Help me out! Meals at home. NBR

dee1369 · May 2011

I need help!

I calculated that we spend an average of $200+ per month eating out? I want that to end. Financially we?re doing okay, but we just bought a new truck for my husband that is about $200 more a month in payment and I just want to feel more secure in this decision. I?m always scared when it comes to finances, even though we?re doing good, and I want to be happy about the new vehicle (because we need it).

I need a way to ensure that we?re making more home-cooked meals. I?m fine with eating out like one day a week? ordering a pizza on Saturday night or something is fine. It?s ordering pizza twice a week plus getting other things that I want to eliminate.

We have a meal calendar, but we don?t follow it. We get groceries an average of every-other-week, and buy based on that meal calendar, plus snacks. In my budget I allow for $200 each trip but we usually don?t spend that much. So we could potentially buy a little more food.

Help me figure out how to stretch my $200 in the most beneficial way! I?m tired of buying junk so my husband can have his snacks? he needs to lose weight anyway. And give me suggestions on how to make sure we?re cooking at home at least 6 nights a week (barring unusual circumstances).

nae87 · May 2011

DH and I grill a lot during the summer. It's super easy and delicious. Sometimes we'll make burgers, grill chicken, kabobs, etc. We usually have corn on the cob or grilled veggies with it. I slice zucchini, squash, onion, and potato, toss with olive oil, basil, salt, and pepper and then put it in a foil packet to go on the grill. Yummy!

Maybe if you really enjoy to eat out you should try to make versions of your favorite restaurant meals at home? Kraftfoods.com has fabulous recipes. You can plug in the ingredients you have and it will pull up a bunch of recipes that fit what you have.

I'm not sure where you're at, but if you have ALDI grocery stores you should check it out. They are SO much cheaper than walmart and regular grocery stores. They don't always have everything you need (unusual ingredients) but the staples are almost always there. DH and I have saved a ton of money by shopping at ALDI.

Here's a recipe I got from the Kraft Magazine that we tried out a few nights ago. It was so good and easy!

BBQ chicken roll-ups serves 6

6 cups coleslaw blend (cabbage slaw mix)

1/2 cup kraft light dressing

1 small each green pepper and red pepper cut into strips

1 onion thinly sliced

1 1/2 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into strips

1/2 cup kraft original bbq sauce

6 flour tortillas

toss coleslaw blend with dressing, set aside. Cook and stir vegetables in a large non-stick skillet sprayed with cooking spray on medium heat 3 min. Add chicken, cook and stir 3 min or until no longer pink. Stir in bbq sauce, simmer 3 min or until chicken is done. Spoon chicken mix down center of tortilla. Top with coleslaw mix, roll up.

EriAngel · May 2011

Crockpot meals are simple and lazy. Just put the ingredients in, turn on low, and eat!

It sounds like it is just will power. If you have the groceries and the list then you just have to DO IT!

I look at eating in as a way to lose weight. I still have 25 pounds to go (to get back to my wedding dress weight) so eating out is a step backwards in my goal.

Aviee · May 2011

I second the croc pot meals if you don't have a lot of time. There are so many cheap and easy things to make in them. I'm also a fan of baking meals for leftovers (even though I'm the only one who seems to be able to eat them after the first time lol) My favorites are cheesy potatoes with ham and broccoli in it and old fashioned baked beans (has sausage in it). We also do a lot of hamburger helper so that H can manage to do it if he's home (rarely anymore) and they're also good in a lunch for work.

If you like to not have to cook constantly, cook a couple of things in bulk a couple of nights and re-heat them with different veggies. At least one leftover night will mean you only have to actually cook 5 nights a week if you eat out once. Chicken wraps are our favorite snack around here. Just bake a lot of chicken, cut it into strips and put them all in the fridge. H can add his own cheese, veggies, dressing anything for a snack and it's better than bags and bags of chips. Easy to do for lunch, too.

All in all, we might spend $50 a week at our house eating like this (usually less if I'm well planned), and this includes H's work food and drinks as well. We spent a little more this week because H bought a ton of candy lol and we're splurging on s'mores to cook on our charcoal grill this weekend to hopefully relax for a night.

If you're looking for good recipes for certain ingredients that you want to eat up, go to allrecipes.com and you can enter ingredients to search for recipes that include them, and even enter ingredients you DONT want to omit them from what the search comes up with. The recipes are usually super easy :-}

Jenniferk08 · May 2011

The slow cooker can be your best friend. I like being able to throw things together before I leave and then having a home cooked meal when I get back. My mom laughs that I hate to cook but have become the slow cooker queen.

We have one or two things on a weekly basis and then switch other things around by season. In the winter I'll make stew which can be frozen and reheated the next week or chicken soup. The summer I'l marindade some london broil or chicken. H loves his wok so we do stir fry once a week.

