How I Get Healthy Family Meals On A Budget

Are healthy family meals on a budget even possible?  Yes, and I’m sharing how The Dinner Daily helps not just with budget but easy meals that don’t take forever to cook!

As you’re probably aware, I’m a big fan of meal planning websites.  I like food, but I wasn’t liking cooking anymore.

Well … liking it less than I normally do.

Last year, I became bored with our dinner routine and felt as though I was in a rut.  I think the whole family was becoming bored of the same things.  Not to mention, Taco Tuesday went out the door when S began gymnastics on Tuesdays.

Taco Tuesday was the one night we enjoyed the rut.

This year, I decided I wanted to start working through several meal planning websites for families to determine my favorites.  Plus, new sites would offer me a bunch of different recipes to explore with my family.  And, most of them are set up to help me find meals that fit my dietary restrictions.

Well, recently I had the chance to try The Dinner Daily.  I was provided a short-term subscription to help facilitate this article.

Healthy Family Meals On A Budget With The Dinner Daily

The Dinner Daily was started by a mom who used to operate like many of us.  “Planning” meals on the fly going through the grocery store hoping to buy the right foods and enough to last for the week, but not really having a full-blown plan for that night, much less the rest of the week.

She was determined to come up with a way to feed her family healthy meals while also making it affordable.  Because, like us, she also recognized how much more expensive eating healthier foods was.

So, The Dinner Daily was born.

5 Reasons to Try The Dinner Daily

1. Food Preferences

You select your food preferences down to how often you want to eat a certain type of protein.  I tolerate chicken, but more than 2 times a week and I’ll begin to hate it.  Fish or shellfish?  I honestly would love to never eat it, but I settle for it about once a week at most.

But, I can also tell the system I have food restrictions, so it doesn’t populate meals in my weekly menu that I can’t eat.

2. Budget Friendly

One thing’s for certain, eating healthier isn’t always budget-friendly.  But, The Dinner Daily can help!

Aside from planning your meals for you, the system is smart enough to put meals on your list based on your ingredients that are on sale at your store.

You indicate the store you shop at and you’ll receive your menu the day your store sales begin.  As for me, I’m mainly a Publix shopper, so I receive my new menu on Thursdays with the new sales.

And, I have seen my grocery bill decrease since using The Dinner Daily.

3. Cost of Membership

The cost of The Dinner Daily membership is pretty affordable, too.

For starters, you can try 2 weeks for free.  Afterward, just choose your membership plan as follows:

$24 for 3 months

$36 for 6 months

$58 for 1 year

4. Swap Meals

If you’re not feeling one (or more) of the recipes or side dishes selected for you, you can change them out pretty easily.

Additionally, if the swapped recipe has ingredients on sale, you’ll see SALE in the title.  This helps tremendously if you’re trying to make healthy family meals on a budget!

5. Easy

The truth is, even though I want to cook healthier meals for the family, I realized that Paleo dinners usually meant spending hours in the kitchen.

As one who simply cooks for survival, spending hours in the kitchen has never and probably will never be enjoyable.

So, The Dinner Daily provides us healthier meals without the requirement to be stuck in the kitchen for hours.

In fact, the several weeks I’ve been using the service, I think there were only 2 nights I needed to be in the kitchen for 45 minutes.

Most meals, however, have required 20 – 35 minutes, which is completely do-able!  So, this is a major bonus while also have healthy family meals on a budget!

The Downsides of The Dinner Daily

While there has been a significant savings in my grocery bills every week, there are still some things I don’t love about The Dinner Daily.

For starters, The Dinner Daily only offers 1-click ordering with Peapod.  As another grocery delivery service user, it’s an extra step having to manually insert my grocery list into my account.  This is something I’ve gotten used to not doing with a previous meal planning website that automatically uploaded my grocery list for me.

So, if we’re being honest, I’m just upset I can’t be extra lazy 😉

Also, I feel as though seasoning and spices aren’t bold enough, so I have to account for that and make some changes while I cook to boost the flavor in the dishes.

Finally, while I’ve only been using the service for a couple weeks, I’ve already seen some of the same foods show up in my weekly plans.  I’m guessing, because of my dietary restrictions, the recipe options are limited.  Unfortunately, I cannot verify where or not this is the same for families who have no dietary restrictions.

Overall, though, I’ve been pleased with The Dinner Daily.  It’s helped me cook healthy family meals on a budget, saving me time in the kitchen, and has mixed up our weekly dinner routine.

Give The Dinner Daily a try for FREE for 14 days and tell me what you think!