Meal Planning Printable Packet

Product Description

We all have to eat to survive, but you want much more than that for your family. You want to give them nourishing, healthy meals that fit nicely within your budget. You want to cook up a great variety of yummy meals that has your family thanking you for being awesome. You want to be able to shop and cook only once a month so that your attention can be better focused elsewhere.

Wasting food is wasting money, and we all know how tight things have been since losing your income. So, it stands to reason that buying extra of something you didn’t know was already in the house and then throwing half out is a bad thing. To help you avoid this painful mistake are the Pantry Inventory and Freezer Inventory. Sure, it takes a little extra time to write down every single food item left in your house at the end of the month, but it means that you can shop with confidence knowing that you won’t be doubling up on things you forgot were already at home.

Taking down an inventory of your stored up food items will also save you money by helping you meal plan with what you already have on hand. Don’t plan a lot of pasta dishes when you have rice coming out of your ears! Don’t buy steak when you have salmon in the freezer. And, since planning meals around what you have can be hard, there is a Meal Brainstorming page which gives you some blank space to jot your thoughts on what might work best with what you have and what your family likes.

Once you’ve come up with some tasty meals on the Brainstorming page, you are ready to plan them out on either your Monthly Meal Plan Calendar or Weekly Menu, depending on how frequently you like to shop. Be sure to take note of days that you will not be home, eating out, or having leftovers.

Next, it’s time to write out that Grocery Shopping List! With your recipe books (or internet) in front of you, start studying the ingredients of the meals you planned and write down what you don’t already have. It’s easy to know what you do have because you have your Pantry and Freezer Inventory in front of you. I usually add checkmarks on the inventory for ingredients I plan to use. Jotting down the food items you don’t have in the appropriate sections of the grocery list make it easy when you are actually shopping to stay organized and not be constantly scanning a jumbled up list.

Planning meals for the entire month is not an easy task. It takes stamina and a clear mind to make all the thousands of decisions that come your way. If you can make it all happen within one day, though, your reward of not having to think about it again for thirty days is a great one indeed. These shopping days are not for the faint of heart and need strategic planning, which is where the Shopping Day Plan comes in handy. On this page you will find a checklist of what you need to do before you go and another checklist for what you need to bring. You wouldn’t want to make it to the store and realize your coupons were left at home!

Below that is an area to plan for the stores you plan to go to. If the sales are better at one place, then you want to be sure to buy those items at the lowest possible price, and, well, sometimes, we as busy Moms forget about sales. Writing the stores down while you are at home and of sound mind will decrease the chances of making that mistake.

Of course, we can’t forget about coupons on your big shopping day! Below the “Stores” section is an area to keep track of what you could potentially get a discount on. There are columns for the item, coupon expiration date, amount (price) the coupon is for, and conditions, such as “Buy One Get One Free”.

And, at the very bottom of your Shopping Day Plan, is a space for a little motivation and encouragement because, after all, shopping like this is not for the faint of heart.

So, you have all your ingredients for some splendid meals and maybe you decided that while you are doing things all in one day, why not do all your cooking for the month? There is a Cooking Day Plan specifically designed to help you keep organized! The main focus of this page is to prevent you from doing one task, cleaning up, and realizing you have to do that same thing again for another recipe. If you write down the recipes in a “To Do” list form such as, “chop green peppers”, “brown ground beef”, or “sauté onions”, then you will easily be able to consolidate those tasks in the “Similar Tasks/Ingredients” section and, therefore, be a much more efficient Mom. Also on this page is the “Times to Note” section.

If monthly shopping and cooking isn’t for you, don’t worry. I’ve also included a streamlined Weekly Shopping List page for your enjoyment. Condense all your planning on this one page and you will are set. To the left is a section for planning the meals you want to make that week. Below that, take note of your budget and coupons/sales to take advantage of. The entire right side of the page is dedicated to your grocery list.

Whether you are an at home chef, or a Mac-n-Cheese type of Mom, grocery shopping and meal planning can be a huge chore. By using these printable pages, my hope is that the Stay at Home Mom Survival Kit will help ease the difficulty and make it a somewhat enjoyable task. You’re doing great, Mom!