Meal Planning Apps Compared

give you the meals every week. We're doing both all of the options because we know you like options and it's not a one size fits all, so we're just kind of gonna put all these different things on your radar and you pick what's best for you. And we're making sure all the paid apps have free trials too, So we're here for you. We here, we know how much we like free fits free. It's for me most of the time, most of the time. But first, an additional sponsor for y'all. This episode is brought to us

by Crying for Help. Fantastic. We didn't realize there was a marketing team behind Cries for Help until they reached out to sponsor us. Turns out there's a lot of partnership opportunities and congruence between the Frugal Friends podcast and

Crying for Help. This time around, the messaging is mostly centered on those who take on the primary cooking responsibilities in the home, who are currently possibly maybe questioning why do we need to eat so often in one day and making statements like I don't know how I'm gonna do this like cook for everyone for another forty years. If this is you, We're glad you're here. This episode is for you, and you want to know what's also

for you? Are free e book. Check it out at Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash e book to get your free copy with over two hundred money saving tips not just talking about saving on food or meal apps and that one Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash e book. If you're crying for help, we hear you, and help is on the way in the form of apps and

e books. Is me? The team is me? I am crying. Oh. I often ask that question, like how even on the weeks when I feel as though I'm really crushing it with getting food on the table, how in the world am I going to do this for decades to come? I did it really well this week and then it's overwhelming. Yeah I'm hungry again. Why how cruel world? Uh, well, we see you, we are you. And we talk a lot about cooking on this show because it's not a cooking show because we are not cooks um and it

is not it's not my favorite thing to do. So this is the show about how to not just grin and bear it, but like make it easier, uh, and more likely that you'll do it so you can eat the food you have at home. If you are like us, and you want to queue up a few other episodes

after this to listen to about the same topic. We've got episode one forty nine, which is frugal meal planning with Ashton Cope and then the crux of this episode we we may refer to it several times, so this is more like required listening Episode seventy nine, which is our favorite frugal recipes and food blogs. But we recorded it like an awards ceremony. Do you remember that much? And in the editing stage, Eric added in so many fun elements to make it feel like a wore an

awards show. It was cool. Yeah, it is the MTV UM Food Blog Awards essentially. So episode seventy nine. It's titled our Favorite Food Frugal Recipes and food Blogs. It's great, so we will refer to it back actually several times during the episode. But let's get into a general Let's start with a general overview of like why meal planning apps, the differences such as and such as how do you

feel about meal planning apps? Chill? This is a new concept for me in some regard to Obviously I know that they exist, I have yet to use one regularly. Of course, I have intersected with various meal plans and how to use them, and this is making me more excited to pick my favorite and use them. And obviously we have our favorite, which we'll talk about later on. But I think that it is really important to recognize why would we even want to engage in another app?

There's there are so many resources out there, but sometimes we can feel overwhelmed and inundated with the amount of resources that we just don't engage at all. But I think beginning this episode with just an appeal to everyone to give this a try, especially if you really felt our ad our sponsor today of crying for help and feeling maybe overwhelmed. Sometimes it really does take a community. You're not alone and you don't have to do this alone.

And I think meal apps can make it easier, as you've said already, Jen, So just to talk through some of the benefits of why use an Why use a meal planning app? I mean, first of all, it can help keep you organized. I know that the weeks that I even create my own meal plan, I feel so much more on top of things and kind of all of life. It takes out the question marks and I know what the meals are going to be each day.

That doesn't mean that I can't switch out what dinner is on Tuesday for Wednesday, or maybe have Friday's dinner for lunch, and it can be switched around, but it gives a lot more ease and relaxation and organization. M hmm. Yeah. And you can't. Also, you can't make a shopping list without a meal plan. Then you're just adding I mean you can, but you're just adding random things onto your

shopping list. Like sometimes you you'll make a shopping list and you'll have a meal plan in your head, but if you don't write the meal plan down, you forget it, and then you this stockpile starts building in your fridge and your freezer and your pantry. So avoid that because

that's a big one. I mean when people gosh, when we have the conversation about paying off debt, and they're like, what's the biggest thing you did to like help you, And I was like, meal planning and no spend challenge, just those two things, the two things that I wrote a book on, wrote books on. So meal planning was like essential to that. And it's because if I don't meal plan, I buy random stuff, I over buy, and

