Meal Planning for Two

I like to take on a lot of things myself when it comes to household chores. I guess this trait comes from my mom :) I hate to delegate, and often find that I'd rather just 'do it myself' than ask for help or spend money on help since I'm also very cheap frugal. I do everything from cooking to cleaning, laundry, paying bills and budgeting. One thing I'm inconsistently NOT good at is meal planning. You'd think it be simple, right? But week after week, I end up planning the same meal over and over again (since I'm one for repetition!) or plan unhealthy meals time and time again. Ross grows bored eating the same thing too much, and I grow frustrated if we aren't eating as healthy as we should be. So I finally recognized this as one of my weaknesses :)

For awhile, I joined the Fresh 20. It's a really great website I would still recommend... if you're a family. They choose 20 ingredients for 5 meals/week. I love that idea behind it! But after using their service for more than a year, more often than not, I found myself not looking forward to the week's menu. Nothing was quite doing it for me. And on top of it, since they plan the menu for a family of 4, often times I was finding myself trying to cut all the recipes in half, which wasn't easy, or I'd only cook 2 or 3 of their meals for the entire week (which if I didn't like it the first time, meant I certainly wasn't looking forward to the leftovers). I still recommend the site, but it just didn't work for us after awhile. Though I may go back to it one day when we are a family of 4 :) Until then, it was time to move on...

So back I went to my own meal planning. And quickly it went back to junk food, not enough veggies since my idea of veggies is the frozen kind (yuck!), or new recipes I found online that would take *for-ev-er* to cook or had a 20-ingredient list for ONE meal! That's a joke, right?! 20-ingredients for one meal? What does that household's grocery budget look like?!! Yikes. I grew frustrated every sunday when I sat down to write out our grocery list. Then I'd take it out on Ross and tell him to do it! *throw hands in the air* I give up!! (I was always so dramatic :)

So I set out again and googled meal-planning websites. I came across "Couple Supper."  Four meals/week for just 2 people and only $5/month. *Hallelujah!* It's just what we needed! Their recipes are easy but tasty, help us to eat the right portions (which I'm awful at gauging myself!) and are plenty well-rounded and healthy. I actually look forward to what they have on the menu each week which is hard to do for this picky-eater (though I've gotten much better :) It's only been a few weeks since we signed up but I like them so far! And Ross is happy to have some variation in our dinners as well as trying new things. Though it seems 1 or 2 dinners/week are vegetarian, which I didn't realize until Ross promptly exclaimed "where is the meat?!!" lol The meals were still just as tasty, and in my eyes, cut down on our grocery bill :)  It's been a win-win so far! And as far as the other 3-nights/week, I like having the flexibility to eat out once or twice on the weekends and/or plan our own meals for those nights :) After all, one of my unhealthy meals is ok when we've eaten good the rest of the week, right?!

So even though I sound like a salesperson, I'm not (I wish! haha) I would really recommend the site. To me, it's worth the $5/month when I know we're eating healthier (and the side dishes don't consist of frozen veggies either!) and I don't have to do the meal planning myself. Just one thing off of my to-do list every sunday :) The rest of my Sunday is filled with chasing Dakota down in order to trim her nails anyway. Priorities, people!! I refuse to pay $11 at Petco for nail trimming. O well...just another one of my frugal ways, haha. Now time for lunch (is there a meal-planning service for that too?!!)....