Meal Planning 101

Meal planning isn't something new; for some people what I have to say in this blog is a no-brainer. But for many people living on their own for the first time, whether that's college or thereafter, this is a skill that should be quickly learned and utilized. Your mother is not cooking for you anymore; it is now time for you to create your dinner plan!

For many of us who may lean more Type A, meal planning offers us a small bit of relaxation by planning our lives, even if it just revolves about the week's or month's dinner line up. HOWEVER, this relaxation technique has other benefits that just so happen to fit into our areas of expertise:

1. Dinner is planned, so no stress that night wondering what to cook. (Our FOOD Pillar)
2. As discussed in my crock pot blog, planning=financial saving as well. (Our FINANCES Pillar)
3. You can plan to rotate foods through your diet and aim for proper nutrition. Though a one up from ordering pizza, chicken and rice every night for a month just won't cut it nutritionally. Don't forget about the variety of vitamins and minerals from consuming varying meats, fruits and veggies! (Our FITNESS Pillar)

I personally like to plan a week or two at a time, unless I know I'm in for a crazy month, in which case I do more. Planning in this manner allows me to put like foods semi close together for grocery shopping ease and food optimization. However if I plan a month-long dinner plan, I create a second grocery list for the produce for the latter half of the month so they won't go bad! Essentially, plan asparagus meals within a certain time-frame that balances you not getting tired of asparagus and not letting said asparagus go bad. This being said, I do analyze the produce in the fridge and blanch/quick freeze anything on the verge of going bad.

Questions to ask prior to meal planning:
1. What is your grocery budget for the month?
2. What produce do you have in the fridge you need to use?
3. What meat/veggies do you currently have in the freezer that should or could get eaten?

Things to consider:
1. Travel plans: who will be home that night?
2. Work schedule: should you prepare meals at the beginning of the week?
3. Visitors: do you need to plan to serve more than just the usual one or two people?
4. Weather: what foods pair best with the weather?

Things to research:
1. Foods in season: veggies and fruits not in season are more expensive!!
2. Store specials: advertised online or in those circulars in newspapers you can pick up on your driveway or at the store!
3. Coupons: having a loyalty card with Kroger, they send me coupons every month, plus offer more online via an online card account. These loyalty programs will sometimes offer more personalized coupons in accordance to your actual purchases. Yay for proper marketing & purchase tracking-my college diploma applauds you. Also, coupons are usually in the weekend newspaper! I'm not an extreme couponer but multiple times I have saved about a quarter of my grocery bill by optimizing coupons and store sales. Still working on being better but no shame there!
4. Recipes: time to actually look through that Pinterest recipe board. Dust off those cookbooks and post it mark any & all recipes that look appetizing. This could be a joint effort, often I hand James a stack of recipes, my phone open to Pinterest or a cookbook and tell him to mark which ones appeal to him!

Time to ACTUALLY USE those pretty cookbooks!

Those lists might be intimidating but when sitting down and looking at our January, I knew:
-We would be traveling A LOT (can plan smaller grocery budget or use buy high priced meats or stock up for the future-icemageddon could happen again!)
-I would be home by myself a few evenings, so one meal could probably last 2ish dinners plus lunches, depending on dish. As many individuals agree, it's hard to cook for JUST yourself everynight. So I cook larger meals I can eat for multiple days. If I weren't married, I would still do this then freeze half to pull out later that month to not eat the same thing all week all of the time.
-There was frozen meat we should use from prior Sam's purchases.
-It would be cold; hello roast and hearty meals!
-Any coupons I had on hand would be looked over to help plan dinners.

So this is what our January looked liked:

The plan:
Since we are primarily paleo, we don't do a lot of sandwiches for lunch. This means leftovers from one night's dinner becomes the next day's lunch. If you like having different lunches, this could be one way to spread out how long a meal lasts. Just remember to plan your lunches out too! Same with breakfast!

We cook practically every night. Yes, it gets exhausting. Yes, we have cleaned every cooking dish and utensil multiple times in one week before. Yes, I wear supportive shoes in the kitchen when I'm in for a long haul ;)

I love gathering meal recipes, and planning actually allows me to be creative with dinners and not resort to my comfort food of chicken & veggies EVERY night.

