Meal Plan Monday

This week, we are eating almost completely meals that I've premade or leftovers that I've frozen. This is going to be one of those weeks that I'm catching up from a busy weekend (trying to get us to where we have some clean clothes and space to walk...) and trying to get some holiday preparation done ahead of time. Also, I'm just not too much in the mood to cook. :)

I'm so glad that we have that big extra freezer in the garage now. I do think that we're going to save some money, and I know that it's helped us keep from eating out so much during weeks like this one.

Here's what my family will be eating:

Monday - Chicken 'n dumplings
Tuesday - Broiled fish, rice, veggie (fish from freezer)(make a whole pot of rice to use the rest of the week)
Wednesday - Fellowship dinner at church
Thursday - Roast chicken, rice, veggie
Friday - Chicken casserole over rice (from freezer)
Saturday - Sausage stew (from freezer) with salad
Sunday - Chicken rice pilaf (from freezer)

In other news, we've had an eventful past few days! We traveled to Monroe on Friday and Saturday to visit that Baptist Children's home there. Such an amazing facility, and I got some great resources to use at work. Sunday after church we went to New Orleans to see some dear friend and meet their precious new daughter, Maggie Grace. She's beautiful! Today, Dennis is busy getting out yard ready, our 4 new chickens arrived today! I think I'll call them all "Sally." They're all solid white, so I can't tell them apart. Hopefully, we'll start getting some eggs soon!

How about you? What are you cooking (or pulling out of the freezer) this week?

Meal Plan Monday

Have you made your meal plan for the week yet? Here's what my family will be eating:

Monday - Roast beef sandwiches (The roast is in the crock pot now. Our house sure smells yummy!)
Tuesday - Crock pot chicken, rice, bok choy (From our garden!)
Wednesday - Fellowship dinner at church
Thursday - Sloppy Joes (double the meat)
Friday - Chicken and dumplings (made with leftover chicken from Monday)
Saturday - Spaghetti (brown the ground beef w/the sloppy joe meat on Thursday)
Sunday - Soup from the freezer with salad (Lettuce from our garden!)

I'm not trying any new recipes this week, we have quite a bit of ingredients around that I feel need to be used up, and our garden is producing nicely, so we'll be getting out vegetables from there this week. It's so much fun to be able to go pick our vegetables for right before dinner!

You can see I've streamlined our meal plan this week to make it easier. I'm going to brown 4 pounds of ground beef on Thursday (or earlier if I have some spare time), enough for two meals plus 2 meals of leftovers. It doesn't take much time to brown extra meat, and I only make a mess one time, so it's less to clean up. I'm also going to do a chicken in the crockpot and use the leftover meat for another meal.

I hope you're enjoying this fall weather and drinking lots of hot drinks to keep warm!

Happy meal planning!

Meal Plan Monday

How did your meal planning from last week go? We did pretty good, I always end up switching up a couple of nights because I change my mind mid-week, but it works out fine. We're sure eating out a lot less now that I'm planning and shopping for each night!

This week, we'll be having:

Monday - Vegetable not-sagnia pasta toss (210) (double)
Tuesday - Road to Morocco chicken w/couscous (138) (double)
Wednesday - Refrigerator soup in the crock pot
Thursday - Sweet soy soaked salmon fillets over noodle-y veggies (188)
Friday - Black bean burgers (from freezer)
Saturday - Chicken with apple mushroom sauce and steamed asparagus (174)
Sunday - Potato soup and grilled sandwiches

I'm still cooking through Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals, and we've found quite a few family favorites so far!

What will your family be eating this week?

You know what I'd like to do one of these days, when I've got some spare time and I'm feeling ambitious (rarely happens on the same day)? I'd like to plan all three meals plus snacks for a week, counting up to make sure we're all getting our daily allotment of protein, fruits and veggies, and dairy each day. Hmm. Do any of you know of any books or web-sites that have the meal plans already written up? That would be nice...

This post was shared at Plan-it, Don't Panic.

Meal Plan Monday

Hi guys! Last week I wrote about how I discovered meal planning, why I find it to be so useful, and shared some tips I've discovered to help me in my meal planning. Today, I want to share my meal plan for the week with you and invite you to do the same.

If you're new and want to read more about meal planning, look here and here.

Alrighty, here it is. The most exciting part of your day, I'm sure. :)

Monday - Dinner with friends
Tuesday - Everything lo mein (114)
Wednesday - Fellowship dinner at church
Thursday - Italian tuna casserole (110)
Friday - Bacon bit burgers (88)
Saturday - Tuscan Calzones with "the works" (118) (double)
Sunday - Potato soup and grilled sandwiches

Make ahead - white beans, hamburger buns

Here's a little insight into my "code". I'm cooking through Rachel Ray's cookbook "Express Lane Meals - A 30 Minute Meal Cookbook" The numbers are the page numbers for the recipes.

When I say "(double)" that is to remind me to double the recipe so I can freeze half for another night.

"Make ahead" are the things I'll need to make sometime early in the week for meals later.

Pretty simple! I've got my shopping list all made and Isabella and I are headed to the grocery store!

What fun recipes are you trying this week?

This post is a part of Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesday, and Fat Tuesday.

Meal planning tips

On Monday, I talked about a method that helps me save both money and time while eating healthier - meal planning.

Today, I'm going to give some practical tips to get started meal planning and a few different ways that people plan their meals. Don't worry, it doesn't need to be daunting and it doesn't take much longer than simply writing a grocery list. (If you're already thinking this might be too much for you, skip to the bottom part that says "What if I'm overwhelmed?". It will help you muchly.)

