Book of Recipes

I'm pretty sure I posted about my book of recipes before, but I can't seem to find the original post. None-the-less, I have updated it. I have been reading several blogs written by women with several young children. Within a week or so I read a couple of post about shopping once a month and meal planning. This is an area that I am always looking for new ideas with! One of the ladies said that she picks 15 meals for the month and triples all ingredients except the meat. She has six small children and a husband, and they eat this for two nights. Well, obviously we are not eating quite as much as they are. I am able to do most of my recipes exactly how they are, and they last us two nights. There have been a few things I've doubled, but for the most part a casserole or soup will last us just how it is. So, with all of these jumbled sentences, here's what we're doing now.

Instead of having my binder divided into weeks, I have all of my muffin recipes in the front, then the dinner recipes. Going straight through the dinner recipes, I picked a recipe for Monday, Wednesday and Friday for each week of the month. We eat breakfast for dinner on Sunday nights, so I wrote that in. Sometimes we go to Awanas on Wed. night. When we do that, I cook Thursday, move Friday's meal to Saturday and we have left overs for lunch on Sunday. Also, two Fridays a month I do homemade pizza. For March I needed 13 recipes. 

On the first Monday of the month, I went grocery shopping and bought all of the non-perishable ingredients and all of the meats for the month. I also bought our household items and toiletries, enough for the month. Now, once a week, also on Mondays, I go to the grocery store for fruits, veggies, milk, eggs and cheese (if we've run out). We were given a freezer when we were in Enid, so I am able to store all of our meat, shredded cheese, various ingredients and breads out there.

This has lifted such a burden. I do not enjoy spending forever thumbing through recipes, writing the list, going to the store, spending a fortune. This has cut down on our grocery bill at least 20%. 

Oh, one other thing I did was make a Staples Grocery List. These are all of the items we keep on hand. I like to have a spare of all of our toiletries. We do not like running out! Also on this list are my spices, sauces, baking ingredients, household cleaners and things like that. I have a good mental idea of what's on the list, so when I run out of something that I don't have to replace often, I write it on the list for next month's shopping trip. I am trying to not pick these things up at my quick stops on Monday. That will increase my grocery spending for the month. 

It's all been very exciting and much more enjoyable to only cook and do a ton of dishes every other night.