How Do You Vary A Family Dinner Menu While On A Budget?
Some of my favorite things to do to vary our family dinner menu while considering our budget is to head off to the local 99 cent store to add fresh fruits and vegetables at a really low price. I"ve asked the store personnel when their fresh deliveries are made, and I show up early on those days to get the freshest items for my money.
Another thing that I’ve found really helps is going to a local farmers market to get some good buys on fresh breads and produce.
You can check out all kinds of really good recipes on line at several popular websites and try to make sure that you’re not making something so new and exotic that the family won’t eat it, since that would be a sad way to waste money. But stay with the tried and true favorites to make everyone happy.
Trying an old ’50’s’ style weekly menu of Monday as meatloaf night, Tuesday as taco night, Wednesday as chicken salad night, etc., can have your family looking forward to the yummy routine foods you make that keep them coming back for more. You can buy food ahead of time when it’s on sale so you don’t come up short during the month.
When you’re planning your menus, you should write up your grocery lists. Don’t ever buy anything that’s not on your lists and get coupons that you can download from the computer or glean from the Thursday and Sunday newspapers. Red Plum is the source for those coupons and you can join them on line to make sure you get some really great discount coupons in the mail, too!
To vary your menus, you can buy bulk hamburger or ground turkey meat, make it all at once and then serve different dinners from the purchase like: spaghetti, tacos, burritos, chili, and casseroles. You can do the same with chicken after buying in bulk & cooking it all at once and freezing the rest for later: chicken salad sandwiches, chicken tacos, stir fry chicken, chicken pasta salads and chicken cordon bleu.
Get excited about meeting the challenge of providing good, healthy dinners with a little less expense! It feels good to be a frugal gourmet!
Cooking dinner for your family every night can be a trial when you’re on a budget. Even if you’ve got enough groceries in the house, it’s likely that you stick to the same ingredients (those that you can afford) which can make for a pretty boring menu. But, just because you’re keeping a close eye on your expenses doesn’t mean you can’t vary the menu a little bit. You just have to be creative. Have a rotating list of inexpensive side dishes that will go well with any meal. Not only can a side dish make a meal more appetizing, but it can also help to curb the hunger pangs which cause you to cook more than your budget allows for. Rice, pasta, potatoes, salad and beans can all be prepared in many different ways, are relatively inexpensive to purchase and go well with a variety of main dishes. Vary the menu by having a “choose your own leftover” night at the end of the week. Allowing each family member to select what he would like to eat for dinner from a menu of the week’s leftovers may cr