How many meals to plan.
In reality, our family ends up eating outside our home at least one a week. More if we have a fellowship dinner at our church. So, the first thing you want to do is see how many meals your family will be eating at home each week.

Next, you want to think about whether you want to plan all of your meals, or just dinners. I personally just plan our dinners because breakfast tends to be the same rotation of dishes, and lunch is usually leftovers, salad or a sandwich. Some people even like to plan snacks. Whatever works for you.

How long to plan for.
I plan for a week at a time. A reader commented that she plans for two weeks at a time because that's when her paycheck comes in and she goes grocery shopping. Makes good sense to me! Some people even plan for a month at a time. They do one big shopping list per month and then just do a few short trips for perishable items in between. I tried this one time, and found out right after I'd gone shopping that my husband needed to go on a special diet, so a lot of that food and time planning went to waste. I decided that life is too unpredictable for that method. Some people even shop and cook just one day a month for the whole month, and then pull the already made dinners out of the freezer each night. This website is a good resource if you're interested in trying this method out. Let me know if you try it!

What to cook.
This is the fun part, but it can also be intimidating. If you love to cook, set aside a few nights a week to try new recipes. A lot of people find that it helps to do "theme nights" to provide a guideline each week. We do this sometimes. It would look like this:

Monday: Chicken night
Tuesday: Vegetarian night
Wednesday: Mexican night
Thursday: Date night
Friday: Fish night
Saturday: Beef night
Sunday: Crock pot night

Of course, you might make a mexican dish with beef in it or a crock pot recipe for chicken, but it's just nice to have a general guideline. If you're on a tight budget, do a soup night and a bean night. You could also do a breakfast for dinner night. There are a lot of options.

I like to take it one cookbook at a time. Each week, I cook a few recipes out of that cookbook that look good to me. It's fun trying new dishes and it helps me keep from getting stuck in a rut.

What if I'm overwhelmed and I don't know how to cook much?
This is no problem! Make a list of dishes that your family likes and you can easily make. Write them down. There's your meal plan! When your list runs out, start over. Make a goal to try one new recipe per week, and you'll eventually have enough items on your list to fill a whole month. You could repeat the same month meal plan for a few months and no-one would even notice. After all, the same meal would only come around once each month!

In the first 2 months after Izzy was born, we had the same meal plan each week and I could easily shop for several weeks in one trip. It looked like this:

Tacos
Spaghetti
Chicken casserole
Date night
Church fellowship dinner
Leftovers
Soup

I eventually got tired of this and branched back out into cooking more, but it was nice not having to think about dinner while trying to figure out all that new parent business!

Ok guys, that's about it. On Monday, I want us to share our meal plans so that we can help each other with ideas and recipes! I'll be sharing some sample meal plans on Friday. See you then!

This post was shared at Fight Back Friday.

Meal planning

I actually first learned about meal planning when I was doing an internship in college. Shortly before Dennis and I got married, I worked at a transitional living home for women battling addiction. I had a wonderful experience working with these women, sitting around their kitchen table through many a meal, Bible study, and counseling session. Every monday morning when I arrived, the women would sit around and plan their meals for the week. I thought it was such a great idea that I initiated it in our home as well. I'm sure my Mom did something similar when we were growing up, but I don't specifically remember it.

Why is meal planning so helpful? Why take that extra time to sit down and do all that planning each week? Why not just buy what looks good at the grocery store and work with it when you get home? Well, here are a few reasons why we rarely let a week pass at our house without a meal plan in place.

You save time.
Yes, meal planning takes some time on the forefront, but you save that time and more by making less trips to the store. With your meal plan, you plan all at once and make one shopping trip.  Also, you spend less time staring blankly into the fridge waiting for dinner to jump out at you. (Don't be ashamed, we've all done it. If you dinner does ever actually jump out at you, I don't really suggest eating it. That sounds dangerous.) In fact, I do most of my meal planning on Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, and it now takes me a total of about 10 minutes, plus another 5 or so to write out my shopping list.

You save money.
As I just mentioned, when you plan and shop just once for the week, you save time, but you also save money. You use less gas driving to the grocery store and back, but you also have less opportunity to buy things that are not on your list. We are all susceptible to impulse buying, but if you shop once a week and you have a specific list with a plan, you will buy less.

Also, it's a good idea to take stock of your pantry, fridge and freezer before you sit down to meal plan. That way, you can cater your meal plan to the things you already have that need using up. This helps prevent food from getting pushed to the back, forgotten and allowed to spoil. Throwing away spoiled food is like throwing away money to me!

Planning ahead also saves us from those "I can't think of anything to cook and there's nothing to eat here. Let's just eat out." nights. Man, we can waste a lot of money eating out simply because we failed to plan ahead!

You eat healthier.
Like I just said, we eat out less when I keep a good meal plan going. I don't know about you, but eating out is usually one of the least healthy options for us. Of course, I could order a salad, but if I'm paying good money for my food, I want to enjoy it, dad gummit! I have no self control when I'm eating out, which okay on occasion, but not okay 3 times a week because I didn't plan a healthy meal at home.

Also, when we cook at home, we know what goes into our food. Most commercially prepared foods would shock you with their ingredient lists, especially at fast food restaurants.
Of course, we can make food at home that is really unhealthy, too, so we have to be mindful of what we're cooking. Planning ahead helps us here, too, as we're not frequently resorting to microwaved super-processed "food" at the last minute.

So, there are all the good reasons to have a meal plan, and I'll be writing on Wednesday some tips to help you get started meal planning, as well as a few different methods of meal planning. Next Monday, I'll start posting my meal plans each Monday (accountability!) and I invite you to post your meal plans, too.

This post was shared on Monday Mania, Traditional Tuesdays, and Fat Tuesday.