Back in the saddle again, so to speak...I've decided to resume the tailored meal plans after a summer of eating from the revolving meal plan. My reasoning is tri-fold:
1. I'm tired of eating those foods.
2. I have worked into our schedule 2 periods of in-their-room playtime for the kids to give me a chance to get housework done. Now that Annalise is almost 2, this works really well. Consequently I don't feel quite as much craziness and I think I can think creatively about food again.
3. It really didn't save a substantial amount of money.
In fact, I finally resigned myself to raising our bi-weekly budget to $170. I was overspending way too often and now that I've given myself an extra $20, I have been better able to keep things in check. The bottom line is we eat food, food costs money, to feed 4 people costs more than $150 over a 14 day period...at least this year. I am hoping to grow some veggies during the dry season.
Monotonous recipes aside, I do think that it saves some money to eat the same things over and over again, but since the most expensive part of each meal is meat, the way to get around the monotony is to plan different recipes, but use the same meats (chicken on Mondays, fish on Tuesdays, etc.)
For now, I'm going to do single weeks, life isn't as crazy as it was before, but I do still have 2 small children and need to think in smaller chunks of time for a little bit longer.
September 8-14, 2009
T 8 - Chicken Pot Pie
W 9 - Beef and Barley Stew
R 10 - Smoked Sausage with Egg Noodles and Veggies
F 11 - Curry Chicken, Rice
S 12 - Mushroom & Steak Linguine, Salad
U 13 - Pizza, Corn
M 14 - Chicken Tortilla Bake, Salad
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