Meal Planning Made Easy: A Review of Passionate Penny Pincher Meal Plans

It’s hard to know what to make for dinner, and even harder to find recipes that everyone in the family will like. 

I used to spend hours upon hours scrolling through Pinterest trying to find something that my whole family would like. Once I’d finally find a recipe that appealed to me, it’d turn out to be crazy expensive because of the ingredients and the cook time was just too long.

One of my goals this year is the get more organized, and part of that is to get a system in place for meal planning. I’ve tried so many plans in the past but nothing seemed to stick!

Facebook somehow knew my goals (creepy, huh?) and kept showing me ads for a meal planning kit from Passionate Penny Pincher. The ads got to me and one day I decided to order one to try it out.

Maybe this one would be different? It was worth trying.

I’ve now been using the meal cards for over a month and wanted to share my experience with them!

Key Takeaways

•Passionate Penny Pincher Meal Plan is a 12 week meal planning system that includes 72 recipes, broken into categories such as Slow Cooker, Low Calorie and Freezer.
• After trying the first recipe from the low calorie box, our family was blown away by how delicious it was!
• We have been using the cards for over a month now and are completely obsessed with them; we’ve only had one not-so-great meal due to an issue with BBQ sauce.
• Pros include easy cooking, whole ingredients used in recipes & huge time savings while cons include no nutritional values provided or WW points calculated & some of meals may not be considered healthy.
• Overall review: If you’re looking for an easy way to meal plan then Passionate Penny Pincher’s Meal Plans are definitely worth looking into – they will save you time and money!

What is the Passionate Penny Pincher Meal Plan?

The Passionate Penny Pincher Meal Plan is a 12 week meal planning system that does everything for you. Each week has 5 meal recipes, 1 dessert recipe, and a dry erase grocery card. In total, there’s 72 recipes in each box.

The meals are broken into a few different sets. Currently there are:

Slow Cooker (2 versions)

Low Calorie

Freezer

Celebrations

Sides (this one just has side dishes)

Summer

PPP is coming out with 2 new versions this year: 5 ingredients or less and a Whole Foods box.

Each box costs $46, which includes the physical cards and a digital version. PPP does run sales often so when I got mine I only paid like $23 each, so keep an eye out for that!

Ordering the Cards

After seeing ads for a few weeks for these cards, I decided to order the low calorie box. I was pretty skeptical because I’ve tried what feels like a million services like this, and usually after a few weeks I get tired of the recipes or they end up being a ton of work.

However, they were on sale so I decided to give it a try!

Right after ordering the box, I got an e-mail invite to join the private Facebook group as well as a digital copy of the recipes and meal plans. I jumped right into reading all the recipes.

After reading through a few of the recipes, I was pretty impressed. The recipes seemed simple enough and were different than the usual types of recipes I make for my family. I decided to start right away with the meal plan and decided to make:

Easy Frittata

Braised Balsamic Chicken with Sweet Potatoes

Oniony Turkey Breast with Mushroom Saute

Turkey and Biscuit Skillet

Unfortunately the grocery store was out of turkey so I had to change my plan and just made the frittata and braised balsamic chicken.

Our Family’s Experience and Review

We were completely blown away by the first recipes we tried! Both the frittata and the chicken were really easy to make, and my whole family loved it. This was one of the first weeks that we actually finished off all the leftovers even!

After the success with the first week, I ended up ordering the slow cooker and the freezer meal plans.

I could barely wait for them to arrive so that same day I ordered groceries to make a few of the recipes, like easy lasagna, chicken taco bowls, and shepherd’s pie.

I really liked how easy the freezer meals were to put together. I had tried to do freezer meals in the past, but it would end up taking me hours to do and I questioned if I was even saving any time.

However, these freezer meals are different. They don’t call for a lot of ingredients (and when they do -it’s usually a whole can or package, a major win in my book!) and most of the recipes don’t require anything to be cooked or prepped ahead. Simply dump and freeze.

How We Use the Meal Plans

We’ve been using the meal plans for a little over a month now and I’m completely obsessed with them. This has been the first meal planning system that I’ve actually used every single day, and my family has loved most of the meals.

So far we’ve only had one not so great meal, and that was the Brunswick Chicken Stew Casserole. This one called for BBQ sauce in it and it could’ve been my own fault and the BBQ sauce I chose to make it with.

