Putting in a little time upfront for meal planning can save you a lot of time later, not to mention money. Plan your weekly meals around what you have and what is on sale. This way, you won’t be spending more for expensive ingredients or be left with the “What’s for dinner; let’s eat out” scenario.
This week, ground turkey was on sale, so I had that to work with, along with lots of fresh produce from our local CSA. Because of this, I planned out the weekdays like this: one meal of sloppy Joes with homemade sweet potato fries, another meal of Thanksgiving meatloaf with mashed potatoes, another meal consisting of homemade bread, salad and broccoli cheese soup, a leftovers meal on a busy night, and a chicken meal with chicken from the freezer plus the fresh butternut squash.
Of course weekends have to be considered, too, but we have one planned meal out and then I’ll be shopping for the next week on Saturday, so I’ll include Sunday in there as well.
The easiest way I’ve found to meal plan is to do it weekly, and as you see, supplement my meals with items that I’ve stockpiled in the freezer. Others do well planning their meals monthly, but this works well for me because I don’t like to think ahead with my meals past a week or maybe 10 days at the most. I’m just not that invested with being organized and planning for a longer timeframe.
Looking at the grocery flyer, I see that the following is on sale: chicken (I’ll get extra to replace what I took out of the freezer), English muffins, apples, mozzarella cheese, canned pineapple and more. A no brainer meal might be a chicken dish with an apple compote, egg muffin sandwiches for breakfast or lunch, homemade pizza, eggplant parm (the eggplant left over from the CSA) just to start with. I can supplement with ham slices from the freezer topped with the pineapple and some brown sugar, plus more sweet potato fries.
This is just off of the top of my head, so it could change depending on what else I find in the clearance areas of the grocery store.