Shaun got it right! If you are home with little ones and have a fair-sized freezer or separate freezer, you can make plenty of meals ahead by just making a big batch of a recipe each time you cook. Ideas: "Dump" chicken recipes - you mix chicken pieces with various marinades, "dump" it all in a heavy freezer zip bag, put it in the freezer. When you want to have chicken for dinner, pull it out a day or two before, let thaw in the frig, put in a baking dish and bake. Meatballs - I use the Freezer Stash Meatball recipe, make several dozen, bake them on a cookie sheet, drain on paper towels, let cool, flash freeze them on a clean baking sheet, put in freezer weight zip bags. When you want meatballs for dinner, you pull out enough for your family, simmer in red sauce for meatballs and spaghetti, or meatball sandwiches, make a pot of soup and add meatballs, simmer in a mushroom sauce, serve over noodles, etc. Chicken off the bone - boil a couple of chickens in a big pot, cool, pull meat off the bones, make some favorite chicken casseroles, put some in the freezer, have one for dinner that same night. Mexican Meat Mix - cook several pounds of hamburger, drain fat off, season with taco seasoning packages, simmer, cool, pack in containers for tacos, burritos, mexican pizza etc. The concept can be taken further and is called Once a Month Cooking - you cook for one day (a marathon session) and eat for the rest of the month. But you can do mini sessions as I have described. Just do a Google search for OAMC recipes and you will find tons of information. Here is a link to a OAMC Hamburger Plan. Click on the set of pages provided down the article and you will find the Freezer Stash Meatball recipe. You can also Google "Recipe Dump Chicken." Here is a link: Dump Chicken Teresa Here is a link that might be useful: OAMC Hamburger plan

I'm a very big menu planner. I'm a WOHM to 3 boys with 136 acre ranch with 12 horses to keep up with. 40+ hours of volunteering a week, every week, minimum. I literally plan everything. I plan for a month at a time and try to buy for as much of that at a time as I can, usually I can afford about 3 weeks of it, sometimes more. I shop every two weeks. We're in the boonies and I don't like to drive an hour to the major stores. I try to plan for one new recipe every week and at least one crock pot recipe every week, sometimes two. Love the Slow Cooker bags. My biggest goal is to stay below our grocery budget. I don't necessarily cook for the month, but do things to help me out for the month. I'll buy the family pack of ground beef and cook the whole thing. Then strain it, cool in and freeze it 2 cups at a time (about 1 lb) in freezer bags for taco's, sloppy joes, or cowboy beans. I'll slice my round steaks for my stroganoff and other dishes. I cook my italian sausage, slice it and store it in freezer bags in the right amount for my red beans and rice and spaghetti sauce. The amount of time it saves me is incredible. When you come in the door from work and have laundry and a house to clean, 4 hours of homework, dogs and horses to feed and still have dinner to cook it's nice to know you can throw a bag of precooked ground beef in the micro for 1 1/2 min , grate some cheese, chop tomatoes, onions, lettuce and cook some shells and you have homemade taco's. In less than 15 min. When I cut veggies for my roast (crockpot)I just keep on cutting. I set up 5 bags and 1 container. The container is for the morning and the bags go in the freezer. It only takes a couple extra mins to chop those veggies and saves a ton of time when running out the door in the morning. The kids also like knowing that they can look at the menu on the fridge in the morning and know what's for dinner that night or the rest of the week. Something to look forward to if their favorite food is coming up.

Leanne Ely is one of the most well know dinner divas. She has complete plans and shopping lists. http://www.savingdinner.com/ Hillbilly housewife is focused on saving money, but she has good ideas. http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/menuplanning.htm I've looked at Menus for Moms before. It's free, but I'm not sure of a shopping list. http://www.menus4moms.com/kitchen/weeklymenu/ This blog has a couple of hundred women listing their Monday meal plans. I've got to go back and check that. http://orgjunkie.blogspot.com/ scroll down towards the bottom of the page. I haven't tried this one, but she does have shopping lists with her menus. http://www.dinewithoutwhine.com/ http://www.mealmixer.com/ http://www.busymomsrecipes.com/menuplans4newbies.htm http://www.munchkinmenus.com/id8.html I've tried saving dinner and my family just didn't like her meals. What seems to have worked best for us is to sit down and come up with a list of as many meals that we can think of that we like. Kind of divide them up according to type and effort, then create a few plans and grocery lists. Gloria

Things are changing hourly, lol. Good thing we are in a festive mood. Our boiler stopped working, scratched our heads about that mysterious 'boiler' room downstairs and the temp seemed sorta fine. Turns out we have two...one for upstairs and one for down. Rarely use the downstairs heat as it is half in soil built into a hill and keeps a nice 65. DH was fussing down there and cranked the heat... Called a # on the unit and the owner of the company stopped by in an hour and changed the thermostat. (when does that ever happen!?) Turns out he installed the originals and was full of stories about the neighborhood and our original owners...and yes, we need a new boiler and it is ordered...MerryChristmas, yikes. $ Had to postpone our trip by a couple days...travel xmas morn. Menu is still the same. Pork butt is in the oven on low and slow for tamales. Ground all my spice mixes. Making 3 mustards. Toasting croutons for the oyster stew that is now going to be a seafood stew Saturday. Soaking salt cod for cakes. Managed our shopping trip after the boiler was semi-fixed. Near a re-peat of the Thanksgiving shopping...one of everything for a mixed veg roast with the turkey. Crazy crowded but they had all lanes open for quick check-out. Jolly crowd and seems good moods are all around. Scrapped Costco and Rockland Bakery as the traffic was unusual for 2pm and it has been gray and raining for two days. Can live without any of that. Guessing it is gift shopping and kids are off school tomorrow so mom's are doing the last minute things. Always amazed what little it costs for feeding 6-8 for 5 days when so much of it is harvest garden goods. Food, meals and cooking is always my gift so no other shopping is needed and the type of shopping i don't like is gifting and wrapping. Need a substitute for file/sassafras. DH has everything for an oyster/andouille gumbo he is insisting on making...thought i had some deep in the cupboard. (but it would have been 20yrs old) If this was colder temps we would be deep in snow right now. Wow is it raining non-stop....