Friends, I need your help. That Proverbs 31 lady stands outside my house and shakes her head at me in dismay. Baby girl and I have been at this gig for 13 months already and I cannot get myself together enough to do more than one thing at a time. I used to like to cook and did so with fairly decent results. I scrubbed and diced fresh ingredients and cleaned up afterward. Now I'm lucky if I can nuke a potato and manage to get the plate in the dishwasher.
I am TERRIBLE when it comes to meal planning. I don't even know what meals to plan anymore. I'm trying to be extra frugal since Manny is yet again laid off, but many of the recipes on the "frugal" sites are based on condensed soup and onion soup mix - dairy and MSG are no-nos in this house.
Please, please give me your tips, suggestions and recipes. There has to be a way to prepare healthy, tasty, economical meals on a budget that do not require every pot in the house. Right?
Oh yes, another caveat: I cannot do prep during naptime. I am lucky if this child naps once a day, and when she does I have to stay with her. She absolutely refuses solitary sleep, and by the time I finally get her out (which takes some doing) I'm not going to risk waking her by slipping away. It just doesn't work. This is my life.
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How I started:
Make a list of your standard meals (pre-baby). Sort by appropiate as is, can be modified, and someday way in the future. Make a meal plan that is reasonable. If you're realistically cooking two meals a week, plan three. Once three meals isn't that much of a stretch, add in a new one.
I go in two week pay periods, and aim to cook 10 meals. (But we're only home for dinner and two breakfasts and two lunches right now - and this will be changing soon) I may repeat 2 or 3 meals, so I'm actually only doing 7 different ones. Of those 7, 1 is a new one, dug up from a cookbook or MIL's recipe box or online.
I take inventory of the fridge, pantry, and freezer, then make a list of meals, then make a list of ingredients.
Back through the fridge, freezer, and pantry, crossing out the things that I already have, which gives me my grocery list.
I AM ONLY ALLOWED TO BUY FROM THE LIST unless something is rediculously on sale and is something that we buy on a regular basis. I also only go to the store on Payday Saturday. This saves me a TON of money. Like half the grocery budget.
I do not buy cheap food and I do not make recipes with ingredients that I don't dig on their own. If I wouldn't eat Cheez Whiz straight out of the jar, why would I put it in a cassarole? Ew.
I also don't say "Monday is spaghetti, Tuesday is chicken..." I have my list of the meals that I have ingredients for and make them as they sound good.
I've probably got more, but my own babygirl is tugging on my jeans. :)
Groan. I hear you on processed schwat being cheap. There's a reason poor people are out of shape.
My strategy for cooking around a baby who allows little prep time is to use the Crock Pot. You start everything in the morning, when they're usually in more of a mood to play for little bit without so much help from you, and then when it's time to eat everything's ready. Buying a whole chicken or cheaper pieces, like leg quarters, is pretty easy on the budget and great for slow cooking. I also load up on pork roasts for my Crock Pot when they're on sale. Save the bone and use it another day for slow cooked bean soup. That's another thing, soup. Lots and lots of soup cooking all day without your help and not costing too much.
Over at the CSPP recipe wiki there's a great crock pot chicken recipe and directions for chicken stock from the bones and other leftover goop.
In our house we build our meals around meat. A rancher in our congregation gave us a quarter of a cow this summer to fill our freezer, and I bought 16 whole chickens from a local Amish community (only $6 a chicken!!!). Finally, my Head brought home his first buck two weeks ago which he quickly processed and also added to our freezer.
So, this is what I did:
I pulled up a Word document and put 4 Categories: Beef, Venison, Chicken, + Vegetarian
Under each category I listed as many meals as I could ie:
Beef: tacos, pot roast, meatloaf, spagetti + meatballs, chilli, Shepherd's pie, and GLOP (hehe, creation from our college days: ground beef, brown rice, taco sauce, and melted cheese all combined in a pot-our kids LOVE IT!)
If you come up with 7 meals for each category (giving you 28 total choices!) you can paste it to the side of the fridge and at the beginning of each week, choose 7. Then, as you come across new ideas/recipes you like, you just add them to the appropriate category :)
When I first started this I had a meager 12 meal ideas total...but each week it seemed I thought of more ideas! I hope this helps...food has always been a huge challenge for me, esp at seminary when we lived on the food coop!
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