Couponing Meets Menu Planning

That's right ladies and gents....she's back!  I interviewed Jereka, the Coupon Queen, in the post titled: Couponing for Jesus, where she gave us some basic instructions, best places to find coupons, and her reasons for couponing.

Today we'll be showing you how we developed a dinner menu plan for a week, and we found coupons and grocery store sales to match.  You can save more money if you develop your menu plan around the coupons and sales that are out there, but I'm kind of a spoiled princess when it comes to my food, so we did it the other way around.

This week we've had temps in the upper 90s and even over 100 degrees, so we designed a menu to accommodate not turning on the oven so we didn't have to heat our houses any further.  I could have picked meals that didn't require the stove top either, but like I said, no matter the temperature, I'm still a spoiled princess (my men are spoiled too) when it comes to my food.

Here's our menu:

Monday- Gourmet Chicken Salad with pecans, dried cranberries, celery, and a diced apple & Chips

Tuesday- Blackened Tilapia, rice, and mixed veggies

Wednesday- Chicken Caesar Salad with homemade garlic toast

Thursday- Pepper Steak, mashed potatoes, and corn

Friday- Breakfast for Dinner (pancakes, bacon, eggs, cream of wheat)

If you would like any of these recipes, please e-mail me at tianna.mae@gmail.com

There's enough food to have "Clean the Refrigerator Out" meals for Saturday and Sunday.  I know ya'll have heard about cleaning the refrigerator out; you either eat what's leftover or freeze it!

Also, if you'd like to save the maximum amount of money you should consider going to more than one store.  However, due to extreme allergies, heat, and church, we went to one store called: Hilander, which is in the Kroger family.

Here are the stats on our Couponing Meets Menu Planning Adventure:

• I saved approx 13% off of my grocery bill for this past week's dinner menu using coupons and sale ads
• I paid about $11.67/meal for these wonderful heat friendly gourmet style meals, which of course is way less than eating at a restaurant
• Per person, I only spent $3.89!  Wow!
• I only used 5 coupons, and I was able to take advantage of at least 10 sale promotions going on at the store

I saved more money than I ever have just by having a list (menu plan), using coupons, and going to the store with the best sales on the items I needed.  Here are a few couponing etiquette tips.

• If you have a coupon that you are not going to use, leave it on the shelf by the item that it is for.  Someone will surely be blessed by your generosity.
• Don't be so eager to use your coupons.  Oftentimes, a store may be having a sale on a different brand than your coupon, and it's cheaper to just use the sale price for that item.  You've hit a jackpot if you can match a coupon to the store sale, but it's not always possible.
• Only buy what you are going to use, unless you plan to give away some items.  Now, if you have some coupons that allow you to get an item for FREE, then by all means, get as many as you can.  
• Make sure you know the store's coupon policy.  Many stores are modifying their policies due to shoppers coming in and wiping out their inventory
• When your BFF comes to your town and finds the bread store and tells you that they have $.75 gourmet bread, take heed!

I'm obviously still very green at this couponing thing, and I know I'll get better and save more and more money.  Jereka and I will definitely keep you updated on our couponing adventures.

Do you coupon?  What tips do you have?