Meal Planning Without a Menu

- by keeping the kitchen stocked with basics.

One piece of advice you will probably see on most frugal homemaking blogs is to plan your meals for the week before you go to the grocery store. I understand the logic; by planning you buy only what you need for a week, and are sure you have the ingredients for the meals you will be making. Another benefit of planning meals is that you don't have to figure out what is for dinner at 4:00 when the kids are driving you crazy, and the last thing you want to do is think. It makes sense.

I don't do it. I used to early in our marriage. I would sit down with my cookbook and look at recipes, plan the meals, make the list and go to the store. The problem was the meals that looked so good in the cookbook usually included high end meats, seafood or special ingredients. I was not utilizing sale items. We were eating well, but not exactly frugally.

The next step in menu planning for me was to sit down with the ads first and plan meals and lists using the sale items. That helped, and I got pretty good at using coupons and loss leaders. We were still eating well, but now a bit more frugally.

Then fast forward a few years and a few kids later, I had gotten out of the habit of planning our meals. Matching up coupons, sales ads, and menus was taking too much time. I found that I could feed us just as well, often for less money, by shopping at low cost grocery stores and keeping a consistent stock of frugal basics in my cupboard and basics in my refrigerator Other items were only picked up only when I saw them marked down or there was a fantastic sale. I learned to cook a variety of meals using basic and cheap items. Still eating well and frugally, but investing a lot less time.

Those two linked lists above certainly don't cover all the staples in the house, but they do give you a good idea of what is there. You'll also find last year's garden produce in the pantry. In the freezer you'll find the meat. Much of our meat now comes from our homestead, but when I bought all our meat it was the basics. I rarely would pay more than $2.00 a pound for meat, and generally would create most meals from hamburger and whole chickens, or other meats on sale.

Lest, you think meals would be boring by using the "keep your kitchen stocked with the basics" method I use, let me assure you they are not. There is not a lot of repetition in our meals. A huge amount of different meals can be made from using the same basic ingredients. Using the same foods in different combinations helps to mix it up a bit too. Even my fall back meals, like quesadillas or pizza can be made with enough variety to keep it interesting even if we did just eat them last week.

For example quesadillas can be made with just cheese, cheese and onion, cheese and leftover chili, beans, meat, green pepper, or whatever you have on hand. They can be served with beans, rice, fresh salsa, guacamole, black bean salsa, or soup. I think I could serve these three times a week without anyone complaining.

Meal planning can work, but it does take time. It can help you stay in a budget when done carefully, and it can save your sanity on those crazy days, but it isn't the only way. I don't plan my meals for the week. My sanity saver is those fall back meals that are simple and quick. The ingredients for those meals can always be found in my kitchen. Keeping in the budget is simple because I buy the same basics consistently, and supplement with marked down items noticed while shopping. Keeping the kitchen stocked with the basics is the way I plan for our meals. It is frugal meal planning without the time investment of menu planning with ads and coupons.