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How come the woman who writes the longest running real food Menu Mailer has never written one post on menu planning? Because I plan backwards to most people, and I do it purposefully so I can save a bunch of money at it. Using this method, I save even more than just shopping the sales, and today I’m going to show you how.
Shop the Sale… Or Not?
Instead of menu planning the normal way, I do something quite different in my own home. Most people recommend you look at the sale ads, find recipes based off of what is on sale, make a shopping list for everything you need and then go shopping while sticking closely to your list and ignoring anything with chocolate in it that calls your name from the shelves. But that’s not how I do it at all (other than ignoring the chocolate). In fact, the way I menu plan is backwards to most people, but it does save me money, even sometimes significant amounts of money, and time in the long-run. I’m not adverse to swapping money for time when needed, but this method has shown itself to be a win-win for me in saving both.
Shop… Then Plan?
Since most of my shopping is done at places that do not have ads, such as the salvage and the farmer’s market, I have no way of knowing what is going to be priced the best when I arrive. I go, only knowing what is in season at the time, how many meals I need to serve and the amount of money I have to spend for that week. I prefer to do all of my shopping in one day to save on both time and gas, so I only have one trip to get all of the produce I need for the week. So instead of planning before I shop, I shop for the best deals at these locations, then build a menu around that using my pantry once I get back home.
Keeping a well-stocked pantry means I have emergency food AND I never have to run out to pick something up so I can make the dinner I planned. Nothing gets forgotten. I don’t have to worry about having a list of everything for every meal, to make sure I get it all. I can be confident that I already have what I need at home.
I purchase the pantry items only when they’re on a good sale or I can get them in bulk at a significant discount. I plan meals assuming all of my staples are already in place and I plan around the well-priced, fresh items I can get in season. This method not only cuts my bills, but actually gives me greater flexibility, because I’m not having to worry about the cost of each individual item. It frees up some space to even keep around some luxury items and not feel the need to ration them when the budget is tight.
It does mean that my recipes are limited by what I normally keep in my pantry. However, since most real food pantry staples are easy to store, I don’t find that to be a problem. Grains, nuts, spices and seasonings all store well for at least a couple of months, and some will store for much longer. Home-canned food is happy to sit on the shelf. That side of beef I purchased isn’t going anywhere. The truth is that many things, when stored correctly, can last a year or more.
So, first I hit the Farmer’s Market, then the salvage, buying enough meat and produce for the week. From there, if I need anything else, I head stores that would have an ad for the week. I come home, plan my menu and add the needed pantry ingredients onto NEXT WEEK’s shopping list or my watch list. That way, everything I use in the pantry gets replaced.
So, yes, I shop the sales, but only for staples that I can’t get less expensively through bulk buying or online shopping. Examples include fresh items like Parmesan cheese and eggs. For everything else, I engage in other practices that save me even more money, which I call a watch list.
For example, let’s say I pick up some broccoli and lemons and I decide to make the best broccoli dish ever, my roasted parm broccoli. If I’m running low on Parmesan cheese, I put that on my watch list for next week, as it’s something I never seen on sale- I just watch for it to be available at the salvage for $2 a wedge when they carry it. If I get really desperate and the salvage hasn’t had it in a long time, I’ll purchase a small hunk at the health food store if there is space in the budget. But when I do find it at the salvage, I go ahead and purchase an extra wedge, so I’m always a little ahead as blocks of Parmesan cheese store well in the fridge so long as they are wrapped.
Or as another example, if I get some great looking chicken thighs and backs and decide to make a soup using diced tomatoes in with the other fresh vegetables, I place the tomatoes onto the watch list. Because I have several more packs of tomato in the pantry, that one tetra-pack missing won’t cause a problem until the diced tomatoes go on sale again. I found most pantry staples go on sale at rather predictable times. Of course, when in season I can my own and use those until they are gone, but this time of year, I’m back to using tetra-packs until the garden produces again. If I use eggs, I place those onto my shopping list and pick up more the next week. I always purchase those staples one week ahead.
