Controlling the budget

We butchered a 1/2 a cow last Spring.  Sadly we are already out of all of the ground beef and down to some steaks and roasts.  I'm not a big steak eater, so I usually use them by slicing them into Korean or Chinese dishes, etc.  Sometimes Brian will make me something else while he and the boys (and sometimes the girls) eat steaks.  Well, my budget doesn't say beef yet.  It says that we must wait until next Spring or it costs entirely too much for the year. 

First I gave Brian an sermon about us not needing two pounds of beef for every meal.  We can cut back on our meat intake and substitute.  So, I've been pretty much in charge of the menu most weeks.  This is where Brian struggled anyways.  He made the same old, same old every week because of lack of planning and time.  I don't complain because he cooks.  However, money is my department.  I had him go to Aldi and get a bunch of cheap chicken breasts, a friend gave us several more pounds of ground beef as payment for some help at the farm and now we have a deer in the freezer along with some ground turkey I also had Brian pick up at Aldi.  It's only around $1/lb, so it goes further financially and the deer is SUPER cheap. 

Brian now has to abide by my rules of no more than 1 lb of meat per dinner.  That means approximately 3 chicken breasts or 1 lb of ground meat per meal.  He can always fry up a 1 lb of turkey or deer and mix with a pound of beef and it's enough for two meals.  I go through a recipe binder I keep.  I take a cheapy binder, put in sheet protectors and any time I see a recipe I like online or in a magazine I put them in there.  Super easy and now we have our favorite recipes readily available.  I make a menu before I grocery shop.  Sometimes it's based on sale items, sometimes it's just what I feel like making (depending on how much we have going on that week) or just feel like stretching out to something different.  I usually pick up about 5 or 6 items; some quick and easy, some a little more time consuming.  I take the weirder ones (Brian likes very basic recipes).  Brian doesn't like to adlib on recipes and I do.  I will make mine on the weekends or my days off and he takes the other nights.  Sometimes, if I really have time I'll cook up some of the extra dishes on the weekend so Brian only has to finish them. 

It's amazing how much stress this relieves for us.  Brian no longer calls me at work because he doesn't know what to make and he knows when he walks in the door what's for supper.  We can have meat thawed and ready to go.  We never were much for eating out, but this makes you not want to because you're not having the same, boring, meal week after week.  And my favorite part is when I get to cook I throw in a lot of fresh veggies and the kids never ever notice.  They eat veggies fine anyways, but I get a lot more in there to take the place of the missing meat they were use to.  We eat pretty darn healthy with these meal plans too.

This is one of our little tips of getting by, a little less stressed, when parents of 5 work fulltime.