“Deals to Meals” and the Eternal Question

If you are the primary cook at your house, you KNOW the eternal question — “What’s for dinner?”  That or its simplified variation — “FOOD?”  (This one is heard if you have boys–approximately every 30 minutes!)  One of my biggest struggles, especially now that I’m working full time, is to keep up with meal preparation. Half the battle is deciding what to cook.  I was finding all my standard recipes were getting boring, but I didn’t have a lot of time to go in search of something new.  They say most of us cook the same 20% of our repertoire 80% of the time, and I believe it.  Then one of our contributors tipped us off to the “Deals to Meals” website.

“Deals to Meals” was started by someone a little like me — someone researching for a class she was teaching who then started sharing her findings with friends via the internet.  She has turned her skills into a paying venture, however, and when I saw what she was doing I was very impressed (and perhaps a bit envious).

The premise is simple — save money on food by taking advantage of the loss-leader specials at the grocery store each week.  “Deals to Meals” takes on the task of locating those for its’ subscribers, posting all the weekly specials for each store with the best deals marked in red.  All you do is select the stores in which you are interested and up pops a list of everything from their ad.  To determine which are the best deals, the founders compare the listed prices to the regular price at WalMart, Costco, and Sam’s Club.  If you can purchase the same item there for less, the special is listed in blue instead of red.

But they don’t stop there — each week they post dinner menus created from the items on special, plus tips on how much to buy for food storage.  They even have the shopping list already created, listing every ingredient you will need by category and marked as to which recipe requires it.  If you follow their complete meal plan for the week all you have to do is print out the grocery list, mark the items you need to purchase (I also marked which store at which I wanted to purchase the item) and go shopping!

“Deals to Meals” offers a free two-week trial, however you do have to have or create a Pay Pal account and sign in to get the offer.  After the two weeks is up, they will automatically bill your Pay Pal account for $4.95 each month, but if you save $1.25 each week on food, it pays for itself.  I am a fairly religious reader of grocery ads, but I found enough things on sale that I hadn’t noticed that I believe I have saved at least that much in the two months I have been a subscriber.  I used to have to drive across town to pick up Ridleys ads, but now they are all listed on my computer.  It is also especially convenient for those who aren’t paying a lot of attention to the best price available to have the comparison already laid out.

I decided to really try the plan to see if this was something I would use and/or recommend.  I printed out the menu and the grocery list and started marking the items I needed.  I was happy to see that the majority of the list was things I commonly purchase and many were already in my freezer or pantry.  In half an hour I had determined what I would purchase and was ready to hit the store.  For me, this was a big savings of time over my old procedure of spending an hour or so making the menus and the grocery list myself.  I did cover two or three stores, but I probably could have just chosen one or two had I chosen to simplify a little.

Actually making all of the meals was a bigger challenge for me.  With my work schedule I am often not able to start cooking until 7:00 or later, which is really too late for dinner on our schedule.  A few of the meals can be done in a slow cooker, but most require hands-on preparation right before serving.  It took me about two weeks to get through the entire menu instead of one because I would sometimes substitute a faster option of my own.  And, I confess, the barbecue chicken pizza got replaced by a run to Papa Murphy’s on a busy night.  Still, just having the menu done and knowing the ingredients were already purchased made it much easier to skip the dash to the store and dive into cooking instead.  Most of the dishes required a moderate amount of preparation, but I was able to divide some of them into steps that could be done earlier in the day so that the finishing went faster.  It was especially fun to eat something not on our ordinary ho-hum list and the majority of the ones I tried received a thumbs-up from most of the family (we don’t count the opinion of our pickiest eater).

Since that week that I was dedicated to the process, I have come to the following conclusions:

“Deals to Meals” is a very helpful tool.  For me, the price comparisons and the new recipes are what I use most.  I have difficulty incorporating that many new recipes on a regular basis, but it is nice to have the inspiration and I have used many of the meal plans, just not every day.

If I were running the site, I would do it differently — but then isn’t that true of about everything?  Many of the recipes are high in fat, some high in sugar or other carbs.  I don’t think I have made any of the dessert recipes yet although some of them looked yummy.  Most weeks there are sandwiches and dinner salads included in the menu.  They are fabulous, but since it is cold where I live I would normally save these recipes for summer and eat soup or a hot casserole instead in the winter.  I also frequent the “Bountiful Baskets” co-op and have vegetables and fruits that need to be used that are not included in the menu, so I frequently rearrange things to use up those items.

It may be worth the $4.95 just to know when boneless skinless chicken breasts drop to $1.39/lb.!  I definitely save time reading the published list over poring over every grocery ad that comes in.

And of course, the bottom line is — it is different for every person who tries it!  Only you can decide if it is worth the money.  I’m glad I subscribed to “Deals to Meals”.  I may get bored later and unsubscribe, but right now I’m busily collecting the recipes in a binder until I decide which ones I want to keep permanently, and I’m using some of the menu plans each week.  If you decide to try it for yourself, let us know what you think!