Today we are highlighting two fun boards, the Meal Planning/Organizing board and the Saving on Groceries board. On our Meal Planning/Organizing board we are gathering great ideas for helping you to organize your recipes and plan out your meals. This can be very helpful for day to day cooking as well as for planning your three month supply. The Saving on Groceries board is full of tips on how to reduce your grocery spending so you can have more money left to buy food storage!

   

• PIN 1: This menu board has inspired Jodi to embark on a big new meal planning adventure that she is very excited about!
• PIN 2: Plan and track your 3 month supply inventory by inputting your recipes into this simple spreadsheet.
• PIN 3:See what service is saving us TONS of money on our groceries each month.
• PIN 4: Use this handy guide to know which months certain items tend to go on sale.

Make sure you check out the rest of the items on the Meal Planning/Organizing board and the Saving on Groceries board. We’ll keep adding to these boards as we find great stuff, and we’ll see you tomorrow to highlight another one of our boards!

Don’t forget you can Follow us on Pinterest so you don’t miss any of the great stuff we will be pinning in the future.

Whatever your style, make sure you check out our BabyStep 3 Page: 3 month supply. We have a spreadsheet that can help you plan your meals, and then it automatically populates an inventory list and takes the guess work out of figuring out what to buy. Before you start on the spreadsheet, ask yourself these five three month supply questions to help you get started with the planning process.

Well this weekend on our Facebook page we had one of our readers share something about her 3 month planning that was FABULOUS and we thought everyone needed to hear about it. If you’re not on our Facebook page, make sure you join because it’s AWESOME. We learn so much from our readers, and we feel so great when we see you all helping each other out on questions. Even if you don’t HAVE Facebook, you can see the discussions and learn if you type this in your browser:

So here is the little gem of knowledge we learned while talking about our Shelf Stable Saturdays this weekend from Kim S. on Facebook:

Jodi, Julie + all… My DD & I have SO many recipes to share, but I’d really like to tell you WHY we have them! March ’09, inspired by YOU, we took your 3 month food supply EXCEL spreadsheet (baby step 3) & worked out 30 dinner recipes (br…kfst & lunches were a bit more repetitive). We really wanted to work with meals we are used to, family favs, etc., so we worked pretty hard at this, converting them , not just to food storage ingredients, but also to serving sizes for each of our families.

Taking ingredients for one recipe at a time + multiple bowls spread out on the counter, to each, we added all the dry ingredients that would be in that recipe (if something needed pre-soaking, or pre-prep, we put THAT ingredient folded into wax paper, to keep it separate, ie peas or beans). We ordered mylar bags & oxygen absorbers, but vacuum sealed bags should work, just as well.

Note that mylar bags are quite large – but – if you cut them in quarters, edges can be carefully sealed w/ a flat iron for hair (I bought a small one for $4 at discount store). These are the 11 x 13 mylar bags from the LDS distribution center’s online store.

Into each of our now-resized mylar bags went the the dry ingredients + an oxygen absorber. Sealed them up w/ the flat iron, added sticky labels to the front w/ Recipe name, ingredients to be added at time of making (water, canned ingr., etc.), instructions, and “serve with”.

The “serve with” became important when we were planning, not just the main entree, but what we were going to have WITH it! This way, our food storage inventory could be complete w/ what to have on hand for sides, etc., and to plan *variety*.

Because they are uniform 1/4 sized mylar bags (large families – go w/ a 1/2 bag), they stand up nicely in a shoe box. When it’s a “what can I make tonight?” night, those “space food” mylar bags get whipped out! I’ve just sent the scalloped potatoes & hams recipe to you, but have Chicken Scallopine, Creamy Italian Chicken, Cajun Pork, etc., as well. (think canned meat subbed for roasts or chicken breasts – and yes, we buy on sale and can our own). This is not ALL our food storage, but if using food storage became necessary, food prep time might be precious.

I know this got long, and debated whether an email would be better, but figured this could be shared. This all came about because you inspired us, so THANK YOU! Much work over one week, but soooo worth it!

Kim even shared some pictures of this awesome idea on our Facebook wall. Kim was right- this was a great thing to share and we’re glad she let us share her personal plan with all our readers on the blog! We’re sure this will give you all some inspiration and motivation to get cracking on your three month supply!

