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Beans and Rice: There’s nothing wrong with this. We eat beans from scratch weekly, and *that* is an inexpensive way to add whole foods and organics to your diet.
Menu planning: My menu is this: Sunday Hamburgers, Monday Chicken and Rice, Tuesday Pizza, Wednesday Tacos/Mexican, Thursday Breakfast, Friday Pizzas again (can be french bread pizza or pizza bagels), Saturday is whatever. I find that if I have a general plan, I don’t have to think about what I’m cooking. And that seems to cut my food perpetration time in half. If I’m feeling creative, I still tend to stick to the plan, but I might do enchiladas or tamales rather than the standard tacos or burritos on Wednesday.
Food value vs cost: I try to concentrate on the nutritional value of food rather than just the cost. I seem to be constantly breastfeeding and/or pregnant, and so I eat a lot. Hubby eats a lot since his job is so active. My toddler is a good eater. I’ve found that organic dried beans have an excellent value to them, as does soaked whole wheat bread made from fresh ground whole wheat. Butter costs much more, but the value and how it will affect our future health is worth it to me. Coconut milk and oil has proven to be very healthy to me.
A clean kitchen: A clean kitchen saves us a ton on our grocery bill. When I have room on my counters to get everything out and prepare supper, I am a much less frazzled mom and much less likely to call and order pizza.
Packing Lunches: Traditional lunch meat has a poor value compared to cooked chicken thighs or organic peanut butter, so I try and choose the latter for hubby’s sandwiches.
Divide and conquer: A big bag of organic corn chips from Costco is only $4, and if I bag them up in ziplocks as soon as I get the bag open, it’s just as easy to grab one of those as a pricey pre-packaged chip bags. Bonus: It’s much less likely for someone to sit down and polish off the bag in an afternoon, and so Daddy will not be having a skimpy lunch later in the week because all the chips are gone. This is much like budgeting- since the chip bags are ‘named’ as being for Dad’s lunch, it’s easier to leave them alone.
This post is a part of Menu Plan Monday
[...] from what we normally have. We’re still following the predictable schedule (outlined here) but doing something other than the same ol same ol within it.Lunches are sandwiches, either like [...]