Everything else has been a huge hit in our house!

The way I use the cards is I go through each week and pick out one or two dishes that sound good. My kids are still little so each meal provides us with about 2 nights of food, so I don’t need to make all 5 days worth of meals.

I also like doing more of the picking and choosing because then I can plan my meal plan around the grocery sales.

So far, I’ve found the best balance has been making 1-2 meals a week fresh (usually out of the low cal box) and then 1 or 2 freezer meals. This has worked out really well for us and has made meal planning a lot easier.

Passionate Penny Pincher and Weight Watchers

This year I’ve recommitted to Weight Watchers (WW) and one of my big concerns about getting the recipes was if they would be WW friendly.

The good news is that for the most part, they are!

The low cal box is the most WW friendly plan, but I’ve found that the freezer and slow cooker meals are really easy to adapt to make low in WW points. For example, if a recipe calls for beef, I’ll swap it out for lean ground turkey. Or if it calls for cheese, I might only do 1/2 of the cheese or swap out for lower point cheese.

So far this has really worked out well and hasn’t compromised on the flavor at all!

The only downside is that PPP isn’t a WW plan, so you do need to calculate all the points in the recipe builder. But once you do it once you’ll have the recipes in there for the next time you make it.

Related Post: Weight Watchers vs. Healthi – How Do the Apps Compare?

Pros

Here’s some of the pros I’ve found since using the meal plans

Everything has been delicious

We’ve made quite a few of the recipes and they’ve been super delicious!

Easy cooking

All the recipes I’ve made have been incredibly easy to make. No recipe has called for any hard to find ingredients, and cooking is very easy.

Whole ingredients

Something I really appreciate is that most of the recipes can for entire cans or packages of food. I hate wasting food and this really helps reduce waste.

Huge timesaver

The meal plans have been huge timesavers for me. It’s so much easier to just open up a card box to find recipes instead of endlessly scrolling through Pinterest.

Cons

While there are many pros to the Passionate Penny Pincher meal plans, there are a few cons that I should mention.

Not always the healthiest meals

Like I mentioned above, my family eats mostly low calorie and the slow cooker and freezer meals tend to be higher in calories. This is super easy to adjust, but just something to be mindful of.

No nutritional values provided or WW points

The cards only have the recipes printed on them. The low cal box does have calories and net carbs, but that’s all. You’ll have to use a recipe builder to calculate the full nutritional value or WW points.

Religious Quotes

This isn’t a big deal for me, but some people are turned off because the cards do include a Christian quote on the bottom. PPP is a Christian company so you’ll see on all their products they include religion, but it’s easy to look past if you’re not religious.

The Verdict

Overall, I’ve been loving the Passionate Penny Pincher meal plans! They have been a huge time saver for me and made it super easy to make delicious meals. I’m still able to stay on track with my WW points, and the recipes have all been a huge hit with my family.

If you’re looking for an easy way to meal plan, the PPP meal plans are definitely worth looking into. Give them a try and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!

Want to try the meal plans out? Click here to save $5 off your order!

FAQs

Are the meals healthy?

It really depends on what you define healthy as. For me, I try to keep my meals lower in calories and high in protein and there’s quite a few recipes that fit this category for me. The recipes are all pretty simple and I’ve been able to make adjustments too to make the meals healthy for my family (for example, swapping out beef in a recipe for lean ground turkey).

Are the meals kid friendly? Even for picky eaters?

So far I’ve found that most of the meals are kid friendly! I have a 1 and a 4 year old and for the most part they’ve been a fan of all the meals we’ve made. The only one that hasn’t been a hit is the Brunswick Chicken Stew Casserole, and I think that was more my fault because the BBQ sauce I used was a little too spicy for my kids taste.

Can the meals be adjusted?

Yes! The one thing I love the most about these meal plans is that they can be adjusted. If there’s something on the ingredient list you don’t like you can swap it out for something else (or skip completely)

Do the meals take a long time to cook?

I haven’t really found that any of the meals we’re tried take very long to cook. I’m a big fan of the freezer meals and find they’re really fast to prep and cooking time is usually an hour in the oven. The from-scratch meals like in low calorie can take 30-60 minutes to make.

Do you have a coupon code?

Yes! I have a coupon code for $5 off your first order. Click here to get the coupon!