Weight Watcher Meal Planning Part 1, on a budget

I am trying to be get back on track when it comes to shopping with a budget, meal planning, and weight watchers. I've found some great meal planning tools on pintrest, some are very involved.
http://clairsfairytale.blogspot.com/2012/01/ultimate-menu-board.html and http://robbygurlscreations.blogspot.com/2011/05/asian-recipes.html. If I want to stay on the WWs train then I need to pick my recipes, rather than just follow what these girls came up with. Also, my budget is different from theirs.

So I have created a word document and I am making recipe cards. I am going through my WWs cook book and copying the recipes and making changes to the recipes based on our budget, what we typically eat, and changes I usually like to make to the meals. Many of the recipes I go from memory. So I could potentially just put the name of the recipe, but I thought I would include all the information so it could be helpful to others and to help me stay the course with WWs!

This is so time consuming. I've been doing it for over an hour and I only have 10 recipes. My hope is to do all of the recipes that we typically eat. And then I will most likely organize them by category, and then I will create my menu board. Doing all of this should help reduce or at least help control our food budget. One of the keys to not over spending on food is to go to the store a minimal amount of times.

Something else I need to work on with meal planning is thinking beyond just a main dish. Typically the side is an afterthought, if I even have one. It needs to be simple. It would be nice if it's something other than a salad. I do typically have a variety of veggies on hand (broccoli, asparagus, etc) and it's usually easy to roast or steam.

It's after 11pm and I should be in bed. There is still much work to be done on the meal planning. I mean business about this, so I should be back tomorrow to give an update of what I've accomplished! You know what would be great...if I could also include the price of everything. That's a little ambitious. I think for now I should stick to making my recipe cards and then my menu board. The creation of the menu board should be fun as it will entail creativity.

Chickens

The important thing that I learned about writing is that I have to do it even when I don't think I have anything to write about. So at times you may encounter randomness.

Today with my other mom friends we talked about money and budgeting, as we usually do. We all get by without assistance, for some it's harder than others. Some of us could qualify for aid, but don't use it. This has been something I've been thinking about for a while. So I asked them, if you qualified would you apply? One friend said her pride wouldn't let her. I could see that. I would be conflicted if we can make it without the aid but qualify for it can and should we use it? Would I be taking advantage of the system? What would you do?

Along the lines of budgeting we discussed food, particularly raising chickens. I think I may have convinced my husband that we should get chickens! I was told I need to do my research. I'm very excited at the possibility. We only be allowed to have 3 within city limits. Apparently they produce 1 egg a day. The girls and I go through nearly 3 dozen eggs in about 10 days. I can definitely see this as something that will save us money! I will share the research that I find. If I am really feeling ambitious perhaps I'll share the building of the coop, their roaming area, feed we choose, etc.

All this talk of chickens has me very eager to return to my research!