shop to make sure I have everything written down.
Step 3:
Planning out your dinners on your calendar. I have kids in sports so our nights can get crazy most weeks. So, I like to write down on the calendar practice times and game times. That way I can plan a dinner that’s either easy to put together or we’ll have leftover night. Figure out what night you have time to make a nice family meal. One that you can enjoy making and sit down as a family. Try to put meals together that you could use the same ingredients for, like salads and hoagies. Meatballs subs one night and spaghetti the next night to use leftover meatballs. That way you’re not wasting food, and it won’t go bad.
Step 4:
Time to shop! If you have a discount store that you can go to, go there first. Try to get as much as you can before you go anywhere else. That’ll save you the most money. Next hit up your local small business stores or your local butcher to see if they have any sales on meat, you can take advantage of. Don’t forget those freezer bags too! Wait to get those items that you won’t be using right away. If you’re having salads the 3rd week in your month, it’ll go bad before it’s time to use it and then end up having to buy more. Only buy what makes sense at the time.
Step 5:
Don’t stress about it! Try not to overthink it. Start out with simple meals and go from there. You’ll learn what works best and what’s the easiest way to go. Don’t think you need to get it all done in one day. It takes me a week to get everything wrote down and put together. When you got everything planned and ready to go you can sit back and relax knowing you have a whole month of dinners ready to be prepared!
Get Started!
If you’re ready to start a doing monthly dinner plannigs, head on over to my list of 25 meals I used for this month and get started!