I waste food. So just skip all of that hassle and a meal plan and you can either do it on paper or I would say via technology like vienna app and have it written down like on the fridge

so nobody asks what's for dinner? Yeah, And the benefits of this, like you're saying, Jen, this can be really great, especially for those who are in a debt payoff journey, really wanting to find those additional hacks for how can I really help my budget because meal planning usually leads to less food waste because we're not making purchases on

food that we don't need. It is drawing us to our pantry to who are fridged to identify what do we have already, what are we going to make, what do we need to purchase, and not getting additional items, only the things that you need. It's surprising how little your grocery bill can be when you're only getting the essentials for the food that you've planned for for that week.

And and then it can help you to avoid those last minute purchases, which also tend to lead to impulse purchases when you have to run out to the store last minute because you don't have on hand that thing for this random recipe that you just on a whim decided to make, and just yeah, less money spent overall on food, less food waste, make planning easier, thinking ahead,

less stress, more organized. So these are all the reasons, and so we know that meal planning for these reasons is fantastic, and sometimes that's the barrier in and of itself is but how do I do that? That feels so daunting? What a great idea? Let me meal plan now? How? And that's when these apps come into play, that maybe you could use an app and you get to the point where I've gotten really good at this, let me

do it myself. But if you just want to cut out even the time it takes to do the actual labor of meal planning. Here you go. There are apps that will give you the meal plan, incorporate a shopping list, give you the recipe. So we're going to give you the rundown on the various ones. They're specific things that are really appealing, that might be congruent with whatever it is that your goals are. But that's our appeal to you.

And this is why to do it. This is why the meal plan, this is why to use an app to do it. Yes, So we're going to start out with this article from the Spruce Eats and it is their list of best meal planning apps. And these are apps that are free. Only one of them on the list cost money, but it's like three so it can stay. They have too on here that are one is not is an actual meal planning serve us, and the other

one is like six nine. But we're covering free first because that's maybe where you want to start out with. If you have a stockpile of recipes or you want more flexibility. You don't want people like to tell you what to eat um. You just want to make you know compile your own meal plan. This is where to start. So the first one will go over is the best overall according to them, and it's Paprika. It's a super common one. I have used it. It has a free

basic version. I think all of these will have an upgraded version, and some of them if you like it, worth the upgrade for like three if you'll use it, it's worth the upgrade, but use it for free first. Um And they say they chose it because Paprika UM. The company provides flexibility and customization even with the E version of the app, and it is quite good. I know a lot of people that use this one. There's no database of recipes on Paprika. You will have to

find your own. Episode seventy nine has a lot of great food blogs um where you can go there and clip the recipe and then Paprica will save it and then you can access it from the app. So and you can do it by categories however you want. But yeah, that's that's Paprika. Anything to say on that chill. Next up is the spruce Eats calls meal Lime the best for time crunched cooks. So within that category of I don't have a lot of time to do this. That would be me. I always want recipes that are going

to be really quick and easy. Oftentimes by the time I get to the kitchen, I'm already hungry, so I want the cooking process to be really a typically quick but still yummy. I as much as I don't love cooking when I don't have time, I still love eating. So that's that's the thing. So this one is meal Lime m E A L I M E. And some of the pros to this is that again they do, similar to Paprika, have a free basic version. It is

easy to use. They curate recipes based on some of the inputs in requests that you, the user would put into it, and it also generates shopping lists for you to be able to know, well, what do I need to pick up based on this meal plan. Some of the cons is that an upgraded version would cost you, So if you wanted more money that are wanted more features, you're gonna have to actually pay money, not just the

free version. And it does not allow for manual addition of recipes, so that would be just utilizing whatever they supply to you. So I mean that's great, that's a great like differentiator, Like if you're a food foodie like food blog person, Paprika is definitely going to be better

for you. And if you don't want to look at food plugs, meal Lime they're very similar and they both create the grocery lists, you can create the weeklier monthly meal plan, and those are the two big ones in my opinion, and why you would choose one over the other. And they so with meal Line, they promised that with all of the recipes it's thirty minutes or less of cook time. So that's great, great, Yeah, I love that one. So the next one, it's their runner up for best

for weight loss. But if it's free versus the other one that costs like seventy bucks a quarter, ah yeah, it's eat this much. So I had not tried this one, so I just downloaded it. And it's definitely a um meal planning app, like specifically for being can shifts of your calories and your macros. So it is. It's got a free basic version. Basically you can create a meal plan.

