“Oh! I don’t want to make dinner! I don’t want to make dinner! I don’t! I’m too tired!”! If that’s you, don’t worry pick yourself from up off the bed, come into the kitchen with me, and I’m going to show you our LEFTOVER NIGHT!
Here’s my secret, I only cook four to five times a week and we only have a hundred dollar budget for eating out for our family of five. I feel like we’ve gotten it pretty like narrowed down to exactly where we’re comfortable at the moment
So tip number one is that you only need to plan a maximum maximum of five meals a week. That’s it! Just five meals and when you’re making your meal plan make sure you’re paying attention to your calendar what’s going on in the week.
Think about what days are you going to be super busy, what days are you going to maybe be out of town, what days are you getting together with friends or family, all these things need to play into the number of meals that you’re cooking every week.
Which brings me to my second tip, for those extra crazy busy nights there’s going to be two options for you, you’re going to either plan and budget to eat out or you’re going to plan for a leftover night. So, depending on how many people are in your family, you’re going to maybe either want to make sure that you have meals that are making a large enough serving size for everyone in your family or double it so there’s enough serving size to have leftovers.
Planning for a leftover night doesn’t mean that you need to have double of every meal! Just make sure that there’s a couple servings left over, maybe one to two servings, left over of your meals. Yes, you could eat those for lunch but a lot of times we find that we eat some leftovers for lunch and then what ends up happening is you have a full fridge and before you let it go to waste you need to have a leftover night!
So, it’s been about a week since we had a leftover night and our fridge is packed! So on a leftover night, what I usually do is, I start pulling out everything and we’re gonna line it up on the counter buffet style!
Watch Our Leftover Night!
Of course, all of the kids chose leftover pizza and I am going to eat some yummy chicken and potatoes and a side salad!
I hope you try leftover night soon! It really does help stretch your budget, gives you a break from cooking, and keeps you from wasting food and money!
Enjoy!
Brittany
