Welcome to the Eat At Home Challenge! This four-week challenge starts on August 2nd and runs for 4 weeks through August 29th, although you can start on a different day depending on your schedule. Here I will be going over the specifics of the challenge, as well as diving into a few tips that you can take advantage of while you are crushing your grocery budget. Overall, this challenge will appeal to you if you are hoping to save money, eat out less, eat a more well-balanced diet, or simply create a better system for meal planning.
Goals
First off, there are two main goals to this challenge:
- Eat a home-cooked meal for every meal
- Set a grocery budget and stick to it
Throughout the challenge, use these goals to stay focused. Depending on how much you like to eat out, this challenge may be a big change for you. If you get off track, come back to these goals to reset throughout the challenge.
Getting Started
You need to start by making a plan. The points below will walk you through some questions to answer before you start. This may take an hour or two depending on how many changes you will need to make from your normal. If you have a family, it is best to plan and talk it over with everyone involved.
- What will your monthly and weekly budget be for all food you purchase?
- What day of the week will you make a meal plan and your grocery list? In addition, plan when you will go shopping.
- Decide how often you will cook and, if applicable, who will cook when.
- Some people cook every day, while others like to make a bigger meal 2-3 times per week that they eat over the next few days. Others choose to cook all their food once a week.
- Similar to the previous point, plan through how you will eat home-cooked food for each meal.
- Will you make a larger dinner and eat the leftovers the next day for lunch?
- Will you make all your lunches in advance and only cook what you plan to eat for dinner?
- What will you eat each day for breakfast and when will you cook it?
Weekly Process
After you have finished your planning for the overall challenge, take time each week on a set day, to talk through your weekly meal plan and other goals. Talk through the following:
- Evaluate how the past week went and, if you went over budget, reevaluate how much you can spend for the coming week.
- Take inventory of what items you have in your kitchen already and incorporate them into your meal plan.
- Create a meal plan and go shopping for the items you need.
Get Cooking!
The last step to the process is to get cooking! Remember to take a quick picture of your favorite meals and post them on Instagram or Facebook (you can post on your feed or in your stories). If you tag Two Dollar Eats and use the hashtag #eatathome2021, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a free meal plan of your choice! Each day you post will be one entry so get cooking!