If you have a unique plan or photos of something fun in your storage come on over to Facebook and share today!

• Basement junk making it difficult to reach long term food storage buckets
• Bags of groceries dumped on the floor BESIDE the shelves
• Canning supplies scattered in multiple places
• Shelves for 3 month supply are hard to access, hard to see, and hard to reach

My big excuse is that I had a baby 7 weeks ago. So for probably a good 5-6 months I avoided going down to the storage area like a plague. My sweet hubby would refill my containers upstairs with my long term foods. And my sweet 5 year old son would run down and grab cans of veggies or soup when I needed them for a recipe.

The problem could no longer be ignored when I sent my son down to grab a can of tomato soup for a recipe. He told me there wasn’t any. I didn’t believe him, because I should have at LEAST 10 cans down there. The soup is normally on the left shelf (see above) so I had to navigate around that junk to look for the soup. To my dismay there WASN’T any TOMATO SOUP. UGH! This is not supposed to happen to me.

• A complete reorganization of my storage space
• Elimination of space hogging (and leak-prone) water jugs
• Discarding of multiple foods items that were long past expiration
• Re-inventory of my three month supply spreadsheet

Once I had reorganized and catalogued my foods I realized how much I had depleted my storage over the past months. My “three month supply” was more like a partial 2 week supply plus a billion stewed tomatoes and mandarin oranges.

• Print out my list of “Need to Buy” items
• Use Deals to Meals (LOVE THEM!) over the next few weeks to catch the items when they are on sale
• Put foods straight onto shelves as I purchase them
• Fill up my new water storage boxes
• Buy or build more Can Racks as needed to improve rotation
• Buy better shelves some day (these are second hand and kind of odd-sized)
• Keep stocking up on my long term food storage now that I’m using it so much!

We quite often get asked to see an example of a filled out sheet, but I’ve always been a little embarrassed to share what we eat. I’ve finally overcome my fear and I’m willing to share. Hope it is helpful for you!

Jodi’s Three Month Supply Spreadsheet

If you’re following Grandma Lori’s Extreme Food Storage Makeover, you know that last time we left off with a “to be continued” after Julie made Lori her full shopping list based on her recipes she wanted to use in her three month food supply. The post was titled “We have a Plan”

Well last week Julie was running out of ideas for Mother’s Day presents so she called up Grandma Lori and said, lets get this shopping trip done! (Because once the shopping was done, she could do the real present – which is organizing the whole food storage room) Grandma Lori wanted to go ahead and buy all the food up front, then replace through normal use, and sale shopping…. So it made for a big shopping trip to say the least.

Surprisingly however, the shop wasn’t NEARLY as painful as we thought it would be. We took the excel file that had calculated exactly everything she needed and used it as our shopping guide. Before we went to the store, we took inventory of what she already and then we were actually in and out of the store fairly quickly.

So for Mother’s Day, Julie and her husband went to Grandma Lori’s and transformed that room into a BEAUTIFUL site with great shelves(donated from Can Organizers), some reorganizing, and CUTE LABELS – that you all are going to ask her to do a tutorial on how to make them….! Stay tuned because those pictures and video are coming later this week!

Last week we posted the “Questions to Ask Yourself” when planning your 3 month supply. Julie got together with Grandma Lori and asked her those questions so they could formulate a plan. Watch the video to see what Grandma Lori’s answers were, and then read on to see her very own custom plan.

Grandma Lori mostly wants a 3 month supply of foods she eats regularly using meats she can store in a freezer. She also wants to get the foods all at once and then from there use and rotate. Like we’ve said before each persons plan, budget, and preferences will dictate a personal game plan.

1. Lori gave Julie a list of 12 of her most common dinner recipes (in the video Lori thought it would be a good idea to use the forms, but since Julie was feeling generous, she told Lori she would take Lori’s recipes and fill out the excel form for her).
2. Lori listed breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas to buy a lot of, but isn’t going to plan each day like she wants to for dinners.
3. Julie is going to compile the master list of ingredients to shop for based on the recipes and what Lori already has on hand.
4. Julie, Lori and Jodi will make a fun trip to the stores and get the foods.
5. Julie, Lori and Jodi are going to be build the shelves that CanOrganizers are going to donate for Grandma Lori’s pantry.
6. STOCK the pantry!
7. Lori will use and replace the foods. YAY!

