Are You Looking for Easy Meals to Make for Dinner?

In today’s time starved world, we all seem to be looking for ways to make life easier.  “Life Hacks” are all over Pinterest – but there are a few areas you really don’t want to hack.  You would rather have someone who has vetted the product or service before you spend your hard earned cash.  Our “Make Life Easier Series” covers three areas where you want to make life easier- clothes, easy meals, and finances.

Would you like to save money and time and eat well?  Yes, yes and yes!  Right?  It is so easy to fall into the trap of going out to eat – which costs a lot of money and depending on where you go – could take longer than eating at home and not be as good.  Fast food might be quick but it lacks in the real nutrition/taste department.

“Emeals – Meal Planning Made Simple”

Enter easy meals and plans from Emeals.  Emeals is a service you sign up for online.  You pay $5.00 a month and you will receive 7 days worth of menus per week (that is less than 20 cents per meal for the recipe and shopping list per meal – 28 meals on average).  You can pick from many different types of subscriptions based on your favorite type of meals (quick and healthy, budget friendly, clean eating, etc.)  We use the 30 minute meal plan for 4 people.  We use this one because we have 4 people in our household and not a lot of time to cook at night between sports practices.  Once you are signed up, you receive the week’s menus on Wednesday.

How Does Emeals Work to Create Easy Meals?

Emeals has a handy app you can download on your phone to save even more time or you can print out the recipe/shopping list.  The Emeals app has my easy meals in it to choose from for the week.  You read the recipe and decide if you want to make it.  If you do, you click the add to list icon and it adds all the ingredients to a list.  You repeat this process for the rest of the week.

There is usually a main dish and a side dish for each day for the dinner portion.  When you are done selecting your meals, you go through the shopping list and click on the items you already have (checking off that they are “done”).  Whatever else you may need is then pushed to Kroger/Walmart/Amazon’s application when you hit shop now.

Finalizing Your Easy Meals with the Store’s App

Now that you have the items over to the store’s app to select, you choose the item from the sites list (quantity and price are shown).  Most stores will have a running total for you as well.  When you are all done selecting your items, you select your time to pick up/deliver/ship, pay, etc.

Once you have received your items you can now pat yourself on the back.  You now have a week’s worth of easy meals for a fraction of the cost of eating out and you’ve saved yourself at least 2 hours of time (meal planning – one hour and grocery shopping – one hour).  Now all you have to do is cook the (in my case) 30 minute meals and watch your family gobble it down.

My Review of Emeals

We liked our dinner meal plan so much, we added the lunch and breakfast options as well.  (Although, I don’t use them as often as the dinner one- just because I sometimes run out of time to make them all.)  However, it is well worth the small cost to have these ideas at my finger tips when I do have the time to make them.  The healthy lunch option has 5 meals for the week plus a dessert.  The healthy breakfast option has 5 meals as well.  For all of the meal plans (breakfast, lunch and dinner) if you find recipes you or your family love, you can save these to your favorites.  In addition, detailed instructions are included with each recipe and they are easy to understand.

Emeals is so convenient and a real time saver.  I like that we are using real food and I know what goes into our meals.  If you would like to sign up, click here.  (I am NOT an affiliate, I just love their service).  And, you can try it for FREE for two weeks too!

What do you think?  Is this something you have tried or would like to try?  What are your favorite meal planning tips?  Please share in the comments below.   If you liked this article, you might also like this article on why meal planning makes sense for busy people.

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