Meal planning

So, my new years resolutions aren't doing too shabby so far (granted, it IS only day 9 of the first month....), but  I'm focusing this month on meal planning. While I should have picked a better month, I figure if I get in the habit, something is bound to stick.
So, the Monday after Christmas, we sat down, planned meals and created the shopping list. We packed Miriam up for a morning of shipping and we went grocery shopping for the month. At Bilo, Aldi and Walmart....it was totally worth the traveling and all of the stops...and spent just under $200 (for the month! - with the exception of purchasing 1 gallon of milk every 4-6 days, bananas (1 for each day)).  This would feed all of us for breakfast, Miriam and me for lunch, and all of us for dinner, allowing one night a week to go out to dinner.  These are our dinner meals:
1. Minestrone soup (originally planned to make one batch and freeze half, but plans changed and we had company that ate our intended frozen batch...)
2 & 3. White Chicken Chili
4 & 5. Cream Cheese Italian Chicken - Jeremy's favorite crock pot recipe
6. Turkey spaghetti
7 & 8. Shrimp Scampi
9 & 10. homemade pizza
11-13. breakfast (pancakes or waffles, grits, and sausage)
14. Poppyseed chicken casserole
15. regular chili beans
16. Bowtie chicken pasta
17. BBQ chicken
18. lasagna hamburger helper
19. Chicken Soft tacos (a new crock pot recipe)
20. Tilapia with yellow rice/peas
21 & 22. Black eyed peas and collards

Of course, there is the occasional bowl of cereal, pb&j, or "snacks" for dinner...but I think we fared pretty well with the purchases. So far, since we bought our goods (Dec 26), we've only made 2 trips to the store (for the milk & bananas), and only eaten out twice.
Saturday, we choose CookOut and all 3 of us ate for under $11.

So, not only are we eating better, but saving $$ too....
however, this grand idea might be thwarted a bit when I'm bedrest - but like I told J...these are meals that a 5 yr old could make - there's NO REASON why he can't fix them :)