Meal Planning Boot Camp.

OK, I’ll admit it. I need help with meal planning.

It seems like we eat the same thing every week and there is absolutely no creativity to it. I have run out of ideas.

A typical dinner for the week will include baked chicken; a small twist on a taco, nacho, burrito dish; roast beef (because we have it in the freezer) and a pasta dish.

Another problem (aside from boring meals), is that I can’t seem to get a handle on healthy meals. I try, but we fall right back into our old routines. I don’t think I can do it any more!

I pull out my cookbooks and thumb through them. Nothing new. What I need is a different way to look at meal planning, grocery shopping and creating healthy meals.

I need help and I have a plan.

My Own Meal Planning Boot Camp

I have created an extensive meal planning – frugal grocery shopping – healthy meal class. I think it will get my meal creativity flowing, give me fresh insight into shopping frugally and with purpose and help with planning for the future. I’m even going to include some easy meals to pull from the freezer on busy nights.

I’ve created this myself with the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle. Here’s what it will include:

Meal Planning & Shopping

I need a mentor (or two) to help me plan meals better and get the most bang for my buck at the grocery store. I bet you can too!

// Backwards Meal Planning by Mindy Harvey – Ever felt stuck with traditional meal planning methods? Backwards Meal Planning could be just what you need to get your budget and your 5:30 dinner freak-outs under control. Find meal planning freedom while creating delicious, healthy, and affordable meals for your family.

// Supermarket Ninjas by Beth Ricci is going to help me steadfastly conquer the grocery store aisles with a cool confidence, resulting in a cart loaded with unprocessed, real, and nourishing foods to serve and satisfy a hungry family! This eBook is your guide along the way.

// Grocery University by Crystal Paine is going to teach me that I don’t have to bust my budget to feed my family! Enter Grocery University: this 2 hour, 19 minute audio eCourse will teach me everything I need to know about making the most of my grocery budget.

// Frugal Real Food Meal Plans by Tiffany Terczak is an all-inclusive meal plan designed to feed the average family of four for as little as $350 a month. Each meal plan comes with a full month’s worth of dinners, plus breakfast, lunch and dessert. It also includes a comprehensive shopping list with price points, prep lists to get ahead each week and money saving tips to help you get the most out of every grocery dollar.

// ListPlanIt Meal Planner by Jennifer Tankersly is your source for recipe inventories, menu and grocery list planning, and other tools to feed your family. It will help you figure out what meals you make on a regular basis, plot them on a monthly menu, and transfer the ingredients to a grocery list for easy shopping. It is your complete menu planning solution.

// Costco Slow Cooker Freezer Meals by Erin Chase. The second edition of the Slow Cooker Freezer Meals meal plan in the 20 Meals from Costco for $150 series gives you the tools you need to put together twenty meals for your slow cooker into the freezer in just a few hours. This plan includes complete recipes with freezer instructions, shopping list, assembly and bulk cooking instructions, printable labels for the bags and exclusive access to videos of the meals being assembled.

I’m not even sure I could take a class to teach me that! Once I’ve completed this part I will have a handle on how to plan, and shop, from an entirely different angle.

Update My Recipe Reserve

It looks like the resources I’ve chosen above also include recipe ideas, but I’m looking for even more inspiration.  Time to update the recipes I keep in reserve for my family meals. These are the books I’m going to use:

// Easy Oven Free Dinners by Tabitha Philen . Don’t use your oven this summer! Keep your kitchen cool by using the grill, stove top, and crock pot. With more than thirty dinner recipes, you can cook a new meal every night for a month and never have the same thing twice!

// No Cook Freezer Meals by Kelly McNelis.  No Cook Freezer Meals doesn’t require any cooking ahead of time. Simply combine the meats, vegetables, sauces and spices, and freeze! This eBook will teach you how to save time and money while making delicious, homemade meals for your family. She promises seventy-seven pages of step-by-step instructions, expert tips, and no cook freezer recipes as well as a grocery list for every recipe inside, nutritional info, printable freezer meals labels, and printable freezer inventory sheet.

// Not Just Taco’s by Shirley Solis is sure to get me out of my taco rut. It’s a tour of Latin America without ever leaving your kitchen. Prepare to enjoy the delicious and flavorful world of authentic Latin American cuisine with the most popular dishes across the Hispanic culture. With amazing photographs, fun facts for every country, a picture for every dish, easy to find ingredients and easy to follow instructions.

// The Healthy Breakfast Book by Katie Kimball makes a real from scratch breakfast attainable. Here’s an upgrade for my breakfast smoothies. With over fifty family-friendly recipes, key tips for planning ahead, hosting a brunch and the one food to have on hand to kickstart your family’s “5-a-day” fruits and veggies at breakfast, The Healthy Breakfast Book: Cereal-Free Secrets to Starting the Day with Real Food will be your guide to healthier mornings.

// Real Food Desserts by Kate Tietje uses traditional principles of nutrition, relying on real butter, cream, unrefined sugars, soaked whole grain flours, alternative flours, and other nourishing ingredients to create healthy desserts. I can have my cake and eat it, too!

// From Your Garden to Your Family by Stephanie Cornais has fifty delicious fresh, in season grain-free/gluten-free recipes that your family will be sure to love. And almost all of them are freezer friendly and will fit perfectly into your freezer meal planning.

Finally, I’m going to head on over to Craftsy and take one of their free courses that are included in this bundle. I can choose 1 FREE Online Class from Craftsy (Select from 24 of Their Most Popular Classes) UP TO $60 VALUE. Craftsy provides premium crafting classes on Cake Decorating, Food & Cooking, Gardening, Knitting, Paper Crafts, Photography, Sewing, and much more. (I’ve taken the Artisan Bread Class – it’s fantastic!)

The best part of all? I can do all of this for as little as $29.97. I’m not sure I can even take a class about meal planning for that amount of money.

Plus, there are probably 75 more interesting things I could do with this bundle.  What a deal!

But time is running out! The Ultimate Homemaking Bundle will only be available from 8:00 a.m. EST on Monday, April 20 until 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, April 27.

My personalized meal planning boot camp (provided by the Ultimate Homemaking Bundle people) is just the thing I need to get my grocery budget and meals back on track. What will you do with the bundle?

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