I am not sure who really actually reads this blog, but I am attempting to figure out if there would be any interest out there in a project that I am thinking about undertaking. The goal would to have the product available for purchase before the holiday season. Here is the background....
I personally hate grocery shopping. After we got married, I found that we were basically doing a once a week trip to the store to get enough food to make it through another week. This typically was done on our way home from work one evening or earlier in the day on Saturday. Not only was I tired of shopping that frequently, but we ended up going places out of convenience rather than what was most cost effective. I decided that something needed to change, so I decided to work towards a once a month shopping approach, buying the bulk of our food at Winco and making quick runs in between to get only a handful of products such as milk and some produce that spoil if you don't use them up quick enough. It was difficult at first as I tried to figure out how to plan our menus to use up the ingredients in the right order to avoid spoilage, but now that I have been doing this for at least 2 years, I will never go back to the way it was.
Many of you may also know that I prefer to cook healthier foods. In our house, we typically do not have beef (we eat a lot of chicken, turkey, and pork as well as quite a few vegetarian dishes), we watch the overall fat content, and we are currently watching sodium content more closely. We rarely go out to eat, and because I have a plan, we typically have meals that aren't processed foods. For meals during the work week, I focus on simple recipes that usually take 30 minutes or less to prepare, and then I may spend more time in the kitchen on the weekends. I can honestly say that between a run to Winco and one to Costco every month, our food bill averages about $200 per month. As best as I can figure, that is about $100-150 less than we were paying before with the one a week shopping. We also had a greater tendency to grab fast food because there wasn't really a plan. I am also a person who prefers to have variety in my meals, and planning this way allows me to accomplish this, trying new recipes as I go.
So now this brings me to my project. I have had several people ask me if they could just get a copy of my monthly menu plan. I am considering putting together an entire year's worth of menus, including recipes and shopping lists, but before I put that much time into it, I need to find out if there is interest. Keep in mind that what I currently do is a plan for two adults. I am sure this could also be used for a family who only has one child (one that isn't a teenager that is). It would also be easy to make substitutions based on personal taste preferences. Please comment if this is something any of you out there would be interested in.
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