Meal Planning - Month 2 - Foodie Friday

This is my second month of planning out meals. (Click here for the first post) It's going pretty well I'd say and I'm catching on pretty quickly.

Because I really want to do a minimal amount of thinking about it, I tend to go by the schedule and have what's planned for that day on that day. However, it does happen that substitutions need made for whatever reason or we're just not feeling the meal planned for that particular day. The calendar set up makes it easy to just cross and switch things around. So far this month, and it's pretty well done with, there has been minimal switching and most everyone has been happy with the meals.

I feel like it's also cut down on the grocery shopping to an extent. It's easier to look at the calendar and see that we'll need peppers, potatoes and hamburger instead of waiting until the day of and realizing we're out of onions, noodles and pasta sauce.

It's also making it easier to take advantage of sales. Knowing that we're going to need x, y and z at some point in the month is great. Then, when the local grocery store runs their 10 for $10, get the 11th item free sale we can stock up on not as perishable things we'll need later in the month if we know they never go on sale any cheaper. The same goes for meats. Ground beef is $3 a pound this week? Great! We're going to need 5 pounds to get through the month so we'll buy it now knowing it rarely goes much cheaper anymore.

In order to try new things and get out of a cooking rut, I've also added chef's choice/new recipe days to the calendar. That way, we get to try something new to break up the meals we tend to rotate instead of waiting until we've had a month of the same meals and we're sick of it. In the end it's still cheaper to toss in a random/new meal than to get take out because no one wants to eat what we're supposed to.

Anyone else meal planning? What's the method to your madness?