This is literally a whole counter full of clean dishes, and the dishwasher had just ran as well.

HELPFUL HINTS

The List:

Include quantity of items (ex: 3 medium carrots, one 4lb spaghetti squash) as you go through recipes. It'll help when you hit the supermarket and debate prices and quantity! And it stinks to not buy the right amount for your recipe!

Coupons:

Get these organized so you don't forget them when you reach the cashier! Pay attention to brands, but also use them to debate whether that coupon will actually save you money or if you could buy a generic at a cheaper price!

Item ingredients:

This is a HUGE point when dealing with allergies. I read every single ingredient in anything I buy that has a label. Some brands are cleaner or don't contain our allergens so unfortunately some items can throw a wrench in the plan when it comes to shopping by coupons or meals. Start paying attention to which brands you use, when they go on sale and which supermarkets carry them! I stock up when I see a great sale on these approved items!

Sales/organic items:

I know manager special items get added on certain days at my store, so that's the first place I go. Blanch the veggies and use them later or move around your meal plans if there are items there you can use!

As I am starting to learn, there are certain foods that should have a higher priority to be bought organic. Lots of lists out there help you prioritize which produce to buy organically, so keep an eye out for sales!

DON'T GO GROCERY SHOPPING WHEN HUNGRY & ALWAYS BRING A LIST. 

Your budget and checking account will thank you.

Any other helpful meal planning advice to add? Any questions I didn't answer?

Now if you excuse me, I need to finish planning for the month of March!

Financial Peace, Food Love & Joy

RR

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
― Benjamin Franklin

Double F: Food and Finances

I have a secret: I love my crock pot! (okay, maybe it's not a secret) Not because it's top of the line or can on its own land a perfect 10 back flip like other fancy slow cookers. 

 See? Only 1 knob with 4 settings including OFF. So simple.

Rather, deep down at the root of my being (well maybe one of the root shoots) I love to multitask. Besides prepping the food (you know super hard cutting meat and veggies or opening cans), the crock pot allows me to cook and do everything else I need to do in a day! AND minimal cleanup time if you use these fancy bags!

 (I buy these in bulk.)

So this 5 year love affair has been blissful, and I can't imagine where I would be without my crock pot.

Seriously.

I'd like to say I'm joking but almost everyone knows that James fell in love with me AFTER I fed him crook pot roast in college. (Single Ladies out there, take note: there are 3 ways into a man's heart, accomplishing 2 will solidify a date. One of those ways is through his stomach, so learn to cook and quench his appetite.

So I write this post to explain how my crock pot fits into 2 pillars of our household (as previously mentioned in this post: finances and food. 

 

Finances: One of the main PROs of a crock pot is the financial efficiency of most meals. I say most because I'm sure there's someone out there making organic, farm raised meat meals who would beg to differ. (Future Rachel we are talking about you!) But point is: Lots of food at a small cost. This food can be eaten all week, frozen for later, or shared. I have done all three and still find it cheaper than a meal out at times (even if I feed 12 other people). So for those days you know you would come home from work and NOT want to cook and cave in to ordering pizza at 8pm or later because your husband sits on the couch the whole time and whines about being hungry but doesn't want to cook anything either, a crock pot would have been a better solution financially and health-wise, too. So think ahead, plan your meals, and don't give in to the "let's just go somewhere and spend money" temptation anymore! When you come home to the smell of dinner, you won't think ONCE about going out to eat. Unless you are thinking about how much money you saved by using your trusty friend the crock pot!

The other pillar: Food. My favorite things to cook in the CP: Roast (True life: I have never not cooked a roast in a crock pot) and taco chicken. I'm starting to crave both of these meals now. The truth is, I wasn't a chef prior to or even during college. In fact, my skills are still minimal compared to many women who have more experience than me (and less for you gifted ladies out there). I began "cooking" in college by using the crock pot. It was my gateway kitchen appliance if you will. There are recipes upon recipes for slow cookers out there, and I rarely find one that's bad. I'll eventually post my winners.

If you don't have a crock pot, buy one. It'll be an investment that will positively change your health and bank account if you find it hard to cook healthy meals and are wanting to save more money this year.

Peace, love, and crock pot meals.

