Quick and Easy Meal Planning Method
I’ll be the first to admit that I am nowhere near perfect at meal planning. In fact, in a lot of respects, I consider myself a total meal planning failure. I know all the money saving blogs say that the number one thing you can do to keep your grocery budget in check is to meal. Honestly, I don’t have much trouble keeping the budget in check with or without a meal plan and I rarely feel stressed about what to have for dinner, but when I don’t plan, it’s my health that suffers!
Therefore, I menu plan off and on, but I’m trying to do so more consistently these days. I’ve tried so many different methods – so, so many! I LOVE the idea of menu planning, I LOVE the pretty, organized menu sheets hanging on my refrigerator, but it takes me forever to create a plan, and I struggle to stick with it. I’ve only found two methods that work really well for me. They don’t take me forever, and I tend to do a decent job of sticking to them. I’m sharing one method today and I’ll share the other later.
I’m using the Plan to Eat site to help me menu plan. It’s an online program that allows me to plan a weeks worth of meals within 5 minutes while it automatically builds my grocery list! I can add any recipe I want to it plus I can use any recipe from anyone who is my Plan to Eat “friend.” It also nicely categorizes recipes so they are easy to find. The best way to let you know how it works is just to show you! Here’s a short video showing you how it works:
I love how it’s super easy to add any recipe from around the web since I love trying new recipes, and I love how I can see recipes from my friends, or even see or use their whole menu!
I will say that you will probably need spend an hour or two at first to get your most common recipes in the program and your pantry list set up. However, once that’s done, you can plan a menu in just a few menus or just use a saved menu. Plus, you’ll never again have to make a grocery list! It’s done for you.
If you wan to try Plan to Eat, your first 30 days are completely free! Then it costs just $4.95 a month (a small price to pay to save all that time if you ask me), or you can save more by paying yearly.
How do you usually plan your menus or do you? Have you tried a ton of different methods like me before finding one that works?
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Lori gEORGE Says
Laura,
was very excited to find someone else who used Plan to Eat “religiously” and as you suggested tried adding you as a friend. However, I kept getting a “unable to find any users with that username” message…are you no longer using Plan to Eat (or am I as technologically illiterate as I think I am) ?
Lori
LauraJane Says
Post authorI’m still on there. I changed my username so that may the problem. I’ll look up my new one and see if that works.
LauraJane Says
Post authorMy new username is LauraSmith. Hope you can find me!
Ginger Says
Just want to pass along that Pepperplate is completely free….all the time. And has a TON of features, including direct clipping from any other website where you’re looking at a recipe, grocery list making (including categorizing it so you aren’t bouncing all over the grocery store.) It’s available on the android devices and I would imagine it is also available on apple devices as well so it is also portable. You can plan your meals at the computer at home then take your phone to the store and it’s all there. There is also recipe sharing capabilities. Free. No ads. Just another resource.
kim Says
Are you able to print the meal plans and grocery lists laura?
LauraJane Says
Post authorYes, you can print the out.