I don't know about you but one of my least favorite things has become meal planning. I lack inspiration to put a full meal together and at times when I meal plan it ends up with meals I end up not making, wasting of food or a freezer full of chicken breasts and not much to go with it as far as sides and so one more night of grilled bbq chicken anyone?
I had heard Dave Ramsey talk about Emeals. I sort of let it go in one ear and out the other as I didn't think I would pay for anyone to plan my meals ... but today as I sat down to meal plan and literally didn't get past writing out the days of the week of on a sheet of paper..... I decided to investigate Emeals and give it a go. This isn't a plug for Emeals and I'm not getting any type of compensation for talking about it, but I know others have to be struggling with meal planning so thought it worth a mention just in case someone found themselves sitting like me staring at a page of paper trying to find some inspiration for meals.
I signed up for the free trial today, which gives me 14 days of free access and then I will be charged $30 for 3 months (there are other plans and also promo codes to lower the price). I also downloaded the app which gives a bit of a neat spin as you can pick and choose the meals you want to make from the meal plans which can be nice if you have foods you or one of your kids simply won't eat at all.
I haven't found that aspect on the desk top version but maybe it's there and I just haven't seen it yet.
I don't see a way to print the recipes or meal plans from the app, again maybe I just haven't stumbled upon that as of yet. But I was able to print from the desk top version which suits the paper preference in me. I do like the way the app lets you use it as a shopping check list. Love that both the app and desk top version show you what foods you need from the store you choose (I picked Walmart as the food is cheaper and also offers me savings catcher discount which helps too).
For 7 days of meals for my family of 6 it has it at about $127 for one meal plan and $103 for the other week. Wow! To me that seemed really great. Not to mention left overs for lunches for the following days. I ended up making adjustments and leaving out the pork dishes from the app and choosing other dishes and it brought my total for 7 meals to $97.72 (though may be a tad more if I need some of the listed staples.) I may look at SAMs Club for the meat prices and some of the veggies since I can freeze the meat to use the following week.
The desk top lay out on this is pretty nice and simple. I love the shopping list broken down by grocery store aisle as well as a box to the right that has the necessary staples. It's nice and simple which is pleasing to the eye.
I looked at a few other meal planning companies. One of them had you important your own recipes. That seemed like a lot of work since what I'm lacking is meal idea inspiration. I know I could search online for them but right now.... I just really wanted something easy to help me make meals that taste good and don't require me to think about creating them or finding the recipes.
I went with the low carb plan. I may try others but I liked the offering of the recipes and the sides are nice and simple, nothing crazy. I am not a fan of crazy hard to make sides requiring a ton of time on my part.
Some examples of a couple of the meals are One pan roasted chicken and vegetables, Shredded Pork Tacos, Pineapple -Tomato Roasted Grouper, Greek Chicken Kabobs with Herb Yogurt Sauce.
I usually shop for two weeks at a time but I'm going to try shopping for one week this time to keep fresh ingredients fresh and go from there. I will also still hit SAMs for our snacks, milk, yogurt, and fruit.
I'm really hoping this will make our budget stretch longer and also make meal time less of a drag since it's been a real challenge for me lately.
I do wish that there was more nutrition info on the recipes verses just net carbs... and for someone on a strict diet who needs to know more information... I could see this presenting a problem.
~Have a blessed day~
