Confession: Mike and I got into a very bad habit of eating out a lot.
It started when we were dating. We were together almost every evening, and come on! You’re dating! You’re supposed to go out to eat. Everyone knows that.
It continued after we got married because I was working an hour away from where we live and my schedule did not leave the time or energy to cook.
It continued after I quit my job and started working from home because I’d get so involved in projects that I didn’t want to leave my desk.
Mike and I were eating out at least 5 times a week. Sometimes (Saturdays) we were eating out twice a day. And we never had much of anything to pack as a lunch for Mike either, so he was buying lunch almost every day. So I guess if we do the math right, that means we were eating out meals at least 10 times a week.
YIKES.
We realized that we were eating up money that we could be putting into savings, if only we were a little more careful. (A LOT more careful.) Let’s see. If we say that an average work-lunch costs $5 and an average meal out together costs $15 (I’m being reeeeeally conservative here—even the burrito bars are closer to $20), that means that our monthly eating out budget probably was about $400. (It probably was more than that.) And that doesn’t count for things at home like yogurt, milk, eggs, bread, etc.
So I consulted my budget-queen friend who said that she and her husband are able to eat for $275/month. I added another $25 to help me ease into it and fixed our food budget at $300.
Yay! Food budget done. Now to tackle the other hurdle: Meal planning! Yikes! I’d say that since we’ve been married, when I actually have cooked, Mike and I have probably eaten shepherd’s pie 1 out of every 3 meals because Mike happened to mention once that he loves it. I needed to expand my food repertoire, but I needed to get some good variety of easy, quick meals. But it’s hard for me to be that creative, to be honest. And my collection of cookbooks is so vast, and there are so many kinds of foods…
I realized I needed to narrow down my foods into categories so I have a meal category for every day of the week. It is as follows:
Monday: Eggs or breakfast foods.
Tuesday: Meat and potatoes.
Wednesday: “Ethnic”: Italian, Mexican, Asian, etc.
Thursday: Leftovers.
Friday: Sandwiches/Soups/Salads/Fish
Saturday: Grilling.
Sunday: Dinner with Mike’s family. (Make dessert or salad.)
This works for me because my categories are very broad, but it means that I only have to really look in one section of the cookbook to decide what I’m going to cook that day. And the categories leave things open for me to cook a big long meal or a really short meal. Right now, I’m relying on a Food Made Fast book and a 15-minute recipe book. And we’ve been eating well! Here’s our menu from this week:
Wednesday: fajitas
Thursday: leftovers (Mike gets home late Thursday evenings)
Friday: spicy black bean soup
Saturday: carmelized onion and blue cheese omelets with fruit salad
Sunday: Easter dinner with family (made coconut cake)
Monday: grilled steaks, roasted potatoes, grilled veggies (switched with Saturday’s meal because it was raining Saturday)
Tuesday: pot roast with mashed potatoes and spinach salad
(Coconut cake for Easter.)
I now look forward to planning meals because I feel I have great direction for each day of the week. I might change this up a little bit as time goes on, but for now, it works and it’s getting me motivated to start cooking on a budget and see how much more money we can hide under our mattress!
Come back next week for a special surprise when I write Meal Planning, Part 2!
I have great intentions every single week to have a menu and meals all planned out, but by 5:00 every day, I feel like I am struggling to keep up. I’m glad I’m not the only one having a hard time getting dinner put together!
I love the idea of having general categories for each day of the week, it makes it much easier to pick out meals and keep it interesting.
Thanks!
This is such a great idea. You sound incredibly organized. I like checking out cookbooks from the library because you have three weeks to go through them and use them before you have to give them back, which is normally plenty of time to try out several recipes.
I’m just going to come over to your house, yes? You’ll need to make your portion sizes bigger as C eats more than a grown man, and Viktor, well he is a grown man. So cook for 10 and tell us what time to come.
Yep, you’re pretty much a rock star. I, too, will be showing up at your house, Archer Farms Italian soda in hand.
Good for you! Can’t wait to hear about more.
I really love Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine.
I like to use http://www.simplifysupper.com to plan my meals. They have a great calender/shopping list tool and best of all… It’s free!
This is a tough one. My husband and I ate out ALL THE TIME when we were DINKS (Dual Income No Kids) so it was hard when suddenly our income was cut in half, but our brains didn’t! It’s been 9 months and we’ve finally made the transition. I gave up making a big meal every night because that was overwhelming, so we do easy things like Frito Pies, Quesadillas with chips and dips, leftovers, etc 3 nights a week, and I “cook” 3 nights a week. We still go out for date night (though sometimes we don’t even do that!) Once we got used to stocking our fridge with stuff we liked it was a lot easier. Anyway, I didn’t mean to say so much, but there you go!
Good job starting to meal plan! I’m really not good at it (although my husband is…). I’m looking forward to Meal Planning Part 2.
Yummy was that the coconut cake from Family Circle? It looks so good! It looks like our meal planning schedules is very similar!