There is always room for improvement in just about everything. Preparing meals and feeding your family is one of them.
I can't believe that until 2013 we had no meal plan set in place. Thomas and I would just end up texting or calling each other on our way home to see what we were craving. This fly by the seat of your pants type of meal plan was extremely stressful - but I had no idea that it was!! I have a friend (who is no longer blogging) who would write about her meal plans for the week and I thought it was such a genius idea. I had never heard of such a thing, my own mom was a SAHM and loved to cook so she would just get inspired throughout the day for what to have for dinner and then make it - or she would make our requests.
So enter in 2013 and the beginning of my meal planning journey. I really cannot get over how much simpler just having a plan/guideline for the week has made my life. We don't always follow it 100% of the time but it's nice to know that if all else fails we already know what's for dinner. I write our weekly Menu on a chalkboard I picked up in February 2011 and it's so nice to have it out and displayed.
One thing I noticed was a bit of a challenge was coming up with what to eat. We try to sit down and talk about it on Sunday nights but that doesn't always happen. It get exhausting trying to come up with 6 meals for the week that have a variety. Some weeks we don't meal plan and I can tell the difference anxiety!!
A couple weeks ago I came up with an idea of how to remedy this. Much like in blogging I have content guides for the day of the week why not do something similar with meal planning?!!
So here it is:
Monday meatless
Tuesday Mexican
Wednesday American
Thursday eat out
Friday Italian
Saturday family recipe
Sunday soup
Of course this is just a guideline and not set in stone. We can make adjustments as we want but at least it helps to give ideas.
Here is what we came up with for last week:
And the reality is that we went out for Mexican with my dad on Monday so we had leftovers on Tuesday. Wednesday we had to make a Costco run and nothing can beat a $6 meal of pizza and hotdogs. Thursday we went out for BWW $.65 wings and Friday we had our impromptu family gathering for the Husky game with my family. Saturday I made the Carbonara since we had picked up all the ingredients and Sunday we enjoyed family and Gumbo.
Here is what this week looks like:
Everything but Sunday meets our suggested faire. And so far we are two for two with following through with what's cooking!
How do you meal plan? Have you figured out how to meal prep on the weekends too? Gosh I would love to get my act together enough for that!!
♥ Ashley
I am really curious to hear how you like this in another month or two. A lot of time I plan according to the day of the week. I try and make something on Monday that will have leftovers for Wed. I ended up working on a binder full of meal ideas. Hopefully I will use it and love it. Meal planning systems only work when you use them.
ReplyDeleteThis is so cute/helpful. I usually do something similar but I'm a little more lenient…. ie. I do one soup a week, one meatless, one panini/wrap night etc… but I mix and match the nights.
ReplyDeleteThis is something that I always seem to struggle with!! I'll sit down and make out a meal plan for the week, or sometimes two weeks, before I go grocery shopping but about half way through the week it all gets thrown out the window.
ReplyDeletehaha I was wondering about the bbq chicken soup =) Chicken taco chili is a fave around here. I hate/love meal planning. I go through spurts. And it really makes life easier but I never know what to plan. I love the themes idea!
ReplyDeleteI've really been trying hard to make a meal plan each week and stick to it, but it's tough! Plus I hate meal planning, shopping, and cooking, so that doesn't help anything, LOL. But I've figured out if I can make just a couple big meals during the week and have leftovers, that pretty much gets us through. Plus when Stew is on shift I pretty much just pick stuff off Ryder's high chair tray for dinner instead of eating a real meal. ;-)
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