One idea of Meal Planning

I need to get back in this routine, but when I followed this plan, it actually helped me a lot. Each day of the week I had a theme that helped me either use recipes that I enjoyed in the past, or inspired me to look up new recipes.

Mondays: Soup and Sandwich
Tuesdays: Taco Tuesday
Wednesdays: Crockpot
Thursdays: International
Fridays: American
Saturday: Leftovers
Sunday: Grandma favorite (I have a recipe book of my Grandma Betty's recipes, it's awesome!)


For example, it's really easy to whip up some yummy Grilled Cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for Monday. We absolutely love having either tacos, burritos, or enchiladas, so everyone is happy to have something Mexican on Tuesdays. Wednesdays tend to be a busier day for me, so it's the idea day to plop everything in the crock pot and let it do it's job. For Thursdays, I often do something Italian like spaghetti, or Chinese. I try to make sure I don't do a pizza night until Friday. That way I can be proud of the yummy, more healthy meals I've made during the week and make life easy for Friday night. I unfortunately don't like to have leftovers, but Jon and the kids don't mind, so that covers Saturday. I'd like to make recipes found in my Grandmothers' cookbook, but I haven't really gotten into the habit-yet. I'm working on it.

Marissa's Strategy for Planning Dinner

(Written by Marissa)

In our family, every Monday we plan out meals for the week. My least favorite part is choosing what to eat that week, but if I do all the planing for the week on Monday then it is done and out of the way. We only plan dinners because breakfast is normally a protein bar or shake and we each eat leftovers for lunch.

I write all the meals we plan to cook that week in a simple lined notebook. On Monday I pick out five-ish recipes and then write out all the ingredients I will need to purchase to have everything I need. I try to include a couple sides to go along with the main dish as well. I take the notebook with me to the grocery store and it dictates what to buy. If I pick a new recipe that I haven't cooked before, I'll oftentimes write in the full ingredients list to the notebook. I generally write staples that our family has ran out of in the top right corner.

Here are two example sheets. One from this week and one from last week:

This week's list

Last week's list

What I like about this process:

• I have a record of what I've cooked in prior weeks that I can look back on when deciding what to cook in the future
• I have an "at a glance" view of all the things I need to buy at the grocery store

Things that could be better:

• In book club today I realized that I don't really take advantage of good sales
• I still get bored cooking the same things week after week
• I don't like picking out recipes

Maybe others have good suggestions for things I can do differently. :)