I am not the cook, Ben is, so usually he comes home from work and I ask, “What’s for dinner?” It takes us awhile to figure it out and it really makes us waste a bit of time and we eat too many frozen meals from Trader Joe’s. One of the things we always wanted to get better at is meal planning. This is my attempt. Every thursday, in this space, I will post the following week’s menu and I will also recap the flavors of the meals cooked from that week. This will give us (and you) the weekend to get the needed groceries and be more prepared for family dinners for the coming week. The links I put will be healthy, I am married to a dietitian after all, and will sometimes be new recipes to me, so I can’t guarantee on flavor.
Family meals are important because we all get to sit together and talk about our day, so I want to be more efficient with this time we are given.
Week of 1/16 through 1/20:
Monday – Dawn’s Scampi (I love scampi, but don’t eat it cause of all the oil, this sounds like a good alternative)
Tuesday – Oven fried chicken (sounds good and not fried, but make sure note preparations as you need to let it marinade a bit)
Wednesday – Monday’s leftovers
Thursday – Tuesday’s leftovers
Friday: Pizza night (or something like that)
Obviously, I haven’t really covered the vegetable dish for these days (or weekend meals for that matter), but this is a good start for now. This will be a work in progress. Also, I will be sure to be making more so that we could eat left overs during the week too. A new meal every night is a bit adventurous, so I will be starting slow with just two official cooked meals next week. What do you think? Anyone else want to try this out with me?
I love this idea! We're (or… I've) been terrible about planning meals (which is a great way to make sure we're eating healthily and saving a bit of cash), but I definitely need to get back into it!
I'm in!!
Im trying out the meal planning this week as well. 😀
My meal planning is quite simple. I am also not a cook, I leave that up to the mister, but when I attempt to meal plan, here's what I end up with.
Monday: some sort of chicken and veggie crockpot dish
Tuesday-Thursday: Monday's leftovers
Friday: takeout or delivery
Done.
No way!! Was just preparing a post so similar. I subscribed to emealz in November and then never used it. I finally downloaded my first menu today (for the next week) and have been narrowing it down to make our actual meal plan consists of half emealz/ half recipes i have seen other places. i'll add your weekly recipes to my list!! great!
I love your Blog and read it all the time… I too do menu planning! I try to post my menu Thurs or Fri…I also am not the cook in my house… Although I LOVE to cook the duties fall more on my husband… I love that I get to make the menu and he shops and cooks! Doesn't get better than that! Take a look at my menu for next week: http://blog.thatissoal.com/
What a great idea, Ruby! One our new year resolutions was for my husband and I to cook more together.
This is a huge challenge for all of us with big ol fams and I mean a huge one. We do the Trader Joe's way more often than I care to admit! Meal planning is just so crazy some times and the weekend meals can be equally crazy! I am looking so forward to this these posts
I'm very excited about your new meal posts, especially if it is all healthy food!
This is a great idea. I have a similar, “what’s for dinner?” post occasionally on my blog, and I’m always searching for more and easy ideas. This weeks menu for us was:
-Ginger and Cabbage Chicken Noodle Bowls
http://www.rachaelraymag.com/Recipes/rachael-ray-magazine-recipe-search/rachael-ray-30-minute-meals/ginger-chicken-stir-fry-with-sesame-noodles
-Bowtie pasta tossed with garlic and grape seed oil sautéed TJ chicken sausage and broccoli thrown in at the last minute so it stays crisp
-homemade pizza night for us for tonight
That oven fried chicken looks delicious, I must try!
Menu planning is the way to go! I fell off the bandwagon a few weeks ago, while having a baby/holiday craziness. I'm ready to start it up again though:-) Good luck! xoxo
I have started using an Iphone app from Mark Bittman to do meal planning. It has changed my life! He has one app only for vegetarian meals as well. I pick the recipes for the week and add to my calendar on the Iphone. Then the ingredients go to a grocery list that I can check off as I buy at the store. Every night I look at my calendar to see what is the next day recipe (if I need to defrost something) and next day I don't have to worry at all! Also I love the website 101cookbooks great recipes and healthy. Bon apetit!!
meal planning is definitely the way to go. I like to keep it loose by just choosing 5 meals for the week, and then prep whatever we're in the mood for that day. and only 5 so we are sure to eat our leftovers (we're pretty committed to not eating out-except on very rare occasions). I usually end up only needing to make 4 of the 5 and have plenty of leftovers and often have enough to freeze for another meal!
Great idea! I'm in!
We have been good for a while, preparing healthy meals with my boyfriend, but not so much lately. I have just started a little blog on enjoying nights in (crafting, cooking and hosting). Your idea is perfect for the cooking part. Hope we can all support each other and make excellent dinner that our family and/or hosts will enjoy! Why not posting the result also? Recap of the week and how it went…
I came up with a really neat way to plan meals during the week just after I got married in 2010. I have slacked off now but want to get back to it because our family is growing and it was so nice to have a plan before I was too hungry to think straight.
I came up with alliterations for the days of the week. Like Mexi-Mondays… Mexican food! (Or anything yummy and Latin worked..) – Thirsty Thursdays… Soups and Merinated foods! YUM. – Sleepy Sabbath… great for leftovers.
I had a whole week mapped out just waiting to fill in the blanks. I hope you like this idea! I think our meal plans if I start them back will have a lot healthier focuses than they had before, though they were always fun and exciting.
Hooray loving on your family with food. I love it.
<3 grace
I have menu planning for a while now. It's just me and the husband, but I think it gets really easy to fall into frozen/processed food habit. Eating healthy has become one of our priorities, so when we have cute little munchkins like yours, teaching them how to eat healthy will be easy!
It sounds like you guys make a better use of leftovers than we do! I need to work on that!