Menus from store ads?

[SquirrellyMama]

Do most people make menus and grocery lists by finding recipes first or my looking at store ads? If you make your menu and list from the store ad how do you do it? I can make a menu and list from recipes that I have selected but I cannot look at an ad and make a menu.

 

How do I do it? Help!

 

Kelly

[Chris in VA]

We do, after a fashion. We have our "regular" meals, and we generally build our meals around the meat, and add in the sides. So, if chicken is on sale, we make a chicken dish, and add in staples like potatoes (zillions of ways to make them) or rice, or couscous, and veggies (salads are a fav here, but we also buy whatever frozen veggies are on sale, and often don't use the whole bag, so we can use them some other time).

We eat cereal, but only buy what's on sale. We buy the brand of paper products that's on sale, or generic, whatever is cheaper (or, if we have a super good coupon, we try to save it for when that product is on sale). And so on. Occasionally, we stock up--usually on soups and staples.

 

We know the things we typically eat, and all the ingredients used to make the more "non-plain" items (like chicken enchiladas). But, like I said, if steak is on sale really cheap, we have steak. If pasta sauce is, we have pasta. It's simple, really.

[G5052]

I have two pantries though and a fairly large freezer, so I buy what I can get a good deal on and store it even if I'm not going to use it right away. One local grocery store has a meat "mark-down" bin that has really good values if you go the right day and early enough. I keep a spreadsheet of what I have stored with the most recent price and carry a copy in the planner that is in my purse.

 

Then Sunday I make a menu based on what's on sale or what I have frozen/stored, and plan when/where I need to go shopping based on our schedule that week.

[SquirrellyMama]

I don't buy a lot of prepared foods so I find it hard to do. I make pasta sauce so a sale on spaghetti sauce wouldn't help much. I shop at Aldi so the tomato sauce there is cheaper than sale tomoato sauce at the grocery store. I guess my question is this "Is it really cheaper to make your menu from the ads?".

 

Kelly

[Mom0012]

I make my menu based on the sale items at the store for the week. But, we eat very simple meals since we are laden with food allergies. Most of the meals I prepare are a meat, a starch and a veggie, so I just base my meals on what meat is on sale for the week in addition to what I have up in the freezer. I stock up when the price is low. I use the grocery game and this saves me a lot of time trying to figure out what is really on sale in the weekly ad.

 

Lisa

[AnnetteB]

I don't know if this is helpful, but we shop at only two or three places for foodstuffs during most of the year. We also like to buy seasonal produce from the farm down the road, but they close during the winter. Dh pops into these two favorite places on his way home from work saving me the entire experience. We have allergies and have a list of staples that we prepare our favorite meals from. Coupons are a rare thing. We don't subscribe to a newspaper because I am allergic to the ink! I think we save time and gasoline the way we do it.

[hsingscrapper]

Yes. You read that right. I've had my oldest take the ads and told him to create a meal for 4 that involved all of the food groups, had a main dish, one side, and dessert for $10 from whatever was in the ads or in the pantry.

 

You'd be surprised at what the kids will come up with. Just give them serving size guidelines (a 1/4 lb of meat per person, for example) to make sure they're budgeting enough food for everyone.

 

My boy has come up with some interesting combinations. I let him count ice cream as dairy in the summertime when it's too hot to think straight in the house.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Heidi

[G5052]

I don't buy a lot of prepared foods so I find it hard to do. I make pasta sauce so a sale on spaghetti sauce wouldn't help much. I shop at Aldi so the tomato sauce there is cheaper than sale tomoato sauce at the grocery store. I guess my question is this "Is it really cheaper to make your menu from the ads?".

 

Kelly

 

I've noticed that sometimes the sales really aren't that good though. My pantry/freezer spreadsheet includes the last (best) price I paid, so that helps me keep track. For example, I buy 50 pounds of organic hamburger for slightly more than $4/lb. from a local homeschooling family once or twice a year. Sometimes the store puts their organic hamburger "on sale" for $5.25/pound when it's usually $6/pound. That's not a good deal. However, if I find organic hamburger in the mark-down section and it's 50% off it's normal price, that's a good deal.

 

You need to know what a good price is, sale or not. For that a price list or book of things you buy frequently is a better deal to find bargains. In Tightwad Gazette they advocate using a little price book that lists the price and store where you get the best deal and updating it. They also are big on "pantry cooking" where you stock up on standard items and just cook from what you have using a set of very basic recipes. That's pretty much what I do, although I try something new on Saturday evenings if I have time.

Edited January 28, 2009 by GVA

[springmama]

Here is what I do-

 

First, I buy many Sunday papers every week, then collect as many coupons as I can for items I know my family will use. I use coupon trading forums to trade the stuff we don't like and accumulate the stuff we do like. We only use natural products, so this can be tricky but it works.

 

Second, I wait until the items I like go on sale. For instance, we like Steamfresh veggies because they are nearly fresh and they are super convenient. When they are on sale BOGO, I get out my coupons and buy as many as I can, combining coupon and sale to get a killer deal. I do this with cereal, and other staple items as much as I can. We use organic milk and organic milk stays good for a long time, so we can even stockpile that to an extent.

 

Third, since meat is never on sale, I stock up on certain types when they go on sale. We use boneless chicken breasts about once a week, and I've noticed that our store has it on sale about 1x a month. I buy a months worth to get me through until the next time it's on sale. Since you rarely see coupons for this kind of thing, the best I can do is get it on sale.

 

Fourth, every Sunday I sit down looking at couponmom.com on the computer. This site lists the sales ad items, plus which coupons you can apply to each item to get a better price. The site also tells you in which Sunday insert you will find each coupon so you don't have to hunt through a big stack of coupons.

 

Then, keeping in mind what I have stockpiled in the deep freezer and pantry, and what is one sale, I plan my menu for the week, making a shopping list to get whatever I don't already have on hand.

 

After my shopping list is finished, I go back to couponmom.com. The site has a database. You can type in the name of an item that you need, it will search the database for coupons and tell you where to find one that fits.

 

It sounds complicated but it takes me about an hour a week to organize all of this. The perk is that we save tons of money and time, because during the week I already know what is on the menu.