Meal planning update

 I'm a little late with this, but Baby Girl has been giving me a run for my money this past week. 

After playing around with Plan to Eat, I decided that it isn't what I'm looking for right now. Our monthly food budget is pretty low, and I found that the drag-and-drop aspect of the planning made it too easy to over-plan. After working on just a two week span, my shopping list was over $200. That's my budget for the whole month! Even while keeping leftovers and budget in mind, I found I just couldn't keep it simple enough. I think the site will be awesome later on, when our finances are more stable and I have another mouth to feed (i.e. when baby starts eating meals with us). It is wonderful having all my recipes in one place, and I will continue to use it for that function. The shopping list feature is also really cool. But for now, it is better for me to plan a couple basic meals and try to stretch them as far as possible instead of trying to be creative.

February Meal Plan
(These are dinners only; leftovers will be eaten for lunch.  Breakfast is either oatmeal or eggs.)

Roast chicken with baked sweet potato
Chicken quinoa
Potato soup
Cream of carrot soup
Meatballs with spanish rice
Fried rice with beef
Boiled dinner
Chili

I purchased all the food needed for these meals for just under $200, including some odds and ends such as dishwasher detergent, chocolate chips, and fresh fruit. The ingredients are similar for many of the meals, so I am able to save some money by buying in bulk. I will try to post the recipes for these meals during the month.

To aid in my sanity, I do some prep work when I get home from the store (or the next day). The beef for the fried rice is chopped, divided into the appropriate amounts, placed into freezer bags, covered with the marinade and then frozen. The ground beef is divided, seasoned, bagged and frozen. If I had more room in the freezer, I would also make the cream of carrot soup and freeze that, too.