Menu Planning Cheats

I have a new best friend. It saves me time, it saves me money, it saves me frustration. What is it? Menu planning.

We all know that planning your meals ahead of time is better for your budget. It makes it easier when you're shopping and helps eliminate those last minute runs to the store for items you don't have and it gets rid of those last minute (very expensive) phone calls for delivery because you just don't know what to cook and everyone's hungry. (Of course, living 30 minutes away from the nearest delivery restaurant has solved that problem for us.)  But menu planning takes time, and there are days when I just don't have any to spare. That's where my new best friend comes in. E-Mealz. I subscribed to it just to see if it would work for us, and so far, so good. It's only $15 for 3 months of weekly dinner menus. That works out to only $1.25 a week. You probably spend more on coffee. They have lots of menu options: Family menus, menus for 2, low-fat menus, low-carb menus, point system menus, even some store specific menus that help you save based on where you shop. It's almost a no-brainer. They even give you the shopping list!! Can it get any easier? (Well, maybe if they came and cooked for me.)

So give it a shot. There are samples on the website that you can try to see if you like it. My only complaint is that the sample menus don't give directions for all the meals on the menu, but they have the ingredients on the shopping list, so you can either shop for everything and figure out how to make the meal based on the ingredients, or just shop for the meals you have directions for.  Oh, and if you sign up by clicking on the link here on my blog on the right hand side (you see it, it's right over there. No. Over there.), I get credit for referring you. So that would be really nice. =) 

Let me know what you think.