Stay tuned as we complete and document action items #3-#7.

Up until now we have had this intense and “awesome” spreadsheet. However we’re excited to announce two new ways to plan your three month supply – a new and improved excel spreadsheet, and printable forms. The new excel spreadsheet is a lot more intuitive and easy to fill out with the same end results of the old one. We also created printable forms you can use to fill in with good old fashion pens and pencils for those of you who may not have access to excel.

The NEW Excel

To download the new excel form, click here. This form will automatically calculate the number of ingredients you need to purchase for three months. You can also use this spreadsheet to keep track of prices, and as an inventory tracker.

Here is a little tutorial on how to use the new excel (we STRONGLY suggest watching it – there are many ways you can interpret how to enter the info and it needs to be a certain way):

The Printable Forms

To download the printable forms, click here. There is an Instruction Sheet, a Menu Plan Sheet and an Inventory Sheet. You will need to print the Menu Plan Sheet multiple times depending on how many different meals you want to plan.

Planning Tools

We have added these spreadsheets to the BabySteps 3 page and to the Tools page. REMEMBER, check out all our tools on the tools page. We make sure to add any of our most helpful posts in there.

SO- I printed out my little sheet that tells me how much I usually spend for things at Walmart. Since I had the sizes and price per oz, it was so easy for me to decide which items to buy at COSTCO vs. WALMART. Anyways, I was really excited it was so useful.

Make sure you take a closer look at the spreadsheet and the tutorial and get yours started today.

Step 1 – Wrote out my meal plan for the month and wrote down all the ingredients I needed to buy plus anything that was on the “To Buy” list on my fridge

Step 2 – Went to the GrocerySmarts.com website and following the Obsessive Shopper’s instructions I highlighted only the 4 and 5 star deals and printed out the list. (I figure anything less than a 4 star is probably safe to assume is cheaper at Walmart.)

Step 3 – Circled any items I planned to buy including:
a. Items on my current shopping list
b. Items that end up being FREE
c. Items that are on my 3-month food supply plan or long-term food storage list

Step 4 – Clipped my coupons for the items that listed coupons on my GrocerySmarts.com print-out. This included printing out the “printable coupons” (there were a few really good ones!) and also clipping coupons from my newspaper. I was so happy I had read the post about organizing your coupons on The Obsessive Shopper’s website. It was so easy to find exactly what I was looking for.

Step 5 – Headed to Smiths and was pleasantly surprised at just how little money I spent. I spent $37.04 and saved $21.60 in manufacturer’s coupons and $33.28 in fresh value’s savings. If that doesn’t blow your mind wait until you hear about all the food I got!!!

• 5 lbs of ground hamburger (85% lean)
• 2 boxes of Eggo waffles
• 8 bags of Malt-o-Meal cereal
• 4 boxes of granola bars (Fiber 1, ChexMix, Nature’s Valley)
• 4 boxes of Pop Tarts
• 2 boxes of Cheezit crackers
• 2 boxes of Keebler graham crackers
• 5 packages Hamburger Helper
• 5 packages of Tuna Helper
• 1 box of Pilsbury brownie mix
• 1 can of Pilsbury cake frosting

For $37.04 can you even believe it! Thank you thank you thank you to the Obsessive Shopper and her amazing GrocerySmarts website. If you haven’t used it yet, you are really missing out. I’d recommend subscribing to her blog because she summarizes the best of the deals each week in case you don’t have time to go through the whole process on your own. I obviously will still need to go to Walmart to fill in the gaps in my monthly shopping, but I can handle one quick trip to Smiths per month to get such great deals and to build up my Food Storage. This was a great way to really kick-start my 3-month inventory.

How do you decide what to include in your 3 Month Food Supply?
How do you determine how MUCH of each item to buy?
How do you keep track of your current inventory and what you still need to buy?
How do you make sure you are stocking up when items are ON SALE?

We couldn’t find a solution for these questions, so we created one!

We have developed a 3 Month Food Supply Worksheet that will help you outline meal plans, convert them into the number of items you need to buy AUTOMATICALLY, and then track your inventory including current prices for each product.

View our instructional video before you get started!

Let us know what you think of the 3 Month Food Supply Worksheet and how it is working for you. How is your step 3 coming along?