If you want to create a meal plan for the week, you have to create it for the week prior because if you want to create it for the week coming up, then you have to pay for it, but you can still create a weekly meal plan. You're just kind of in quotations creating it for the week that's already passed, which is a little workaround, I guess. And you can't create grocery lists in it unless you pay for it.

So but it does. It has its own recipes and you put in like your your stats, your data and kind of how um if you want to maintain or lose weight or gain and then it will sort out its recipes to be appropriate for your calories and macros. And that means it has like really good nutritional info, but it's not ideal for families that have like varying nutritional means you would have to use just one person's macros for the whole family. And it says the shop and the one of the cons on the list is

the shopping list. Cost estimates aren't always accurate, so that could be due to inflation, I don't know. But it also it has a bar code scanner for nutritional info, so it's very health focused. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point of the family versatility. It might be good for if you're just cooking for yourself, and that's one of your main goals and priorities with the food that you prepare. The next one on this list falls under the category

of best for social media fans. It's called pre Prepare, but the pair part is spelled like the fruit p A R prepare. And the reason that they're describing this as good for social media fans, which is so funny because I feel like most people say I hate social media, and yet we're all on it. So I don't know. Better face the music, I guess, but they partner with a lot of popular food blogs, and there is an ability to connect with others through the app, so probably

an ability to share on the recipes. Talk about it a bit. There are thousands of free personalized recipes, nutritional info that's imported onto the recipes, easy to add recipes. It also generates shopping lists. Again, you can connect with others who also use the apps, so of being social

online is super important to you, especially around food. Then this offers that some of the cons that they mentioned about this app again, if you want the upgraded version, it's going to cost you, and they also described that it can be a lengthy process to add ingredients. Two recipes. I don't really know the situation where you need to do that. But I guess if you wanted to add ingredients to recipes, it's going to be a little difficult. It I don't want to. I have to tell the

app you're adding it. You can keep it a secret exactly, so I'm sure too. Yeah, if if it's a following popular food bloggers getting kind of the most up to date type of new recipes, trying new things, this would this one would be for you. If that sounds interesting. Yeah, it looks like. The user interface is very inviting, it looks very clean, and it has like the like some big bloggers, so like One Days of Real Food or

six Sisters stuff, so like the bigger food blogs. So again, if you're like into the smaller food blogs or like the niche food blogs, then it may not. You can add recipes to this one, which is great. Um, and it may already have some of your favorite food bloggers on there. And it creates grocery lists. So another another

good one. The next one they say is best for using up leftovers and it's Big Oven And I found this super interesting, So they say, Um, they chose Big Oven because of its feature that allows you to type in up to three ingredients and the search tool will find recipes that include them. So that is actually a really cool like feature of and that I wish other I wish other places like have that. Um so pros

is the has its own recipe database. It does create grocery lists you can definitely use use up your pantry. This one might be great for a pantry challenge. It does vary from free to twenty five dollars a year UM and the cons that most features require paying the annual fee, and you have to pay to upload more than one paper recipe, which is interesting, and there's limited features for organizing your recipes. So I didn't download this one, so I can't say that the the Recipe Finder app

is free. I would hope if that's their major feature that that would be included in the free one. But it says they have over a million recipes from home cooks and food bloggers and cooking sites, so a plus. So it has its own recipes and you can add your own recipes, so that's really great. Yeah, I mean year is not expensive, so like yeah, like I said before, use it for free and if you and whichever one you find really good value in if you are really

using it consistently, then pay for it. Make your life easier. But don't just like go out and buy them all and not sure if you'll use any that's that's not great. And the last one that we'll talk about on this article falls under the category of best for shopping on a budget. That's that's all of us and it's meal Board M E A L B O A r D. It does have a cost, so this is the one

