Monthly Meal Planning 2013.02 - February

For this month I've tried to include more fish/seafood into the mix. I'm already noticing a reduction on the weekly grocery shopping bill. As I had already bought bulk meat in previous weeks to freeze, I have been able to get away with buying only a very small amount this week (lamb for Friday night's pizza). It came to around $120 down from the usual $200. I'll have to add up the grocery bills over a few months to see if there is a true saving but it's a good start!

Mel xx

Monthly Meal Planning 2013.01 - January

After some success with weekly meal planning our dinners last year, I thought I would give monthly meal planning a go in 2013. I started out by listing all of the meals we cook, both regular and irregular ones, and put them under the general headings of mince, meat, chicken, fish and veg. I came up with 46 meals but I knew that we probably only ate about a third of that on a regular basis, tending to fall back on old favourites.

My meal planning goals are:
- Plan monthly, but shop weekly sticking strictly to a list to reduce food wastage. 
- Eat more fish/seafood. We love seafood but rarely eat it at home.
- Hubbie likes to take left overs to work (and so do I for that matter) but there are only certain things we make that a) have enough remaining for left overs and b) taste any good once re-heated so I'm going to try to incorporate meals that taste good as leftovers.
- Start introducing the kids to a wider variety of meals including mild thai and indian curries. Those meals have fallen off our list since we started eating "family" meals.
- Create a family dinner tradition e.g. Friday night home made pizza night.

So ... here was my monthly meal plan for January ...

I did pretty well with shopping to a list and creating meals good for left overs but still need to work on incorporating more fish/seafood into our diets. I enjoyed making pizza's from scratch but I'm wondering I'm going to get sick of eating them every week!

Onto February's meal plan I go!