Weekly meals and frugal tips

Jennifer at 'double nickel farm' had the great idea of sharing meals for the week. I thought I'd give it a try as well; feel free to share what your family does!

As we all know, or should know, family meal time can make or break a budget! We try to plan our meals a week at a time, based on what's on hand and what's on sale at the stores. First, I write a grocery list, next I clean the refrigerator, then go shopping ... and finally, I come home and write a meal plan for the week.

Something we are starting now is daily crock-pot meals. Don't get me wrong, we use the crock-pot often!!! However I am now using it every day for lunch. I found that lunch time was when I often slacked and didn't get things started when I should ... thus making the meal late and supper late as well. The crock-pot idea has solved our lunch dilemma! YAY! We are all liking it so far.

Here's our meal plan for the week; I write it all on one sheet with room for notes and a store list. I save the sheets for future meal ideas:

Breakfast is always a green smoothie, fruit &/or oatmeal. If for some reason we are out of smoothie ingredients, the children have oatmeal and I eat raw fruit (I just cannot eat cooked food in the morning!).

Lunch - I make notes on my meal chart to remind me of what I need to prep ahead of time. For example, my note for today (tuesday) said "cut up veg for wed" and "start beans in crock-pot before bed". This makes it to where I can simply get up in the morning, throw the stuff in the crock-pot, add liquid and turn it on :) How easy is that? Now lunch is always ready at noon. Since fresh veggies are abundant right now, I often will serve a cucumber salad or other raw item with the soup. Also, there's usually left over soup; I leave the crock-pot on warm and we'll have it as a snack later when we are hungry.
Monday - Minestrone soup
Tuesday - Veg & rice soup
Wednesday - Black bean soup
Thursday - Potato soup
Friday - Sun seed butter and jam sandwich with carrot sticks (thought we might want a change for that day!)
Saturday - Don't know yet!!
Sunday - Hamburger stew

Supper
Monday - Nachos with fresh salsa and corn
Tuesday - Fish, green beans and rice (we had plenty of left over veg & rice soup from lunch, so we used that instead)
Wednesday - we will be with our friends eating at their house; I am bringing a salad and fresh bread
Thursday - Beef, cabbage and rice
Friday - Veggies over rice biscuits, cuc salad
Saturday - Spaghetti & broccoli
Sunday - homemade veggie pizza (no cheese!), salad

You may have noticed we eat a few meals with beef this week ... once in a while I will buy a little bit of ground beef and cook it all at once. I then portion it out into baggies and freeze them; there is 1c of cooked ground beef per baggie. This 1c is just enough to flavor the meal and make it seem like there's a lot there, however it's not much at all. Also, we really do not like eating meat that much ... so this is a great way to save money too.

Sometimes I will buy a whole chicken, cook it, pick it apart, portion the meat into baggies (1c) and freeze. Then I take the left-overs, throw them in a stock pot with a few misc. veggies and seasons, bring to a boil, then simmer a few hours. Let it cool, strain out the chunks, and what's left is fatty chicken stock. I keep that in a bowl in the refrigerator over night. Pull it out in the morning, scoop off and throw away the fat that has settled at the top, pour into mason jars, and freeze.
In general, we hardly eat meat of any kind (don't like the smell of it, nor the taste in most cases, nor the way it makes us feel) ... we'll go for months at a time without preparing meat at home.

After we steam veggies, I dump the water into a 'community mason jar' in the refrigerator. This collects till full, then gets dumped into a crock-pot soup as a veggie stock.

Something I used to do but stopped ... and plan to do it again ...
When we get home from grocery shopping, I used to prepare a lot of the vegetables, rice, pasta, etc. in one day and then store in the refrigerator or freezer for later use. I would peel and chop vegetables and store in a container with water in the refrigerator. I would pre-cook all the meat for the month and freeze it. I would cook a lot of rice, beans, etc., portion them out and freeze. There were several other things I did, but you get the idea I'm sure! This makes meal prep time so much shorter the day of.

I try to cook extras so I can freeze at least one meal for later use. This does not work with everything, but a great majority of items freeze well. Recently I made a huge batch of spaghetti sauce - I ended up freezing about 10 quart jars full. I poured the sauce into the jars, then topped with the lid ONLY (no band!). Once it was frozen, I put the band on. This allows for expansion and no cracking.

We try to make crackers, pasta and tortilla shells, however it usually does not happen :( This is on my top priority list. Thursday I plan to make either pasta or tortilla shells ... I'll blog that. Also, I used to make batches of granola and healthy cookies for easy snacks. I plan to start that again as well.

All of this takes time but is fun and such a great way to spend time as a family. It's amazing to me how much time I waste - to my shame - when I could and should be doing more important things. This has been one of my biggest prayers (for myself) to the Lord ... that He would show me the way to get all the important stuff done and reveal to me the time wasters in my life ... we have recently gotten back on track and I give God all the praise for that. I continue to pray for strength and encouragement to keep it up. We are also trying to be more structured with our homeschooling ... I plan to post on my other blog about that soon.

Well, that's all the TIME I have for now :)

Matthew 6:33But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 34Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.