“How do you feed them all?” This is one of the questions that we get asked most often as a family of eight. And it is a legitimate question for two reasons, first the literal amount of food that gets prepared and consumed in our house is wild. Six hungry, growing kids can put away some food and at a rate of truly astonishing proportions. Kids are eating in our house almost around the clock – and that’s on top of the dinners we eat together at the table almost every night. There’s not much I can do about this – growing kids need fuel and as their parent I need to supply it.
And then of course, we also hear often, “I cannot imagine your grocery bill!” And this is a valid proclamation, because obviously with all the food our family consumes due to the sheer number of us – it is going to add up financially. But I have found quite a few tips and tricks along the way of being a big family mom that I can make a significant dent in this part of food consumption. So every time someone says this to us, I just nod and think to myself – maybe not as huge as you imagine!
In this Big Family Grocery Bill hack series, I am going to share with you some tips and tricks that help us stay afloat when it comes to the grocery bill!
And major disclaimer – we have no food restrictions in our home. No one has food allergies or specific dietary requirements that they need to follow for health reasons. We have no vegetarians currently in our house either. So besides the run-of-the-mill kid complaints about flavors and textures; we are operating with a lot of freedoms in the food department that I know other families have to work around. So if you are one of those families, please know my love and strength goes out to you and read on with a grain of salt to see if you can adjust any of my suggestions to fit your specific household.
Meal Planning Misunderstood
I know you’ve heard it before, but meal planning is really crucial when you have a big family and/or you are looking to make a financial impact on your bank account when it comes to food. I have been planning our family meals for over eight years and besides keeping us on budget for food each month, it also massively benefits my mind and spirit every single day when it is time for dinner. No guess work, panic, or last minute calls to the local pizza shop. I already know what we are having and I don’t even have to think about. It is truly the geekiest but helpful blessing of my parenthood.
When I first dipped my toe into meal planning several years ago, I thought meal planning was combing Pinterest for things that looked delicious and then buying those ingredients for the week and then making those meals on the days I had penciled into my planner. I quickly realized that this was neither cost effective nor feasible for longevity. Eventually, I became so exhausted from trying new things and filling our fridge with weird ingredients that were so specific to recipes that I ended up throwing them out when I noticed that they had been expired for months. And I would honestly get tired of constantly looking up new recipes and trying to be creative every single week with our meals. And often times, I was taking dinner risks on entire meals that my kids would hate and they’d end up eating PB&Js anyway.
Now don’t get me wrong, I still comb Pinterest occasionally to try new recipes and expand my cooking skills or when I need to liven up our weekly meal plan because I am bored. But for the most part, I use a much more tried and true method.
Lesson 1: Shelf Shopping
Shelf shopping is using the items you already have in your house to build and plan meals. The key here being always making sure you have a staple list of groceries in your house. When I make our bi-weekly grocery list, I do an inventory of our staple items. Do we have a back up ketchup because the one that is opened is almost out? Do we need to re-stock pancake mix? How many cream cheese blocks do we currently have? I enlist the kids in helping to check all our food locations: pantry, cupboards, fridge/freezer, and deep freezer to check for our regulars. If I keep our staple food items always stocked in the house, I know I can plan meals for a whole week, or at a drop of a hat – whip something up quick.
I meal plan for 7 dinners a week and of those, at least 5 of those meals are shelf shopped from our staple food items. I plan meals around the things we maintain in our home because I know they are going to crank out honest, hearty meals that my family will all eat without (too many) complaints. The other two meals might be a new recipe, leftovers, or a special day that I know will have us eating out of the house (post-game or at a grandparents’ house).
Don’t fight what works
This was a hard one for me to come to terms with, I sometimes feel like I need to be creative with our meals so that no one gets bored. The truth is, everyone is just hungry at dinner and they want what they like. So if that means boring spaghetti (literally noodles and store bought sauce) once a week – then I don’t feel shame about that. My kids will eat it with out complaints, it’s super easy, and we always have the supplies to make that on hand. If anyone is bored, it is me (LOL), so to spice it up I might steam some veggies to top off my spaghetti or make a salad or garlic knots to go with. So I can do the same old thing to keep everyone happy with a little extra something to satisfy my need for variety.
Another meal that is on regular rotation around here: tacos. We all love us some tacos. And by that I actually mean taco seasoning because we can do tacos several different ways. Ground beef tacos in tortilla shells, ground turkey taco pasta, baked potatoes stuffed with ground beef taco meat, Nacho chips covered in taco meat and cheese baked on a sheet pan, taco salads, taco rice bowls, shredded chicken with taco seasoning and cream cheese as taquitos from the oven, cheesy baked quesadillas with chicken or beef taco seasoned meat. The list goes on and on. So, yeah, we do eat a lot of tacos – but the variety makes it feel new and fresh each week.
Frozen meats and veggies
We have a deep freezer, mostly because we have a house full of hunters – but it comes in handy when we are maintaining our staple meats and veggies in our home. Because we have a big family and are limited to a budget – frozen meat is almost all we ever have on hand. Very rarely do we buy fresh meat because quite honestly it is too expensive and I meal plan at two weeks at a clip anyway. Even if you aren’t going to be full frozen meat like us, it is still really handy to have a little frozen meat stocked so you know you have it to pull out if you need it in a pinch.
The same goes for frozen veggies – we always have them in stock. Granted, we do buy a lot more fresh produce (both fruits and veggies) but our freezer always has frozen options of both too. In the summer time when our garden is bursting with veggies, I make a point to get those ready for the freezer because there isn’t anything better than some warm zucchini bread in the dead of winter made from your own harvest veggies that have been frozen!
Leftovers
I encourage you to get comfortable with leftovers. We are a big fan of leftovers over here because they help us get through the week feeding all these mouths. Brandon and I eat leftovers as our lunch regularly – we pack during weekdays and it is so helpful after dinner to just portion leftovers out in containers ready for our lunchboxes in the morning. Sometimes when we know leftovers will be hard to come by, I save a little BEFORE we serve dinner just to make sure we have a lunch in the morning!
I learned a great meal idea from my dear friend Ashley over at The Big White Farmhouse. It is called “Fridge clean out night” where all the leftovers, lunchmeats and cheeses, fruits and veggies – basically all the food that is close to going bad gets pulled out of the fridge and everyone gets to build their own dinner for the night. The kids walk away with a mixture of strange combinations but everyone gets full and everyone was happy to make their own choices. And best of all, the fridge gets cleared out and no food gets wasted!
And one major perk of being a big family is that when we leave a party, the party hosts are always trying to pawn their extra food off on us because we have so many kids. (Maybe some people would be offended by this, but we are always appreciative!)
Want a FREE Shelf shopping cheat sheet?
Shelf shopping is truly my number one hack for combatting a huge grocery bill or the temptation to overspend by ordering take out because I’m too tired or overwhelmed to make dinner at the end of the day. I even made you a copy of my personal grocery list that we maintain in the house. And it includes a second page of a list of 35 meals that you can make almost solely from staple food items from the grocery list! All the recipes are either obvious from the name of the meal or easily pin-searchable.
Take it from a mom of six – you do not need to be stressing about what to make for dinner – LEVEL UP with shelf shopping!
*if you need more intense support on shelf shopping, visit this awesome website entirely dedicated to this kind of meal planning.
