Relish: Another Meal Planning Option

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

As you well know by this point, I have been using a meal planning service to help me plan my dinners and control my spending at the grocery store. Currently I am using E-Mealz and I have found the structure to be very helpful and easy to use. However, one thing I have noticed with the plan is that it uses a lot more processed foods than I feel comfortable using. I feel like when I was not using the plan I would buy much more produce than I am now. Aaron noticed this as well so what we have decided to do is to take out any meals we feel do not meet our standards and I will find another recipe that better suits our desires. Since we have already paid for the service for three months, this is the best compromise for us right now. 

Having said all this I wanted to let you know about another meal planning service I recently came across that looks to be geared more towards healthy eating and even gives you 15 recipes from which you can choose for the 5-7 meals for the week. The service is called Relish and costs $35.70 for a six month subscription which is only $5.70 more total than E-Mealz for six months. The website for Relish is http://www.relishrelish.com/. There you can look at a sample shopping list to give you an idea of the type of food the plan uses. 

I have found that meal planning has kept us on track with our grocery bill and helps beat the temptation to eat out often. I also feel that we do not throw away as much food because we only buy what we need for a week at a time. If yo haven't tried meal planning, I would highly recommend you do.