Meals for a year: Good idea or not?

ust in case you haven't been paying attention, grocery shopping has changed dramatically in recent years. With an exponentially growing plethora of food products on the shelf, as well as food prices going up, it can become daunting to buy groceries each week and not feel like you're spending your whole paycheck! Even if you're not shopping at Whole Paycheck (one of Whole Foods' nicknames, in case you haven't heard that one).

This last week I heard about a woman who has saved a great deal of money in her grocery budget by charting out meals for her family for an entire year. Initially I was a bit skeptical. What would a free-spirit kitchen roamer like myself do with that kind of structure? Freak out, probably. And bust out of the albeit-self-imposed grocery bag...

But then I watched the video clip from Good Morning America and took a look at her calendar and was kind of inspired. I don't know if I need to do an entire year, but I could certainly chart a month or two and see how it goes. We have some pretty standard meals that we concoct on a regular basis, and if I leave a few nights here and there for the "free spirit" to run wild, we might all be happy. And after a couple of months, see how it goes and adjust--especially with changing seasons. I didn't see a lot of seasonal cooking going on with her calendar...

Side note: To be honest, I was impressed with this mom just on the basis of her having four boys! Women who have more than two kids get gold stars in my book just for showing up, period. I have a good friend who has four boys, and she's a genius homemaker, from-scratch baker, renders her own lard and spins wool at the crack of dawn (no kidding). So I know, by association, the challenges of cooking for a full and chaotic house!

I'm inspired to give this a whirl. I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's the calendar of the meal plans.

And here's a link to the video at Good Morning America. (It would NOT embed, no way no how. Frustrating.)

Happy grocery shopping! Is this something you'd consider doing? How many children would you have to have to make it worth your while?!