Meal Planning Woes

Last night I spent an hour and a half planning our meals for the food stamp challenge week. That's in addition to the 15 minutes I previously spent on it when we first considered the challenge.

And I'm not quite done yet. I need to do some price comparison at various stores and then make a few revisions based on the results. I also realized I left out a crucial item: after-school snacks. Plus, I have a meeting next week where bringing food would be a nice gesture and might increase productivity. I have to fit that into the plan somehow. (Note: Eric thinks this should be outside of the budget because realistically, someone on food stamps would not choose to bring food to this meeting.)

Normally, when I plan our dinners for each week, it takes me about 30-45 minutes, including making a grocery list, which I haven't yet finished for this week.

Here's the difference: on such a tight budget, I have to plan everything. Every breakfast, every lunch, every snack. Normally, I plan the dinners, then just pick up our usual staples: bread, cheese, yogurt, hummus, tortillas, cream cheese, bananas, other fruit, cereal, milk. And I only plan out the veggies for about 50 percent of our dinners. For the rest, I just buy what's on sale or in season.

That approach usually works fine. I've gotten pretty good at estimating our weekly food needs. Occasionally I end up with too much, and other times I need to make a midweek stop for extra or forgotten items.

This week, there's no room for error. For this to work, every mouthful has to be planned in advance.

If I were working two jobs to make ends meet, I probably wouldn't have the time or energy to do this kind of planning. Certainly not every week. And if I did have the time, I would have to wonder about the best way to spend it: meal planning, or moonlighting to bring in more money, or studying to improve my job qualifications, or even just relaxing after a stressful week of living paycheck to paycheck.