Monthly Meal Planning

This Mama is tired. I told Jason this morning that I would rather have a tooth pulled with no anesthesia than take my children with me to the grocery store. It was pretty painful. However, we are almost out of many things, and with Jason working all weekend I needed to put on my big girl panties and just do it. So, off we went to Wal-mart, Sams, and then to Kroger. Yep, you read that correctly. I had to park at Sams to get one of the carts with the 2 seats in the top, then headed to Walmart where we proceeded to fill it up in the cart and underneath. I don't know how many times I pried something out of the hands of my children. It took about 30 minutes longer than it would have if I had been by myself.

I said that we had been working on a budget, and last month was the first month we tried cash envelopes for most of our spending. I will say that when I had cash instead of a card, I was WAY more careful about what I spent. We've got some tweaking to do, but for the most part things went great. One of my problems last month was in meal planning. I decided this month that I was going to do a "once-a-month" meal planning approach. By that, I mean that I sat down and planned meal ideas for a whole month with the idea of having leftovers for certain nights, accounting for small group, etc. I felt like we had a lot of food leftover that didn't get eaten because it would sit in the fridge for days when we weren't around in the evenings to eat it. Also, by the end of last month, I felt like I had to watch spending in order not to go over my limit. It wouldn't have been a big deal to go over, but I took this as a personal challenge to come in at or under our set budget. I am a nerd that way. Here is a pic of the screen because I was too lazy to print and scan this:

I do realize this is a little intense, people. I just figured that if we knew up front how many meals (at least in a round about way) we needed, we wouldn't run low at the end of the month.

While the boys were napping, I got busy with my freezer cooking. There were groceries EVERYWHERE to put away.  In 2 hours, I had a ton of food prepared, and one dish cooking in the crock pot to head to the freezer. I bought a few meats that I either am going to cook soon or went into the freezer right away. Be warned, doing this much food at one time is not a clean process. I turned around at one point and had to laugh and almost cry a little. My kitchen looked like this:

And I promise I didn't put an empty pan on the stove to make it look like I was working :) There was butter melting to saute some veggies. In the end, I ended up with a bunch of food, and our monthly meals are pretty much set. I am not saying that we have to stick exactly to the schedule or anything, but other than fresh veggies or the staples like bread and milk my monthly shopping is done. Here is what I ended up with (not pictured are the honey BBQ ribs which were cooling in the crock pot):

Okay, I fibbed a little in the pic. Two of the pans are empty but represent the enchiladas that I have to mix up. They will be done in the next few days. Click on the link to find the recipes:

Lasagna (I will post this recipe soon) - 2 pans
Salsa Verde Enchiladas - recipe makes 2 pans
Pioneer Woman's Sloppy Joes - 2 bags
Sticky Chicken - no cooking beforehand required
Beef Stroganoff - no cooking beforehand required
Honey BBQ Ribs
Chicken Spaghetti - makes 2 pans

Whew! It feels so good to have so much food DONE. It is my goal here in the next few weeks to create new tabs for the blog that include breakfast, crock pot, freezer-friendly and so on. That way, recipes will be easy to find versus having to search through all the files. One thing at a time...