that we mentioned there. It's it is not free, but the total cost to purchase it altogether is three dollars and nine cents, so like a one time fee and I'm pretty sure unlimited access. So again the pros is that it's just that one time feeds on a monthly fee, it's on an annual fee. You just buy it one time for three dollars and nine cents. You can upload your own recipes, you can scan from books, magazines, all

that kind of stuff. UH does have ability to create a digital grocery list and you can manually add prices to the items that you add to the grocery list that you can be sure that you're staying within budget with the ingredients and the things that you are planning to pick up from the store. It also has a personalized pantry feature which you can edit when you use

any of your ingredients. It can sink to all your devices, super user friendly web interface, and the cons are that there is no built in recipe database, so that's up to you to upload your own recipes. And then another con is that building and editing your pantry can take some work, so some upfront work of saying what you already have and then might be a little bit more laborious to then edit what you have in your pantry within the app. But again, overall it's low cost and

helps you stay on budget with the meal planning. Yeah, I mean, so I you Walmart grocery pickup for my grocery shopping, which get lets me keep track of my budget, like in real time with accurate prices, I mean, with inflation, like prices are changing monthly, it seems like. And so I think if you track your prices manually, you'll be tracking,

you'll be changing a lot. So like, I don't know if this is worth three for that one primary feature, because you can get all those other features for free from different ones um or with additional features for just a smidge more. Um, so I might either use a free one or like spend a little bit more for something that has a recipe database and allows me to add my own and other things and the and the user interface on this one is very simple. Basically looks

like a spreadsheet like a Google calendar. So it's very simple, which is clean, which some people like. But yeah, it's this one is not my favorite. I think with any of the other five are our better bets. I will also mention that on this article, which will be linked in our show notes, is a comparison chart of all the apps that we've just mentioned, plus two additional apps.

So if you've been listening and you're like, which one was it that had this but not that, there's a great spreadsheet at the bottom of this article that compares costs, whether or not it generates a shopping list, whether or not nutritional info is accessible, if there's a recipe database, and so you can kind of reference and compare each of the different apps there. It's an excellent mos spreadsheet. So let's move on to our second set of meal

planning apps. And while the ones we just stated require you to compile your own meal plan based on recipes that are either in the app or that you find yourself. These meal planning apps are like meal planning services and so they provide a weekly meal plan to you, um and if you don't like it or you want more, you can customize it. So that's what these are. And they all all three of them have free trial, so again you can try it before you spend the money

on it. But if you're somebody who just does not want to think about compiling recipes, like that's the last thing you want to do, then it can save you money and food waste to pay for one of these services. Like I've done it, We've all like done it. I'm currently a customer of one of these services. So so yeah, I mean it's worth the money for the long term

savings that it will provide you. I love it. These are even more do it for me answering, that cry for help type of app where you don't even have to compile it's just what what's for dinner? You, even the person who is the primary one planning the meals each week, can ask this app what's for dinner? And that feels great? Yes. Uh, So let's start out with the first one, which is definitely our favorite, the long time supporter of the show cook Smarts, and they are

one of the best known meal planning apps around. They've been around for years and we know the CEO personally and she is fantastic. She was on the Food Network, like on the Next Food Network Star with Guy Fiertti, so obviously Guy Fieri one. There was no competition there, but she was on the show with him. Her name is Justing and she's a mom and a chef, and so cook Smarts gives you four meals per week and they are definitely more adventurous than some other meal planning services.

They're still kid friendly because she's a mom and she ex these for her kids. Um, but if you are just a casserole, meat and potatoes kind of person, uh, this isn't the best one for you. But this is a The app is very user friendly. UM, it's very easy to go into the archives if you want to add stuff. Even at the bottom below the four meals they give you for the week, she recommends three others that you might want to add or switch out. So

and always using like um shared ingredients. So if you're making Moho pork that week, then you're definitely going to reuse the rest of the moho pork in something else later in the week. So that there is an emphasis on reducing food waste, on meal preps, like prepping ingredients so that cooking is more efficient and uses fewer dishes and um on, even like repurposing leftovers. So this is

a fantastic meal planning service. They're super aesthetically pleasing too, and they've got lots of videos on new cooking techniques and how to So yeah, if you want to expand your skill set and your repertoire, that's a it's a fun one in the process, it's like learning new things too. The next one on this article, and I don't know if we mentioned this is an article that Jen wrote, so again but we didn't. Yes, I wrote this article.

