One of the most challenging aspects of saving on groceries is trying to figure out what to actually make for dinner, when you’ve been diligent about shopping the sales and building up your stockpile. After all, there is nothing worse than suddenly realizing it is quarter after five, the kids are starving, and you have a pantry FULL of food, but absolutely NO idea what to cook!
While there are times where I really enjoy the challenge of creating tasty new recipes using whatever ingredients I have on hand, lately it has felt like dinner in the Soukup house has been more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind-of-show. There has been a lot of creative desperate improvising.
(Peanuts + cold cereal + grapes = a balanced meal! Right?)
For most of you, however, peanuts and Special K does not a dinner make, which means you probably will have to put a tad more effort into figuring out how to balance great sales with great meals.
There are a lot of different approaches you can take. Depending on your personality, food preferences, and time constraints, some will work better than others. It may take some trial & error to find out what works best for your family, and you may also find that what worked for you at one point isn’t working so well anymore. In that case, don’t be afraid to try something new!
The “Just Wing It” Approach
If you are going to take the Just Wing It approach, you can’t be afraid to experiment and improvise. This approach will probably save you the most money, since essentially you will be forcing yourself to use exclusively what you have on hand in your stockpile, and almost nothing else.
I have come up with a lot of delicious stockpile meals this way, but I have also had more than a few flops. There are definitely a few things you can do to make your life easier:
- Be sure to keep a good supply of basics on hand, such as butter, milk, sour cream, cheese, flour, & olive oil, as well some onions and garlic.
- Keep an ongoing list of dishes that you’ve made that you can refer to when you get stuck–you may not be able to recreate something exactly, but it might get the creative juices flowing.
- When in doubt, make noodles. It doesn’t get any easier than spaghetti, and those are ingredients you should pretty much always have on hand. You can always jazz up the sauce with some additional spices, meat, or vegetables if you really feel the need to “cook.”
- Don’t always wait until the last minute. It happens, I get it. (Oh, believe me, I get it!) But once the panic has passed, try to think ahead to the next meal. Is there some frozen meat you can thaw overnight or something you can throw in the crock pot in the morning so it is ready by dinnertime?
Freezer Cooking
Freezer cooking used to intimidate me, but that was before I figured out the “cheater” method! If you’ve read this blog for a while, you know that I am a big fan of easy-to-make freezer recipes that don’t require any pre-cooking. Over the last couple of years, I’ve put together several different 10 Meals in an Hour plans that allow you to whip up ten meals in almost no time at all. All of the recipes use basic, easy-to-find ingredients and allow you to “shop” from your pantry as much as possible. You can find the various plans here.
It does take a little planning to gear up for a freezer cooking day (check out these 7 tips for freezer cooking like a pro), but I love the convenience of having so many pre-made meals at my disposal. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind:
- If you can, plan your menu & print your list at least a month in advance. Figure out what meals you want to make, then shop the store sales each week to avoid paying too much at the last minute.
- In your regular shopping trips, be sure to continue stocking up on sale items when they are at their rock bottom price.
- Don’t forget to stock up on food storage items when you find them on sale! The cost of things like freezer bags, heavy duty foil, & foil baking pans can add up quickly.
“Traditional” Meal Planning
In my pre-coupon life, I would sit down with my favorite cookbooks once a week, pick out a week’s worth of recipes, then make my list and go to the store, nary a coupon (or often even a sale) in site. We ate very well. We also spent over $250 a week on groceries.
I’m not suggesting you do that. However, it is possible to take a more traditional approach to planning your meals and still save money with coupons, even if the savings are not quite as dramatic.
- Before you sit down to plan your meals, take a moment to peek in your pantry and refrigerator, and to glance over the upcoming sale ad. Are there any meals that come to mind based solely on the contents of your stockpile or upcoming sale ad? Add those to your meal plan first.
- Try to pick recipes that include a majority of ingredients you already have on hand. The fewer items you have to buy, the more you will save.
- Be sure when you shop, you are not only buying the items from your meal plan, but also stocking up on any sale items that happen to be a rock bottom price. This will keep your pantry full, and make it easier to plan your meals in the future.
E-Meals Meal Planning
This is sort-of the minimum effort version of traditional meal planning. If winging it is too scary but traditional meal planning sounds far too labor intensive, you may want to try subscribing to E-Meals. This is what I used when I first started shopping with coupons, before I had established a good stockpile and when I was still having a lot of trouble with the idea of not planning every meal. It was a godsend!
For $5 a month, E-Meals will provide a weekly meal plan tailored specifically to your store & based on your store’s sale ad, helping you plan delicious meals using ingredients that are on sale. It is awesome! Most of the recipes are super easy & pretty fast too, and you can even try it out FREE for two weeks!
Even though I am more likely to wing it these days, I still love using the E-Meals lists for dinner ideas, since there are usually at least one or two recipes on the list that I will always have the correct ingredients for.
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Ultimately, if you are going to be successful at cutting your grocery bill in half, you will have to figure out the best way of balancing saving money with cooking to meet your family’s needs. These are just a few of the techniques and methods that I have used, but I’d love to hear your ideas for making meal planning just a little easier as well!
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SUCH a great article as always Ruth!
We started couponing with help from SavingWellSpendingLess.com on 4/17/2011 – what a difference 4 little months can make, especially with tools from LWSL on top of that.
We have three boys so we were used to spending $200+/week on food. After building my stockpile, I now only buy what’s on sale at a rock bottom prices every week and then fruit, veggies, french bread and milk. Every now and then we allow for a couple of items (still with coupons) that we enjoy (ie: ice cream) even if it’s not rock bottom that week. I mainly shop at Publix, but also Winn Dixie for the right deals and about once every 6-8 weeks we replenish the meat with BOGO chicken breasts, pork shoulder, ground beef, etc at WD or at our local meat market. Even on those weeks we are spending less than $80. We portion the meat out in freezer bags and that helps so we can always defrost something a day ahead.
My husband and I LOVE to cook and bake (and, as such, we have a rather large cabinet of spices, baking items, etc) so we just plan our meals around our stockpile and we get creative!
And it IS funny how creative you can get – also adding a different sauce (Béchamel , a caper sauce, a brown sauce with wine) makes meat (or a non-meat protein) taste different every time. I think cooking scares some people but it’s something anyone can do with practice. My advice would be to grab “Mastering The Art of French Cooking” or another great recipe book and learn some of those basic sauces – it will transform your stockpile into some great dishes you can make ahead and freeze or, if you have the time, make fresh.
Thanks Ruth and thank you LWSL!!!!!
My family does not like to eat anything that has been frozen so that makes it hard to plan ahead 🙁
http://www.couponsaremycash.com
I’m pretty good at winging it, but I’ll sometimes get in a rut with my stockpile cooking, and repeat myself a little too often! A bit more variety would definitely spice things up.
Even before couponing, I was a meal planner. My Sunday night ritual is to check out the sales flyers and base my meal plan for the week around what’s on sale. But that’s very time consuming and would love a little help in that regard.
I love anything Mexican, so my pantry is usually stocked with foods to make tacos, nachos, or fajitas.
I LOVE having a stockpile!
Before couponing, I would wing it or shop for a whole week and I would spend a TON of money (plus I was always forgetting stuff which meant we were at a grocery store all the time spending extra money and impulse shopping WITHOUT COUPONS!:( )
Now that I am getting to have a good supply of items, I usually pull out meat the night before and and wing the rest of the ingredients to go with it!
I love to make sauted chicken over pasta or rice, and serve a fresh veggie to go with it
I would like to build a stockpile with more diverse items so I can vary my meals more
I hope I win because I would love to try something new!