~RR

The F's: Finances- Meet a Budget

James and I have realized, in the last year or so, there are 4 main topics we advise people on: Faith, Finances, Food & Fitness. We normally can share our Faith while discussing the other three, as it is the Core of our life and reasoning behind our lifestyle. This being said, I'm excited to post my first F blog! 

 (The 4 pillars of our life, or something along these lines.)

Ever since we took Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, we've been learning and sharing our financial insight, mainly with friends who are in the same "Family Lifecycle" (to use some marketing terms) as us, meaning, they're out of college & employed fulltime but don't have children. We've determined we both are financial "nerds" (okay, not a surprise here), so we took finances to the nerdy extreme. What does that mean? We find delight in making a budget, recording our expenses and analyzing our finances. 

So maybe everyone isn't as gung-ho as we are, but that doesn't mean the average person/family should avoid any sort of financial planning. The average American household income is about $50,000, yet the average American individual has $47,000 in debt and $23,000 student loan debt upon graduation from college. What do all of these numbers mean? It means we need financial planning in our lives.

Now before I continue, I need to say: We are not perfect! Phew, glad I got that off my chest! ;) My husband and I are still trying to perfect our budget and our spending, but we definitely are not perfect right now. I want to share our budgeting techniques though, because in our discussions with friends, we've learned our record-keeping techniques are rare. 

We "graduated" from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, so of course most of our financial planning is based off of his teachings. His teachings are clear and simple for us to understand and implement, and they make logical sense to us.  (Side note: we highly recommend this financial class or ANY financial class to newlyweds. It is important to establish a financial plan and behavior as a married couple from the beginning. One that a married couple adapts together rather than someone's parent's or single life's budget.)

We organize our finances in an Excel Document we've created online in Google Drive. This allows us to access and edit it anywhere! This is great because we don't have an excuse to leave off ANYTHING! You can share these files with other people simply by allowing them access to the doc. 

So here's our budget form, taken from Dave and adjusted to fit our family needs, though I left many areas even we don't use.

 

 (Sorry I had to do 3 screen shots to get it all)

 A few notes:

1. There are some rows/topics that aren't applicable to everyone, just delete those lines. Or start saving for them if they will be in your future. ;)
2. Everything is budgeted. No more impromptu shopping trips, no more reckless spending. If we know James needs new running shoes for his half marathon, we budget for it. When we agree none of my pants fit, we allot money to purchase fitting pants. If I want a new pair of shoes or purse or jewelry or curling iron or makeup...that comes out of my personal fun fund. And I can save up for it or indulge carefully every month. My point is, my husband doesn't have to put me on a certain clothing budget, and I don't question him for spending too much money at BWW, because that money comes from our predetermined fun funds. It works for us right now, when we have many other financial goals to focus money on.
3. Some of these categories are either strictly saving or if we do not spend the entire amount, we put the remainder into savings. So, if we budget $80 for Rocky but only spend $50, at the end of the month we put $30 into Rocky savings (tune in next time for our savings spreadsheet).
4. Every dollar is accounted for. Sure, it makes us analyze every dollar spent-that's the point. Instead of asking where our money went, we tell it where it goes. If by the second day of the month we've used all $75 of our restaurant fund, then we better get creative with cooking at home.

If you want this template mailed to you, leave me a comment or send me a message and I will share. We love helping people become organized financially, because living free of financial stress through efficient and detailed planning has allowed us to enjoy life. When you aren't worrying about whether or not you can pay a bill, life is great. The financial peace in our lives has overflown to every other part of our lives.

I have 2 comparisons to how we feel about our budgeting: when you are out shopping and you just found an incredibly awesome sale and you know your friends or family would benefit from it, you call them up, text them or send a picture of your snag. You cannot contain your joy. 

Likewise, when you are filled with such joy of the Lord, you want to yell it from the mountain tops. When He heals the sick and provides for the poor, or you simply become overwhelmed with the blessing of mercy and grace, you cannot help but share your story to every person who would listen. This was me 5 years ago after my surgery; the Lord renewed my spirit through a miraculous healing and I could not help but tell my story to every single person. I show my scar to those with open ears. 

Well, it is with similar vigor we share our financial budgeting success. We have won over financial stress through God's guidance and the wisdom He has endowed upon us, and we want to share this blessing with anyone who is seeking the light!

~RR