Saving a Busy Moms Sanity with Dinner Preparation

For those of you facebook FANS and twitter followers you’ve heard me talk about how great dinnertime is at our house these days since I have discovered e-mealz.    OH MY GOSH!  I had thought I had menu planning down. I used to take 2-3 hours once a month to plan a menu.  I would flip through cookbooks looking for those amazing recipes my family would love, I would go hunting for  those scraps of magazine pages I had ripped out while waiting at the doctor’s office or go with some standard dinner fare my family always loved.  But you know ladies….how many of you have had these good intentions?  Yep, I knew I wasn’t the only one – it lasts about as long as it takes to continue to get the grocery’s for those great menus you have planned and if you’re like me I didn’t have the time to keep putting together the menus – so then the chaos would come.   I would fall off the dinner planning wagon and before I knew it 4:30 PM would come. I would have that nagging headache pounding inside my head, because once again I had failed at dinner planning.   I am ashamed to admit it – yes, even The Confident Mom is not so perfect, organized or confident sometimes!   (psst, don’t tell anyone!)

I hate that feeling of trying to come up with something for dinner – no less at 4:30 when it seems that you are always missing one ingredient for that simple “save the day” recipe.  So in my despair and hunt for ideas to share with you busy moms, I stumbled upon e-mealz.  I have looked at other menu planning sites and thought they were the answer, but ladies – this site and the menus that Jane DeLaney and Jenny Cochran co-create each week are amazing.  Not only do you get a menu with 7 dinner ideas, you get an easy recipe (seriously it fits into a little box to the right of the ingredients and take less than 30 minutes of prep!) plus an easy and economical grocery list.  Need more?  Well, brace yourselves, hang onto that coffee cup – you can pick which type of menu you want AND what grocery store you shop at to get the best value for your family by using what is on sale that week at your local store! Plus you choose menus that match your diet requirements too.  Can you believe it?  Yep – you heard me right!  Here we go just to give you some idea:  Family meal plan for 2 or 4,  Kroger, Aldi, Wal-Mart, Publix, Ralphs, any grocery store plan, low-fat, low-carb, points system menu, and vegetarian. If there isn’t something here for your family, then you need to keep planning on your own!

I cannot tell you how I look forward to getting my new weekly menu plan and looking over the great recipes, figuring out what day each will work with what our family has planned and then going through the grocery list.  Last week I spent only $45 for the entire week of groceries, yes I had some meat already purchased in the freezer, but the recipes require few ingredients and the best part is the choices are budget friendly for us moms who are trying to squeeze every last penny in our family budgets.

Every meal our family has had so far has been a hit.  Some especially good ones were:  Chicken Tortilla Stew (crockpot favorite!) Chinese Pot Roast, Salsa Sirloin Salad, Crock Pot Tortellini and Chicken and Rice Bake.  The relief I feel in the morning knowing I already have a plan for dinner is unbelievable, especially when I get the ingredients out and set them on the counter to prepare the recipe later. Walking by that counter all day just makes me smile and I feel good knowing “I have it under control” – with a little help from my friends at e-mealz.

A 3 month subscription for your choice of menu plan is $15 – that’s just $5 per month.  I can tell you the money you save by using ingredients that are on sale at the store you shop will end up paying for your subscription in no time.  You can try a sample right now with their FAMILY DAY 2009 menu they have available on their site www.e-mealz.com.  I am happy to offer a 3 month subscription FREE to one of my readers too – just post a comment below for an entry, tweet this blog post for an entry(copy, paste to post on twitter:  @ConfidentMom  New Blog post: enter to win http://bit.ly/j2VXo ) and if you purchase a subscription post a comment with your favorite recipe by the close date you will receive 2 entries!  If you do decide to purchase a subscription before the contest ends, no worries – you will be set for an additional 3 months with menus coming your way.  Click here:  e-Mealz.com.

Contest entries end midnight PST October 23, 2009, winner will be posted October 24th, 2009.  Pass this blog onto your friends and family so they can get a chance to win too – the more the merrier!  Now off I go to check out this weeks new menu and plan my grocery shopping.  I just saw it was released and I cannot wait to see what’s for dinner at my house this next week!  An added benefit – my family loves the variety and makes our time around the table even more enjoyable – try it for yourself.

Tagged as: dinnertime, EMealz, grocery shopping, stress reliever, time-saver