This is a this is on my when I used to in another life, when I used to write a blog called Modern Frugality, and this I actually have a YouTube video on it as well. I think the YouTube video is linked in there. But yes, so I've tried all of these I've tried all of these services, so that and I forgot to mention the cook Smarts right now, they're free trial is um fourteen days. Oh nice, two whole weeks. So this next one is e meals and also a meal planning app that does a lot of

the work for you. So it's pretty streamlined, and it's it is for you if you don't want to be making too many decisions, but maybe that lack of customization might not be appealing if if you want to be able to customize a lot of different things. So they kind of do a lot of the heavy lifting. Some of the highlights of it is that there are, like we just said, the streamlined options. What I really love about this is the breakfast and lunch plans also being available.

A lot of times when we talk about meal planning, just in the wider sense, we're only typically talking about dinner. It's like, I eat more than dinner in a day and I want help thinking through, well, what what am I gonna eat for breakfast and lunch and dinner and what do I need to purchase? Those aren't like nothing meals thought needs to go into that. So that's super

a great user friendly menus. You've got the option to select thirty minute meals, low calorie meals, kild friendly meals, so there are different categories as well that you can select through the emails app. Yeah, that's probably the biggest differentiator for me between cook Smarts and Emails. Cook Smarts

offers paleo, vegetarian, and regular options. Emails in addition to that, offers heart healthy, diabetic, plant based, so fully vegan, budget friendly, clean eating keto so like, it has a lot of different options. So if you're looking for a more health conscious, like more health conscious meal plan that you can customize based on what you consider health conscious for yourself, Emails is definitely the way to go. And their free trail right now these always changed to the way but as

of recording, their free trial is also fourteen days. So then the last one we got up here is eat at Home. And so this one's a smaller like it's not like a big company, it's just I think, like a small team. But this is a meal plan that focuses on family friendly recipes. So, like I said at the beginning, if you're that casserole, dump dinner, freezer meal, this one is for you. Like, if you're not a very adventurous eater, you're going to really like then the

meal plans it it's called eat at home. So yeah, there again you can um make your grocer gives you. It does have several different UM like plans, So there's a no flour or sugar plan, whole food, plant based, traditional, and crop pot and then um and I use it, I have to double check. With your subscription, you get access to all of them plus six like a freezer stash every month, so you can buy all the ingredients and make six freezer meals every month to use throughout

the months. They are such a great I love them, um and so I that was probably my favorite thing about this one. UM. So you get all four of those and then the freezer stash. So yeah, and you get another thing that I like about this when you get the whole month up front. Uh So the other ones you get a week at a time, and this one you get, um all the whole month up front, so you can you can like plan your shopping trip

like upfront. And then it also gives you the option for small family and large family, so you can do like a three to four serving or sixty eight UM serving plan and so you avoid waste. And so yeah, it still has it says the one hour freezer stash, so that you stock your freezer with six meals prepped in an hour, and you get a new plan each month.

So if you are family oriented, then this is definitely the plan for you, because yeah, I've got a lot of When I tried it had a lot of that um the you know, dump dinners and cast roles and just like feel good food that's very kid friendly, which could be good during a particularly busy season of life. We don't have to cook the same way until all of the eternity. Again, we've got decades of needing to

feed ourselves. So identifying what app is going to work for you now at this particular life stage and then having permission to switch it up if you find yourself in a different life stage, or maybe you've got more time or less time, so hopefully you find something that works for you. Again, we've got these linked in the show notes, so if any of these sound interest saying you want to try these free trials, feel free to utilize the links that are. Yeah, they're in this article.

