Harrumph!

Meal planning did not go smoothly this week either, but I know what the problem was this time.  Me.

Once again our usual grocery store's flyer did not arrive in our paper, so I headed to their online flyer and fell down the rabbit hole.  First, I discovered that you can search the sale items by category.  Cool!  I searched produce sales and bulk sales, then I discovered that you can search the flyer by meal idea.  They only offered one meal idea based on sale items.  Harrumph.  No wonder I wasn't particularly inspired by the week's specials.  The people putting the flyer together weren't either!

So, next I headed over to the competitor's website.  I don't generally shop there, but I was hoping their flyer would be more inspiring.  That led to my second discovery.  I can comparison shop all items, not just sale items, by using online shopping features.  I jumped back and forth between websites to scope out the best deals.  By the time I was done, I had a huge list that included items from both stores, but I still didn't know what we were going to eat in the upcoming week.

I took my list, made another coffee and sat down with my cookbooks.  So many possibilities, yet I struggled to bring it all together.  I had a half-plan and an alternate half-plan jotted on my dry-erase board when I took my empty coffee cup to the kitchen.  On my way, I glanced at the calendar, and realized that we don't need to cook on Saturday.  Both plans relied on leftovers from Saturday.  Harrumph again.

So, I cleared the board and started over.  I took a closer look at what was in the house, and came up with a new plan that concentrates on what we have instead of what's on sale.  My new list is a fraction of the size of my original list, and, even though my first list was built on sale items,  I'm sure my grocery bill be much smaller too.

Dry-erase board is looking a little shabby.  Need to remedy that.

Basic meal planning people.  Check what's in the house.  Check your schedule.  Then start planning.  

Still, it wasn't a wasted morning.  I'm glad I discovered that I have the ability to comparison shop at my fingertips.