Living on Less – Planning for Dinner

One of the biggest budget breakers is eating out, especially for dinner, and the usual reason is failure to plan for dinner.  Dinner happens every evening and many times people act as if it is a big surprise as they haven’t planned what to eat.

Planning what to have for dinner can be daunting for some people and for others it is boring.  When you have a plan in place it does take away the dilemma of what to have for dinner.  If meal planning is new to you, keep it simple.

Start by planning just three dinner meals for the first week. This shouldn’t be too hard.  Go ahead and write them down on a piece of paper.  As an example, one night you could have lasagna, another night you could have a chicken casserole and another night you could have a pot roast.  Make enough for leftovers for another night.  Now you have 6 nights of meals.  Since you have been used to eating out a lot, go ahead and save 1 night for eating out.  In the end you will still be saving money.

How do you begin?  Begin with the meat.  Buy 1 whole chicken (around 5 lbs.), a couple pounds of hamburger, and a large chuck roast.  Here is what you are going to do.

Take the whole chicken and place it in a crockpot with some water and let it cook on low all day.  Be sure to remove the neck and giblets before you do this.  The result is that the meat will fall off the bone and it is easy to remove the skin and bones from the meat.  Shred the meat or cut into pieces.  You will have to let it cool down a bit before doing this.  You now have a considerable amount of chicken meat that you can use in tacos, BBQ chicken sandwiches, a casserole or soup.  Freeze in portions, along with freezing the broth in a separate container, and you have the beginnings for some quick and easy meals.

What to do with all that chicken meat.

For tacos, warm up the chicken in the microwave and add some taco seasoning, then serve in taco shells along with the fixings and you are good to go.

Or take some of the chicken and warm it up and serve on hamburger buns with BBQ sauce on top.

Or cook up some macaroni.  While this is cooking take a can of cream of chicken soup and ½ can of milk and heat this up.  Add to this a couple of slices of American cheese and let this melt in the soup.  Pour over the macaroni, add the chicken and pour into a casserole dish.  You can add some frozen vegetables to this such as peas or mixed vegetables.  Top with some breadcrumbs and bake at 350 degrees til heated through or  heat in the microwave for a quick easy, casserole.

Or add some of the chicken meat to the frozen broth along with an additional can of chicken broth, add some frozen peas and carrots along with a couple of whole cloves, some dried onion, dried parsley and a pinch of salt.  Allow this to simmer for a few minutes and add some cooked noodles and you have a yummy soup.  Serve with some grilled cheese sandwiches.

Or make chicken salad and serve on some wholesome bread for lunch.

Or cook some frozen stir fry vegetables, add the thawed chicken.  To this add soy sauce with a little brown sugar to make a teriyaki sauce.  Heat this through and serve over rice.

Or cook some frozen stir fry vegetables, add the thawed chicken.  Heat through. Add 1 package of cooked chicken flavored Ramen Noodles along with the seasoning packet and about ½ cup water.  Add soy sauce to taste.  Serve with a salad.

You get the picture.  Obviously will you need to cook this chicken on a day off as you don’t want to come home from work and tackle this job and then put together the casserole to go in the oven.

For this week make your favorite casserole from ½ of the chicken meat that you cook and the rest is frozen for another use.  Once you have cooked chicken shreds/chunks in the freezer, you have a lot of possibilities for a quick and frugal meal.

What to do with the hamburger.

Brown a few pounds of hamburger and store in batches in the freezer.  You can take this frozen hamburger and make it into BBQ beef sandwiches, loose meat sandwiches, sloppy joes, or add to a can of spaghetti sauce and pour over pasta or use in a casserole.  Again, having browned hamburger in the freezer creates endless possibilities for a quick meal.

For the lasagna – using your favorite recipe, prepare the lasagna using no boil lasagna noodles.  Thaw your browned hamburger and layer your ingredients per your recipe.  Again, having the meat already browned and ready to go saves steps and saves with clean up.  You can make this up the night before to save even more time.

What to do with the chuck roast.

Peel and cut up some potatoes and carrots.  Place in a Tupperware container and cover with water.  Store in the fridge.  The next morning drain the vegetables and place in the bottom of the crockpot, top with the roast.  Sprinkle a package of onion soup mix on top and add ½ cup water and pour over all.  Cook on low for the day and it will be ready to eat when you get home.

For leftovers, if you don’t have enough for another meal, take what you have and add 1 can of beef broth, heat til simmering and then thicken as for gravy and you now have stew.  Serve over biscuits.

Or add 1 can of beef broth to the leftovers and some cooked noodles for beef and noodles.

Finally:

Add salads or some other sides to the above dishes, along with any bread or other items and you are good to go.

If you end up with a couple of nights of no leftovers, never fear as you have cooked hamburger and cooked chicken shreds/chunks in the freezer ready to be made into a meal.

Some women go a step further and create many meals to freeze and have on hand.  I prefer to have cooked meat ready to make into dishes as I find that it takes up less freezer space and gives me more versatility.

Remember, begin with simple meals.  Anything you can do ahead of time and have frozen will help on those nights when you are tempted to eat out and will also help you save money.