Watch List
The watch list is simply a list I keep of things I need to purchase at a discounted price. This is a very basic tactic used in couponing, minus the coupons, of course. 🙂 I keep an eye out at local stores for sales and online to find these items at the best deals. Normally, for me that means ordering from Green PolkaDot Box for the best prices, and I order from them once a month, as their normal prices can beat many local sale prices for my area. The Green PolkaDot Box even has sales regularly, and when they put a pantry staple I use on sale, I stock up. Sometimes, it means a trip to a local store when running errands if they have the item on a really good sale and buying 1-3 month’s worth, depending on how often the item goes on sale. Other times, it means ordering the item from Amazon, my Frontier co-op, or the like.
The only exception to this is things that are perishable, like dairy. I store raw milk cheeses to fill in when we don’t have fresh. We can only purchase raw milk every other week. Other dairy products are purchased the week they are needed so they are fresh. But eggs can normally sit a week or three in the fridge without a problem, so I buy ahead since we lost our flock to a predator earlier this year.
In other words, the watch list is used to list out how much of what I need when I find a good deal. I then purchase enough to get me through until I believe the item will go on sale again. The shopping list is used for items that are perishable &/or rarely go on sale. We’ll cover how I know something is a good deal in a future post.
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I’ve menu planned this way for years, and for the same reasons – the places I shop don’t publish sales flyers. It’s just easier to shop, then plan.
I see you are near Asheville. Where is the salvage you are speaking of? We are in that area a few times a year. Btw, I love this method of meal planning, and storing pantry items in bulk makes a lot of sense!
Amy, I use two Salvages. One is Amazing Savings, the other one is Dickie’s. Both are chains. Amazing Savings has a Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AmazingSavingsMarkets
I absolutely agree… the only way to menu plan.
Hi KerryAnn,
This may be obvious to everyone else but what is the salvage?
Also, you mentioned the Frontier co-op. Do you have any advice on how to start a co-op? I live in the desert southwest and haven’t found many options.
Thanks for the wonderful article.
Lorri, the salvage is a grocery store that sells salvaged products. For example, it might be close to being out of date, or it might have one corner of the box dented or the label on a can might be torn. Look in your phone book under ‘salvage’ or ‘salvage house’ or ‘discount grocer’ to see if you can find one locally.
To start a co-op, check out http://www.frontiercoop.com/wholesale They require a $250 minimum order to get free shipping, but in a small group, that isn’t difficult to do.
I love this in theory, but in reality, it doesn’t work for us. We come home from the store, think of all sorts of things we want to make from it, only have half the ingredients, and end up ordering out (if we have the money) or eating plain pasta or rice and beans (if we don’t). If I’m in a hurry, I need to meal plan before I get to the store or I get overwhelmed. On the other hand, if I’ve got time to shop alone (because the kids chattering wrecks my concentration), I can sit down and revise the meal plan once I get there. Nothing’s set in stone until it’s paid for. Of course, a lot of that is counting on wifi to search for nice looking recipes, since I’m criminally indecisive and scatterbrained.
Sandra, the trick is to keep all of those ingredients you don’t have in stock to make the meals you want to in your pantry already. Buy ahead, not when you need the item. Once you switch to doing that, you figure out how to only shop during the sales for those items and your food bill will start dropping.
I understand that, but it hasn’t been an option for a while. After Gary lost his job, our stockpile of staples dwindled. That’s on the top of the list for when he has a job again!
I shop on Thursday afternoons. One of my tricks is having dinner on Thursday already planned (and preferably working in the oven or crockpot) while I’m out shopping. Then, it’s easy on Thursday evening to sit down after the kids go to bed and make up my plan for the next week. I rotate through the same protein on the same nights of the week. Sunday is always fish, Friday is always chicken, Tuesday is red meat, etc. Last, I make basically the same meals regularly instead of always looking for something new to do with a particular food item. For example, I have a basic vegetable curry recipe; several nights a week, I will make that curry, using whatever mix of vegetables I currently have available. A roast chicken every friday night, although I mix up the seasonings in that chicken regularly. If you always make pizza on Saturday nights and you always have a pork roast for Sunday dinner, it’s a lot faster and simpler when it’s time to sit down and menu plan. 🙂
Visiting from Raising Homemakers. . .
