Weeks Worth Of Meals For $10' title='Weeks Worth Of Meals For $10' />Weeks Worth Of Meals On A BudgetWeeks Worth Of Meals In One DayGermany The Sturm Family of Hamburg. Food Expenditure for One Week. What The World Eats. TIME. family consumes in a given weekand. Our delicious dinners make it a cinch to eat nutritious meals all week. Days of Super Healthy. Find and save ideas about Week of meals on. These 21 Day Fix Chicken Crock Pot Recipes are a great way to make an entire weeks worth of meals quickly and easily. How to Plan and Cook a Weeks Worth of Healthy, Tasty Meals. The two biggest objections I hear to eating healthier, whether it be paleo, primal, or whatever you want to call it, are that its too expensive and its hard to cook interesting meals. The truth is, neither of those things have to be the case. My husband and I who both eat a lot of food, by the way spend between 1. AC8100000578-4619936-image-a-23_1497921336522.jpg' alt='Weeks Worth Of Meals For $30' title='Weeks Worth Of Meals For $30' />That money covers all our meals, as we eat out only once at the most. I cook meals every weeknight that are as various as they are nutritious. And preparing them is surprisingly uncomplicated once you get the hang of things. Its not that eating healthy is actually complicated and expensive its that you dont have a system for making it easier and more affordable. Ive put a great deal of thought into creating this system for our household, and now Im going to share it with you. Step 1 Invest in Cookbooks. The first step meal planning is having good sources for your recipes. This means having cookbooks. There are plenty of websites out there with delicious recipes that you can access for free. Personally I like having a hard copy in the kitchen with me and I like the thematic aspects of a whole cookbook. Some of my favorites are Paleo Slow Cooking, Paleo Comfort Foods,Well Fed, Practical Paleo, Weeknight Paleo, and Make It Paleo. I like each of them for different reasons. Paleo Slow Cooking has great, simple recipes. Well Fed has spicy, sassy recipes. Practical Paleo has great vegetable sides. And Make It Paleo has my favorite dessert recipes of any cookbook. Whatever your sources, make sure youve got the recipes from which to start your meal planning. Step 2 Inventory Your Kitchen. When planning your meals you need to know your possible cooking mediums. Look around your kitchen at the tools you have. I have a new slow cooker, an old slow cooker, two microwaves, an oven, and a stovetop. I have discovered, through trial and error, that Im a stressed out mess when I try to cook multiple things on the stovetop. Im a chronic recipe double checker, so the timing of constantly checking the recipe and working my way through the steps of multiple dishes overloads my brain. My solution is to never plan a meal that has more than one dish per cooking medium. So, if I have a main entre and two side dishes, I have one each in the slow cooker, oven, and stovetop. As my multitasking abilities and comprehension of how to adjust disparate recipe temperatures in the kitchen are growing, I sometimes make a small amendment to this rule and allow two items in the oven. My Personal Tip A few years back I had no idea how to do anything in the kitchen. If youre where I was, sign up for some cooking classes. If you wanted to get better at Olympic lifting, youd take lessons. So, consider doing the same if you want to get better at feeding yourself. Step 3 Sit Down With Your Homework. Every Sunday I sit down in the living room with a notepad and a pile of cookbooks. I tell my fiance its time to do my homework. I spent thirty to sixty minutes going through my cookbooks, selecting my recipes, and creating the menu for the week. See photo below for menu example. From this menu I then generate my shopping list. Once I finish my homework, I head to the grocery store. All in, its at most a two hour process that saves me time and money throughout the week. Choose Your Meals Wisely. I plan meals for Monday through Friday nights. We eat leftovers every day for lunch. We cook a simple breakfast of eggs and sometimes sausage or veggies in the mornings. If I have time, some weeks I make a crustless quiche on Sundays to eat for breakfast throughout the week. On weekends we eat leftovers or something from the freezer, or we might go out for one meal. Every Sunday night we treat ourselves to a home cooked steak dinner. As I mentioned, our grocery bill is consistently under 2. When I create the weekly menu Im thinking about a number of things Is there enough variety in the protein sourcesDo we have green vegetables with every meal Is there a source of starchy carbohydrates for my fiance Is there a variety in color and type of vegetables over the week Will there be enough left over for lunch What vegetables are in seasonWhat is on sale at the grocery store Can my personal schedule handle this workload of recipes I often check the website of my grocery store to see whats on sale in the meat department before I plan my weekly menu. Weve had some great cuts of meat for dinner we wouldnt have had if I hadnt done this, and we saved money. I also try to stock up our freezer when I come across great sales and ease my work in the future. The last question on that list my personal schedule and workload goes a long way toward alleviating stress. I have longer days on Tuesdays and Thursday because of my train commute to work. I always make sure to plan simpler recipes that require less preparation on those days. Theres no reason to make it harder on yourself if youre planning things out ahead of time. Alternately, you can always chop all your veggies in advance to make things easier on busier days. The key is to plan ahead and keep it simple. Cooking can feel overwhelming if youre new to the kitchen, so start small dont start with extravagant meals. If I decide to try a new recipe, I make sure all the other recipes that evening are tried and true. So, if youre new to cooking a certain entre, then just steam some veggies for your side dish. My Personal Tip When I create my menu I also write the cookbook name and page number to the right of the recipe see photo. This helps me not aimlessly page through cookbooks all week. Instead I can quickly pull out the right book and open to the correct page. Once I have my menu planned for the week, I create my shopping list First I go to each recipe and write down all the ingredients I dont have in my kitchen. I dont worry about organizing them at first. Just write them all down so you can put your cookbooks away. Second I get a blank piece of paper and rewrite the ingredients in a more organized fashion. I group them similarly to how the grocery store is organized meat, vegetablesfruit, canned goods so that I can quickly move through the store and not go in circles. See the two versions in the photo below. Now, all I have to do is follow my own instructions. I go to the store and buy exactly whats on the list. Each night I make the meals Ive already planned out. If I have extra time I prep the vegetables for meals later in the week. It takes a lot less brainpower and a lot less time this way. We also never waste food anymore because everything is accounted for. As your comfort in the kitchen grows, your ability as a cook will also evolve. I handle much more complicated meals now than I did a few months ago, and Ive begun adding desserts to the weekly menu, too. Youll find as you experiment each week that there are recipes you revisit and they become easier each time you make them. I keep track of these easily by putting stars next to them in my menu notebook. I keep all my meal plans in one notebook for easy reference and for looking back on previous weeks, as to what went well and what did not. Vegetable Frittata more. I also make notes right in my cookbooks if I change the recipes so that I dont have to try to remember little details in the future. Remember, the goal is to use planning to make things easier. So, its not that healthy cooking is necessarily complicated or expensive. It can be, but it doesnt have to be. All you need is a system for moving forward. Once you create that system, before long youll be eating better with less work and for less money.