Meal Planning

So I've decided to try meal planning as a way to stop wasting so much food and bring down the grocery bill. Usually I just go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of crap that ends up costing so much money. I end up having to throw out so much, and I rarely end up with enough meals. So I came up with a list of meals both me and Christopher like (difficult, because I don't like anything!) and wrote down the ingredient list for all of them. We went to the grocery store today to get the ingredients for the week. This week we're having

Steak, green beans, and mashed potatoes
Pork tenderloin, sweet potatoes, and broccoli
Spaghetti with meat sauce, a salad, and garlic bread
Chili
Tacos
Macaroni and cheese

I tried to get mostly things that I could make quickly, because Jackson doesn't like to be put down, and I'm not comfortable wearing him while I cook (obviously). I tried to make the most out of what I already had in the kitchen, which was not much this week. I also got breakfasts and snacks. I figure we can mostly have leftovers for lunch, since all of these meals keep pretty well. Our budget was $150, but I went over by $15. I'm attributing that to the cans of Mountain Dew for Christopher which are not a usual purchase, but were on sale, dog food, and Ziplocs, which don't really count in the food budget. Also I got 4 packs of hotdogs, because they were buy 1 get 1, and Christopher likes to eat those for lunch. I'm going to call it a win. Hopefully, that will be the end of grocery shopping for the week. It would really be spectacular if no one had to go back to the grocery store.

Next week I'm going to start looking at store ads and coupons to see if I can't bring the cost down by planning the meals around what's cheap. This will probably be harder because it involves going to more than one grocery store, and I'm not sure how I'll manage that with Mr. HATES the car seat in tow. Maybe I can just go to one. We'll see how it works.