A New Kind of Dinner Plan

Are you perpetually over or under- thinking your dinner plan? John and I do this all of the time...we love to cook, but if we don't have a strategy then the amount of time we spend on last-minute shopping, the cost of groceries, prepping, cooking and cleaning sometimes is not worth it (esp for 2 people). The alternative of going out to eat often is also not good for our health or budget.

Imagine our excitement when we heard that E-Mealz has the new Weight Watchers point system two-person meal plans. Dave Ramsey writes about E-Mealz on his web site (and if it is good enough for Dave, then it is good enough for us). This system creates a weekly meal plan with recipes and a store-specific shoping list to follow (note: Wal-Mart is the only option listed for our area). There is a $5 charge/month for this service, but it seems to address exactly what is important to us:

• Convenience
• Helps us plan ahead (because when you are following an eating plan, or diet, planning makes you far more likely to achieve success)
• Good menus- use foods we like to eat
• Support nutition goals (which includes eating a ton of fruits and veggies- fresh when possible)
• Save $- It aims to keep the entire week's grocery bill under $45 (for 5 dinners for two people).

John and I just subscribed to E-Mealz and will be able to utilize this system for three days this week. Tuesday is cheeseburger pie and salad (6 svgs). Wednesday will be cheddar cauliflower soup and toasted cheese pitas (4 svgs). Thursday is cobb salad pitas and broccoli slaw (2 svgs).

The total for my week one shopping list was $27.88 for the menu items (this does not include the price of ground beef, an item I aleady had). Then I spent an extra $10.76 on items I need that are on the "staples" list. So the grand total was 38.64 for what the recipes say= 12 svgs of meals. This means that we will have dinners for Tues-Thurs evenings and lunches for Wed-Fri for an avg of $3.22/meal. If you do not factor in the cost of the staples, it would be $2.32/meal. Either way, it more than beats the cost and nutrition of most other alternatives.

The menu items for this week

Items on the list of staples

I did some minimal prep when I got home- diced onion and browned the ground beef and onions that I will use tomorrow. I also hard boiled the egg that will be used in dinner on Thursday. Tomorrow's dish should take about 5 min to prep and then will bake for about 35 min. Sounds easy enough for me. I feel so accomplished already :)

John and I are hopeful E-Mealz is a good dinner solution for us. John has been doing Weight Watchers since October and has had a lot of success with it (42 lbs- way to go love!). I am really excited about trying out this system- it is great being able to support John and his goals, plus it is good for me too :)

Will keep you posted on how this goes...