menu planning

How Weekly Meal Planning Changed My Life

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Weekly Meal Planning helps us to eat healthily, waste less food, save money and reduce the amount of stress around meal time.

I have attempted to meal plan in the past but was never able to fully commit. I get overwhelmed with having to plan out all of our meals and eventually just give up and go grocery shopping for whatever looks good. Then I attempt to use everything we purchased by creating recipes on the spot. In all honesty, I usually fail to use everything and end up wasting food.

So what changed? Having a third child has changed things. One of my goals for this postpartum period was to limit how much we dine out and order take out. The only way to help prevent this from happening was to create a meal plan with recipes/meal ideas that were easy for Neil to put together and it has worked. Over this postpartum period, we have only eaten out at times when it was already implemented into our meal plan, we have used up 90% of our groceries, and overall we are eating more healthily than when I wasn’t meal planning. Being able to take advantage of grocery pick up from Fred Meyer (Kroger) has been a life saver as well. 

Meal planning allows us to spend less money. We aren’t running out to pick up one or two things and coming home with five. We know what we are having for dinner in advance so we are able to prepare meals and are less apt to go out to eat or order take out. 

Just remember to…

Keep it simple. Meals don’t need to be elaborate. Many of our meals are as simple as protein, grain/pasta/bread/starchy vegetable, lots of vegetables, healthy fat and sauce/condiment.

Example: BBQ Tofu (simply Amy’s BBQ sauce + Tofu), baked potatoes, massage kale salad (kale + olive oil + lemon juice + coconut aminos), chive cashew cream (chives + soaked cashews + lemon juice + ACV + S&P) and grapes for the kids. Simple, easy and loved by everyone. 

Account for snacks, treats & drinks. When planning your meals/grocery list make sure you are including your favorite snacks, treats (ice cream, chocolate, etc) and drinks. These are most often the things that we run out for and then of course that turns into picking up some additional items. 

Clean The Fridge Meal. Include a clean out of the fridge meal. This can either be eating up leftovers or simply using up any veggies and/or proteins that are left in your fridge before you do your weekly shop. 

Give Into Your Cravings. Have you been wanting pizza all week? Add it to your next meal plan. Either make it at home, pick up your favorite frozen/take-and-bake or plan for a pizza night out. In my experience when I ignore my cravings it just makes me want them more and then I end up going off plan and eating out or buy more ingredients to make what I’m craving. Now I just plan for it and I am able to save money and be more mindful about my food choices. 

Weekly Meal Rotation. Make your life easy and plan weekly meals either the same recipe every week or every two weeks. Alternatively have themed meal nights like Meatless Monday, Taco Tuesday or Leftovers Night. Here are a few more themed meal night ideas. 

Keep Staples On Hand.  Meal planning sometimes has it’s hiccups so allow yourself room to improvise. For example I ordered our groceries this week and I ended up with baby spinach with a short expiry date, a bag of potatoes that had a few bad potatoes in it and some avocado crazy kids who ate 4.5 of the 6 avocados I ordered in less than 24 hours. So I had to make a few adjustments to our meals. For this reason I like to order an extra veggie and have a few staples on hand just in case. 

At first meal planning can feel like a chore and just another thing you don’t have time to do but after a few weeks you’ll find your groove and it will become easier and easier. If you have a week that gets you off track don’t fret just return to your planning the next week. 

Do you meal plan? What are some of your favorite go to meals? 

Readers Request: Menu Planning

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Menu Planning 101

Menu planning hasn’t always been something that  I have done but over the years it has  become a part of my weekly routine. I have found that planning out what we are going to eat each week helps me to to stay on track when grocery shopping as well as it keeps us eating healthier. So now each week I sit down and I plan out our meals for the week.

Evaluate. The first thing I do when I start to work on our menu is to see what we have in our pantry, refrigerator and freezer.  I take note of items that could be used in the next weeks menu, especially those items that are on their last leg.  I make a list of these  and use it to help choose recipes.  I also currently have a CSA until mid October and base the majority of our meals around what we receive.  Every Tuesday afternoon we receive an email of what will be in our share the next day and I use that list to help build our menu.

Recipe Research. Flip through your favorite cookbooks and san through your favorite food blogs to find recipes that interest you and ones that will pair well with the ingredients you already have. New recipes are always fun but make sure you don’t overload yourself with time consuming or complicated recipes.  Keep things simple. Keep the complicated recipes to a minimum, one or two, per week and plan to make them when you have more time- for me this is generally on the weekends.  On other days focus on recipes that take 30 minutes or less.

Food Blogs I Love: Green Kitchen Stories; Oh She Glows; Golubka; Pure2Raw; roost; My New Roots

Plan dinners first. I always plan out what we will have for dinner and make note of any dining out plans. After planning our dinners I plan lunches; since most of the time our lunches are leftovers I don’t often have to make anything different unless we go out for dinner. Lastly, I plan breakfasts- these are the easiest because generally we have cereal, oatmeal or grits and it’s just a matter of making sure we have enough in stock. My last plan is snacks, beverages and other items we might need.

Make a Grocery List. Once I’ve made a plan, I make a grocery list based on what we need to make each meal and snacks, ect. Making a list helps to save money, make sure you have a stocked pantry/fridge and makes your trip to the market quick and easy.

Other Thoughts.  Stay flexible. Many times I plan my meals for the week and then I decide that I want something different half way through.  Since I have done my shopping and I am well stocked with healthy foods it is easy to make a quick change to my normal plan- so long as I don’t have to buy more food.  Example I plan to make a quinoa bowl with kale, tomatoes and avocado but I am craving a giant salad so instead of making a quinoa bowl I make a delicious massaged kale salad with kale, tomatoes, avocado, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Menu planning is a great way to save money because you are buying what you need and aren’t wasting food or buying more than you need.  It helps you to live a healthier lifestyle; by planning healthy meals and stocking a healthy kitchen it is easier to make healthier choices when healthy foods are right at your finger tips.

Take Away:

  1. Plan dinners first.
  2. Plan around what you already have.
  3. Make a grocery list and stick to it.
  4. Keep it simple.
  5. Be flexible.

Do you menu plan? What are you menu planning tips? 

Menu Planning Troubles

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The newest Cookbook Club starts tomorrow- we will be reviewing Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. I ordered my book from Amazon the other day and received my copy yesterday and was so excited to get down to menu planning for the next few weeks, however my excitement turned into shock and disappointment.  As I flipped through the cookbook I came to see that most of the recipes are centered around oil/Earth balance, faux cheese and SUGAR! The most appalling thing for me was how much sugar is used in many of the recipes I really just can’t believe it and on top of that they list the nutritional value for each serving of the recipes but don’t include sugar which is just strange to me- they include calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, protein, fiber and carbs but not sugar- why not sugar because you probably wouldn’t buy this book if you saw how much they use?

Maybe I’m being a little too quick to judge this cookbook since I haven’t made any of the recipes yet so I am going to spend the next few weeks testing out the recipes and letting them speak for themselves.  However, there are a few recipes that sound really good but are just not healthy (or at least healthy enough) for me that I will be making modifications of.  So after two hours of reviewing the cookbook and planning my menu here are the next two weeks:

Have you tried out this cookbook yet? What are you thoughts? Have the book and want to test it out with us?- send me an email and I’ll add you to the review list!