This exercise in meal planning has gotten me through a lot of lunches …
One of the most straightforward ways to reduce expenses is to pack your lunch if you're not already doing so.
The trick is taking the time to prepare the lunch. It's not difficult, but it does take some time. It takes more time if you want to go fancier than a TV dinner in a cooler.
(Not that there's anything wrong with that; one of my colleagues does that regularly and it works for him.)
Homemade meal planning for people who don't love cooking
Another one of my colleagues makes amazing food: potato crisps, spaghetti with meat sauce made from scratch, and so forth.
I'm not that kind of guy. I've gotten over my fear of cooking, but that's a far cry from gourmet chef.
Spending all afternoon in the kitchen isn't my idea of a good time. I'm willing to trade off a lot of gourmet for time doing other things, so meal planning that is mostly set and forget is great.
Here's the hamburger soup recipe I use week after week
Thankfully, I'm also a creature of habit, and I will eat something regularly after I find that I like it.
This recipe for hamburger soup (based on this one) is one I make once every 2 1/2 to 3 weeks. It takes about an hour each time (not counting letting the soup cook) and I get about 15 servings out of it which keep nicely in the refrigerator.
- 2 lbs ground beef, browned (I use 80% lean; use whatever amount of the fat in the soup)
- 96 oz beef stock (I use three cartons of Kitchen Basics Beef Stock)
- 48 oz marinara sauce (I use whatever variety of Wegmans marinara is available)
- 48 oz (or so) of diced tomatoes, not drained (I usually use about half of a 105-oz can from Costco, which costs a whopping $2.89, and freeze the other half for the next batch)
- 1 can (15 oz or so) of great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 can (15 oz or so) of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 lb carrots, peeled and medium sliced (I use a mandoline slicer to speed things along)
- 1 bunch of celery, medium sliced (mandoline slicer again)
- 1 onion, peeled and finely chopped (I cut it into wedges and then use a Pampered Chef chopper)
- 8 oz dried pasta
- 1/3 cup dried parsley
- 1 tbsp oregano
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp (or more) Tabasco sauce (I like it spicy)
All of this I throw into a 12-quart stock pot (I brown the ground beef first), To get the last little bit of marinara sauce out of the jar, I swish around some of the beef stock in the jar. This dislodges most of it. If I'm using frozen diced tomatoes (see above) then I just throw the block of diced tomato ice right into the pot and let it melt as things heat up.
I let the whole thing cook on medium heat until the carrots aren't crunchy anymore. There might be some gentle boiling but not too much. I stir it a few times so stuff doesn't burn on the bottom.
After the carrots are cooked, I let the whole thing cool off enough to ladle servings into covered containers, and put them in the refrigerator. Then I take them to work in an insulated lunch bag and microwave them.
How to save money with meal planning
This hamburger soup is but one recipe. Here are a few things to look for with your own meal planning endeavors:
- Make enough servings to make it worth your time. This isn't a necessity, of course, but I like efficiency in this area of my life. An hour every few weeks, plus cooking time, in exchange for 15 lunches is a good trade-off for me.
- Don't make so much that you don't go through it, or get sick of it. I go through my hamburger soup in plenty of time so that it doesn't go bad. And I've been eating this for years, pretty much at least two times every week, sometimes five or six times a week. If this isn't you, then adjust accordingly.
- Make it easy technically. This recipe is really forgiving, even if I overcook it. The only thing I have to watch a bit is the Tabasco sauce, but a bit too much and I just end up clearing my sinuses a bit more this batch. If not soups, then crock pot recipes like chili or chicken dishes are similarly easy to do.
- Plan ahead to make sure you have ingredients. We have shopping lists on a whiteboard off the kitchen. We also have some staple ingredients on Subscribe and Save (the beef stock is one of them) that are delivered at approximately the rate we use them.
- Make stuff you enjoy eating. This is probably obvious but meal planning does not equate with suffering. Experiment until what you make yourself is better than prepackaged meals, or meals out.