One day a week we can get pizza/chinese/etc but very often we go without it. Especially if I plan things out in advance

If you want some recipes for slow cooker stuff let me know and i'll give you my favorite and easiest ones.

Ex:

4 chicken breasts (boneless/skinless)

1 can chicken broth

1 pack dry italian dressing

throw it in the slow cooker and cook on low for 7 hrs. serve with side dish of your choice. We each have 1 breast and the leftovers I'll have for lunch.

dee1369 · May 2011

We do slow cooker chicken a lot - I'd love some recipes for other meals in the Crock Pot, because I absolutely love using it, but usually it's the same thing over and over. I think we're lacking variety.

Jenniferk08 · May 2011

Dee, next time you're out shopping check out the crock pot books at the register. I've found some great recipes that way. Also www.cooks.com has some great listings as well.

navyandviolet · May 2011

we started a subscription to www.e-mealz.com when ds was born. my bff has raved about it for the last year so i gave it a go. it has really helped us stay on food budget, not to mention cut down on grocery shopping time. dh has liked everything i made from it so far.

thatsmary · May 2011

I know this helped us -- allow yourself to buy some "junk food". If you have craving items at home then it reduces the temptation to go out to eat. Most junk that you can eat at home is probably still less calories, fat, salt, and sugar than you would get in most resturants. And definitely cheaper. So let yourself buy ice cream, cookies, chips, and muffins or other "fun" foods that you wouldn't normally get. Once you get in the habit of eating at home you may find that you actually like cooking and eating home cooked meals. I also find that if we make lots of dinner that we have leftovers for lunch, much more interesting than a boring sandwich. Most mornings we eat instant oatmeal or toast and on the weekends we mix it up with eggs or pancakes, etc.

dee1369 · May 2011

navy&violet:
we started a subscription to www.e-mealz.com when ds was born. my bff has raved about it for the last year so i gave it a go. it has really helped us stay on food budget, not to mention cut down on grocery shopping time. dh has liked everything i made from it so far.

Someone mentioned this on the 3-6 month board too... I am thinking about joining. Smile

christyp80 · May 2011

Maybe in addition to figuring out how to eat at home more often, you also need to set a budget for eating out. You said you spend $200 on eating out a month...what, realistically, would you rather spend? $100? Then that means you have approximately $20-$25 a week to eat out. You could give yourself a $20 in cash every week, and that's what you have to use to eat out with. No cheating, and no eating out using plastic (barring a special occasion that you plan for). We do this with our miscellanous spending money, and it's been totally working for us. Also, if you like to get pizza, go for Little Caesar's! It's only $5 for a large and I think they're just as good as anywhere else.

myszko · May 2011

We've been eating big breakfasts lately. DH thinks he's getting fatter, so he wanted to start eating more at breakfast and less the rest of the day. Breakfast is usually cheap, so it works out well. Allrecipes.com is great. There's also crockpot365.com. Time wise I've found it's helpful to do any dinner prepping that you can earlier in the day when LO is napping or content. You can do it!!

sarag0116 · May 2011

To stretch your grocery bill, try stocking up on meat when it's on sale and putting it in the freezer. Same goes with stuff like shredded cheese, butter, etc... it can all be frozen without problems. You can find coupons for most snacks/junk food so try that as well. We go to the grocery store once every 2 weeks. I try to plan out for dinners and lunches over that period.

ksyknelvr73 · May 2011

We DEFINITELY had this problem. It got to a point where we were spending a ridiculous amount of money eating out and DH and I both were getting fat. I literally just got tired of it one day, and we now eat out MAYBE once a week. You don't have to be that extreme, of course ; )

Since I've been trying to diet anyway, I have Slim Fast and a bunch of Smart Ones/Lean Cuisines which are super easy to fix and eat. DH gets his breakfast sandwiches that are frozen, or we have some bagels and pancake mix, and then we get a bunch of fresh fruit - bananas, strawberries, grapes, etc. Dinner-wise, I go stock up on a bunch of meat - chicken, beef, fish, pork, whatever....we toss it in the freezer and we never run out of options. We also stocked up on canned vegetables, but we buy fresh also. I have gotten a lot better at cooking. Anytime I have something that I don't know really how to cook, I google it. Perfect. : )

dee1369 · May 2011

Oh, it doesn't help that my DH is insanely picky. He hates most of the sides I fix and just eats the meat. And he won't eat pork or fish, so we only eat chicken and beef. And we don't have much freezer space for stockpiling meat, although I'm trying to do it the best that we can.

I made a menu for this coming week and based my grocery list on it/the sales at the store. I'm going shopping by myself tomorrow to minimize DH's influence on stupid purchases.

Wish me luck!

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