And for the eat at home, they just give you like one free um like an instant pot meal plan. It's not like a fourteen day trial or anything. Because since they don't go week to week. They just go month to month UM. But the trial has like for it's it's like an instant pot school free UM instant meal plan with video lessons, pdf downloads UM to help you use that instant pot And uh yeah, they're all about fourteen dollars a month. It's less if you get a year. But right, it's like half the price on

some of them. So that's about what you can expect to pay. Very reasonable, honestly for the savings I think. So yeah, you know you know what else is reasonable? Well, you know what's free and never requires a monthly subscription. Unlimited trial, unlimited free trial. The bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay

that bill anymore. Touch bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clint, this is the bill of the week. Hi, Jen and Jail. This is Emily from State College, Pennsylvania. My bill of the week this week is my private student loan bill. Believe it or not, UM, it's my bill the week because my minimum payment just decreased by sixty dollars a month because I've been paying um so much extra for so long, so back gets me excited, and I'm hoping to pay that off by the end of this year.

Thanks for the show. Thanks Emily. That is exciting that you will have because yeah, private student loans, they they didn't miss a beat charging they're paying those back. So I'm really glad um that you are going to get the private student loan debt out of your life, even though the bill is decreased, that you're still just going to get it out of your life. So yes, Emily,

thank you so much for sharing. This is exciting, not only the decrease in the amount that you pay because of the extra you've paid, but how close you are. We can all almost taste it. We've added it to our meal plan, the taste of your debt freedom having this bill is private student loan bill paid off by the end of the year. Cheering you on. We hope that happens. Feel free to call back it does happen, and we'll celebrate with you when it happens. At the

not not if, when, when it happens when? Now back to the ifs, if you are listening, want to submit your bill of the week, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. Leave us a bill if it has anything to do with decreasing a bill, getting rid of a bill, giving birth to a bill, whatever it is, especially that leave us your bill. Just a tiny little baby that says Bill on it. Please send us a picture and a naughty and record audio of it. And now it's time for the lightning. Oh wow, just a

tiny little baby. Like a tiny tiny baby, You're still am even if his name isn't Bill. You just want to have a name tag that says my name is Bill. I can feel lie lie to me. I'm fine. Alright, So today's lightning round. How do you come up with new meal ideas and not get stuck in a rut? This question comes from our manager, our podcast manager, Goldie. Yeah. Well, I'm never going to say I don't get stuck. Getting stuck happens, Yeah obviously, then yeah, how do you get

out of the rut? Might be a better way to phrase it. Yeah. One of the things that works for me is changing up my shopping routine. So typically I do get my groceries from Walmart all the you know, kind of low cost environment to procure everything that I

need for the week. But when I'm feeling close to a rut, or i've already found myself in a rut, I'll do something like a Trader Joe's run for that week, where the cost of the groceries might go up slightly, but the variety and alternative options that are different from what I'm typically used to eating. Because I when I do my typical run, my typical grocery run, I'm getting usually a lot of the same things because I know

what I know and I know what works. But if I'm able to change it up with a Trader Joe's, or I have my mother in law's in town, we might try a Sam's Club. They don't do everything that I need, but some new things, some variety, and on occasion, I will say maybe about once a quarter, maybe twice a year, I'll do a meal delivery, so not just meal planning, but an actual meal delivery service too, because that while it is more expensive than grocery shopping, it's

less expensive than eating out. So again we're talking I'm in a rut, I need to switch it up a bit, or or I'm super super busy or I'm just getting back from traveling and I don't even have the time to like think about what I'm going to make or make a delivery order. Getting the meal meal kit delivery service has been really helpful. Yeah, I love meal kits

for that. And when you can anticipate a busy season, like your kids have a soccer tournament and they have games, multiple games every night of the week, But and you want to not eat out every single night of the week. You'd like to eat in maybe you know, three times over the course of that tournament. Then that's great. It can save you money in times like that, or like when you're studying for like big tests or series of tests, stuff like that. Like when in seasons where the week

is going to be identifiably busier than others. Just don't expect more of yourself than you can give. And permission, Yeah, permission, what about you? Jen? I visit my tried and true favorite food blogs. So when if I'm on cook Smarts and I'm just like not digging the week, then I'll go to one of my favorite food blogs and just pick a few recipes from that one blog, and I'll make that food blog the entire like week. That's kind of what helps me. Um. I think I did that

last week. I think it was I think I used love and Lemons last week, so maybe the week before. I can't remember. Yeah, but yeah, that's kind of how I will do it. And I'll go back to my my list of favorite food blogs. I mean actually in our when we did the Eat at Home challenge and our membership, I have a list of like seventy five food blogs in their way more and than episode seventy nine. Yeah, so like with direct links, so just hit one of

