Question related to the cut food expenses thread- share your weekly meal plan

[Anonymous]

We also just rotate through protein themed nights, without necessarily planning specifics until the start of the week. I still find it infinitely easier to know that it is egg night, so I am picking a dinner with egg as the central protein (and if I didn't mess around with the schedule, we will have had other non-egg proteins the days before and after so lunch leftovers will be varied.)

We rotate through:
- Non-bean legumes/Soy (falafel, stir-fry, soup, etc.)
- Eggs (omelets, quiche, shakshouka, breakfast-for-dinner, etc.)
- Pizza/Pasta
- Meat (sausages, roast chicken, etc.)
- Beans (burritos, tamales, chili, etc.)
- Fish

...with one floating night (usually Saturday) that is usually takeout and occasionally meals out with friends or other meals not at home.

We obviously don't eat much meat, but you could easily do the same rotation and just add a beef/chicken/pork night, etc. We always have salad and then have whatever grain or other fish goes with the main meal.

[Anonymous]

I mentioned this on the other thread, but I use platejoy.com for meal planning. They have a ton of excellent recipes that cover every food preference (vegetarian, low fat, low carb, paleo, whole foods, etc) as far as I can tell and scale for your family size and desired leftovers for lunches.

Once you choose your meals, it runs through what you already have in your pantry and then generates your grocery list. you can easily add other staples to the list and you do not need to reenter each week after entering once.

you can then either grocery shop yourself or you can also send your grocery list to Instacart to deliver your groceries for you.

For those considering the food prep boxes, this is probably a more economical version and gets you 90 percent of the convenience.

I usually cook about 3 nights of these meals a week and always have the ingredients for throwing a salad together alongside or steaming some additional vegetables (e.g., cauliflower or green beans) on hand and plan some leftover nights or just food without a recipe (e.g., burgers or breakfast tacos).

[Anonymous]

I try to make 5 dinners a week, one evening of "gotta go's" (food that needs to be eaten before it spoils) and then we typically eat out one night a week. I also make enough food that DH can take last night's dinner as leftovers for lunch. Kids pack their school lunches (usually sandwiches.) I'm at home so I eat our leftovers as well. I have 3 teenage boys.

This week's menu:

Beef Stir Fry with rice and green beans
Skinny Bang Bang Shrimp, linguine and caprese salad
Marinated baked chicken breasts, baked potatoes, asparagus
Make your own pizzas, salad
Gotta Go's (whatever leftovers we have from the week - I usually plan to have enough leftovers for everyone to choose one of our meals)
Eat out
Barbecue Pulled Pork sandwiches (done in crock pot), cole slaw

I always have fresh fruit available with dinner. The only meal above that required much prep was the beef stir fry - I had to cut the veggies and steak into strips. I used a store bought marinade for the chicken breasts. The kids make their own pizzas - I do use Boboli pizza crusts and they decide what they want on their pizzas.

I don't have a specific day of the week that we eat chicken, beef, etc. I keep track of our meals in my planner so I don't repeat anything for about 3 weeks. My DH is a meat and potatoes kind of guy so we never eat vegetarian meals. I tend to buy the large packages of meat (buy 1 get one free, a package of 8 large chicken breasts, 5 pounds of ground beef, etc.) I will portion it up and freeze it raw. If I'm in the grocery store and they have a really good sale, I'll pick up the meat even if I'm not planning to use it that week. I do have a large deep freezer so I can store a lot of meat.

I do my meal planning one day a week and always look at our schedule and plan meals around what we're doing that evening - if we need to be out of the house quickly one evening, I'll do something quick that requires little to no prep and fast cooking. If we're going to be home, I'll make a more elaborate dinner. I use my crockpot alot in the winter. I do convenience meals sometimes to avoid eating out (i'll buy pre-cut vegetables to save myself 10 minutes from prepping the veggies.) Its more expensive to buy pre-cut broccoli than a head of broccoli but its way cheaper than eating out.

Good luck!

I also shop from my freezer. I've done freezer meal cooking in the past, but it wasn't for me.

[Anonymous]

Let's see, so far this week:

Broiled shrimp scampi, rice, green beans
Teriyaki broiled salmon, asparagus
Grain bowls (grain, chicken, salad greens, spiced chick peas, red onions, cucumbers)
Hot dogs
Salmon with spinach and orzo salad