Hi!

Hi! I'm Jordan and I love to cook. Many of my friends, over the years, have seen how I plan out my family's weeks worth of dinners and asked me if I could help them out with their menus. I've never been sure how I wanted to do this, but I thought the other day that making a blog would be the best way. My plan is to show you my menu for the week along with my grocery shopping list on Sunday. Then each day of the week, I'll post the recipe that I'm using for that night's dinner as well as pictures.

Let me, first, tell you what I do. I have the news paper delivered to my house every Sunday morning so that I can get the coupons out of it and throw the rest of it away. I also make sure to save the flyer for the local grocery store that I go to, which happens to be HEB. On Sunday, usually evening, I get all of my coupons together, my HEB flyer, and a few cookbooks out and ready, along with a piece of paper to make my list on. I keep my pantry and fridge pretty well stocked so there are weeks that I don't buy everything that is in each recipe. I also have staples that I buy every week and are on my list pretty much every week. I, then look at the flyer and see if there is any meat on sale that I could use that week and I look through my coupons for the one's that are about to expire and see if I need any of them and set those aside.

Once I have gone through all of the flyer and my coupons, I open up my cookbooks and look for recipies that either a) are in season, b) look good to me, c) we haven't had in a while, d) when all else fails...I hand the cookbooks to my husband and tell him to find what we will be eating.

I have a few things that I am very specific on. 1. I like to keep my grocery bill around $100 for the week. I feed a family of 4...me, my husband and our two kids who are 4 & 5. So, I am not making huge dinners. On the weeks when I buy my meat (I try to in bulk, but we have 1 fridge and so freezer space is limited) my bill can be upwards of $150, but the meat will last for about a monthish. (yes, I like to make up my own words!)  2. I try to use all of the meats once a week. Ex. 1 hamburger, 1 chicken, 1 ham or pork dinner, 1 seafood, and from there whatever looks good to me. 3. I never plan 7 meals for the week. It always ends up that we either have leftovers one night, pizza a night, or go out to eat a night. 4. I almost always plan one dessert a week. We try not to eat too many sweets so if I don't make a lot, we won't eat a lot. I also try not to keep too many sweets in the house (aka cookies, pies, cakes, etc.)

So, this is my plan. I hope it helps you out and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them for me. I want this blog to be easy for the reader to follow and helpful.