those links and and check it out. So yeah, that's kind of my and I have, like I have rotations of like cuisines, so like I'll maybe if I'm trying to create my own meal plan, I'll choose an Italian, a Greek, a Mexican, and like a more like comfort food. So like I'll pick one of each of those because those are my favorite cuisines, followed by like an Indian and a like a pan Asian sort of cuisine. So um. So yeah, I'll just pick one of those cuisines and

look it up. And sometimes I'll do that concept what you're describing in like a week to week rather than a day to day, especially if some of the recipes require some specialty ingredients so that I can know i'm using up. Yeah, like one week will all be kind of Greek inspired, in another week might be more the Asian cuisine, so you can know that you're going to use the items. Yes, yes, so that's so good. Well, thanks guys so much for listening. UM. We love to

help you save money on food. It's our most requested topic and people ask how do you come up with so many topics and and ideas for your podcast? We're like, we don't people do? People come up with them for us like you. Uh So, if you have an episode request, you can definitely let us know shooting us an email or or posting in the Facebook group. Just yeah, emails

probably the best. But yeah, so thanks for listening. You also probably know that we have a private community where we do monthly challenges UM and we have accountability group. So we want to congratulate one of our members for a big mindset shift they made during last month's mindset challenge, and that is Judith. She says, we just got a notice from our water utility company that we can't water our lawns until further notice, and the wheat must make

every effort to conserve water. Since the shortages have started almost two years ago, I've been learning ways to conserve, substitute, and do without. So today I saved the washing machine water and used that to water my front lawn. Not enough, but better than nothing. The mindset I used is always learning. You have to be flexible enough to change when circumstances change. And yeah, learning is deaf is one of the steps to cultivating growth mindset. So good job, Judith. That's amazing, Judith.

I really would love to know the ins and outs of how you made that work. I was also thinking or yeah, the hose that, um let's the water drain or and then I guess using eco friendly soap so that then you can water the lawn with it. Anyhow, I mean, it's you are learning ways two years and that's quite a long time. So congrat So thank you

for listening. If you want to check out our monthly challenge club, head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash club see what challenge we've got coming up next, See you next time. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Syrian Jill Tell Me You know what would be very cool for you and I to do is that if you took me back to Sam's Club, because I've been thinking about Sam's Club since you took me that one time. You want to go, I do. It's some magical place.

You know what I also love about Sam's Club is the inexpensive hot dogs. Absolutely well, we will for sure get a hot dog. We'll go for lunch or something and get a hot I mean eating out at Sam's Club is like dining in because you can get a hot dog for a dollar. That should have been one of our meal planning apps is Sam's Club. It's just hot dogs from Sam's. Neither hot dog or a slice of pizza. And done about the nutritional info put a

vegetable on it, like relish. Yeah. They are great for really specific things, but they're not and we've talked about, you know, bulk stores in the past, but they're not great for procuring everything that I need. But occasionally, if I want even prepared meals, man, they've got some really great That's what I was thinking. I don't they're haired and refrigerated sash frozen like meals, and I'm like, this

is a this is a magic place. You really have to go in with a set amount of what you're going to spend, because you could walk out of there and what you have space to store with only like

five items and spend two hundred dollars somehow. So going in with Okay, I'm going to limit myself to this amount of money or items and but but if you can be regimented, it can be really great, especially in those times when you're in a rut or you need to feed a bunch of people, Like there have been times when we've had guests in who are helping us with renovations, and that's a lot on me when I have full time work and hosting and trying to feed

people that are working on my house. So getting these big prepared meals that I just need to heat up that you know are always going to be good. Like Sam's Clubs Manya's are really great. Yeah. I I saw a group on like special on it for like maybe it was like five dollars for a membership to Sam's Club and then you get like a twenty five dollar gift card and I didn't trust myself to get it, and I was like this, you there are two full sized humans and one half sized human in your house.

You don't need Sam's Club and I and that's what I kept telling myself, and I said, Jill will take me, I'll take you. Let's go. Okay, okay, see it, see you soon, see it. Sam's gone.