Thanks for all the great “black-belt” tips for pantry cooking. I’ve used this method for a long time, and it is far more economical for our family. You had several tips I haven’t seen. I like the watch list idea especially.
One technique I use from when I was brand new to reverse planning is to have a theme for each night: (Italian, French, Chinese, Mexican, Vegetarian, Pizza,Hot Sandwiches, Soup & Salad, Crockpot, Grill Out) so that I can use any type of meat or veg, but still have a framework so I don’t repeat.
Rebecca recently posted..Preparing To Plant!
I plan this way, too! I’m not quite as good at getting everything I need in a once-a-week trip, but luckily there is a supermarket on my way home from work (literally, I just get off the bus two stops early and then walk home from the store) so I can pick up an extra ingredient if necessary. The trick is just keeping a lot of things in stock, buying a variety of stuff, and being willing to swap some ingredients.
I’m sorry to hear you lost all your chickens to a predator–that must have been horrifying to discover! 🙁
‘Becca recently posted..Four Weeks of Pesco-Vegetarian Dinners (early spring)
Statistics show that the majority of households rotate among only 15 of the same meals – that saved me some consternation knowing that my “limited” cycle of family favorites wasn’t outside the norm. Takes pressure off thinking that I “should” be constantly coming up with new, fancy dishes to tantalize the family!!
Excellent article, KerryAnn! I do many of the same things, particularly with keeping the staples stocked. I’m definitely going to share this with my readers. You provide so much helpful info, as you always do! Blessings, Kelly
Kelly @ The Nourishing Home recently posted..Favorite Mother’s Day Breakfast Recipes
Terrific advice. I follow some of these steps, such as buying beef and pork directly from the rancher, keeping our own chickens, shopping the farmers market, some bulk purchases, etc. But we don’t plan menus, just meals. We take meat out of the freezer for the next day and figure out what to do with it. We use homemade stock for soup (sometimes thawed from the freezer because I usually freeze half a batch) and also to reheat leftovers. There are just two of us and we work long hours, so we are very familiar with leftovers. We also keep lots of pantry staples around. Our local grocery store has introduced its own line of dried herbs and spices, and for a huge amount, at least twice what normal spices cost, it’s usually only $3.99. If something gets too old, I feed it to the chickens. (Between chickens, goats and dogs, there is little to go in the compost, much less to be wasted.)
We still manage to shop just a couple of times a week. Just getting to town is 6 miles round trip (and to our favorite health food store with great produce, it’s 20 minutes each way) so we do combine errands and minimize trips. At least I’m not commuting to work anymore!
Thanks for some new ideas.
I meal plan this way, too, and always have! I have always kept a well-stocked pantry with extras of all the items I use to make my usual recipes. It takes up some space, but that is space well-used. I don’t do salvage – we have been blessed with financial good times and I don’t want to interfere with someone else being able to buy what they need there. What items we can get for significantly less at Costco we do. What we save there on coffee alone pays for the gas we use to get there and back.
When you are cooking Real Food you soon discover that coupons and sale items are most often for things you have no interest in buying.
rhiamom recently posted..In Search of Perfect Beef Brisket
Thank you for your choice on salvage. We are currently living on a shoestring budget (for the US) and really, really need that break to make our budget work.
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I run into the same problem Sandra mentioned. To a large degree, I do this. But if I try to use this as my primary/only method of planning, then I get home and find that to make THIS meal, there’s one other ingredient I need. To make THAT meal, there’s this other thing…or I make sure we’re stocked on sour cream and it molds in the back of the fridge because we NEVER needed it all, and then when I DO need it, we don’t have it.
I prefer to make an actual menu plan before I head to the store, but start by planning around what we already have.