Menu Planning - Made Easy!!

I know I posted a while back about making spiffy looking calendars and shopping lists for meals to plan for my family. Pfff, that lasted all of two weeks for us. To which I started to see our grocery bill slowly creeping up each month, because we'd make random trips every other day.

I've used Allrecipes.com in the past, but I'd say half of the things we tried weren't all that great. And it still hasn't helped me with planning an entire meal. I can search and find great entrees, but I can never seem to pair them with the right side dishes. And we can't eat mashed potatoes every night.

So I did some searching around to see if I could find a place that could 1) give me meals that my family would eat (none of us really like seafood), with the right serving sizes 2) feature side items 3) include a shopping list 4) and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

Enter emeals - with weekly dinner menus and matching grocery lists. Seeing that Dave Ramsey has given emeals his seal of approval (and we're trying to follow a modified Dave plan), my interest was peaked. I didn't want to commit to an entire year of emeals, so I did the 3-month trial (that I Googled and found a 20% off coupon code: NEWYOU). I also figured I could rotate those 3 months worth of recipes.

I liked that there were SO many types of meal plans to choose from, and that you could check out sample menus. At first I thought we'd try the Classic Meals, but then I saw a recipe using Cheez-Its and knew it wasn't for us. The Simple Gourmet menu was definitely more our style.


And the verdict? Um, awesome. I have one sheet of paper with my grocery list (breakfasts and lunches are really simple for us), and am able to shop for under my weekly budget.