E-Mealz

Pssst...I want to let you in on a cool little secret.

First, a little background. One day I told Eric I wanted to start eating healthier...not a new year's resolution, not a diet, just healthier. Eric quickly agreed and suggested a program he heard Dave Ramsey recommend over the radio, E-mealz. I later learned that he had been wanting to propose this idea to me for a while, not for health reasons, but for budget reasons. He was just hesitant to mention it because he knew it meant I would be doing all of the work.

Admittedly, it's not the health makeover I was looking for, but it is a clever little meal program, and they have several different meal plan options for various family sizes and needs. See image below.

Eric and I are doing the low-fat Wal-Mart meal plan for 2, and so far we've been really happy with it. It does cost $5/mo, but if it does as it claims, it should still save us a decent chunk of money. It's tough to judge this early, but it seems promising. If anything, we'll just do it for a few months and rotate through the menus that we collect.

The meals are fast and easy to make. I enjoy cooking, but don't do it much. There was always an excuse - working late, missing ingredients, picky eater husband, etc. The great thing about this program is having your whole week laid out for you. In fact, the grocery list even lists the items with prices and organized by grocery sections! Genius. See samples below.

Nice, right? Eric, of course, loves it because suddenly I'm cooking dinner for him every night. We've tried to be brave too and at least try every meal whether it sounds good or not, and we really haven't disliked a meal yet. In fact, neither of us thought we liked salmon, but one of our favorite recipes was a zucchini salmon bake (revised a little bit with the help of martha stewart).

It's a fun little challenge for Eric and I to split up the grocery list and try and track down items we've never had or even heard of before - couscous, liquid smoke, bok choy, various obscure seasonings, etc.

Not sure how long we will keep it up, but so far, so good.