Meal Planning 101, Plan for Week of Oct 2

Life is crazy. That is pretty much the only constant we have. One of my best coping mechanisms for the craziness of our everyday life is meal planning. Not only does meal planning save us a lot of money on groceries (no last-minute trips to the grocery store or going out to eat!), it also gives me a sense of control and helps me to think about what's for dinner before 4:30 PM.
I don't always stick to my meal plan 100%... for example, today we decided to go and do something fun after PK1 got out of school, and I didn't plan ahead enough to be able to make the meal I'd planned for tonight. So, we had last night's leftovers instead. That's the beauty of the meal plan- it's flexible. And the beauty of going to do something fun is that I have some wonderful pictures to share!



PK2, "rock climbing"

 Right now I have about 8 weeks' worth of meals planned, that I will call my "master plan", which I did using my freezer inventory as a guide. Basically, that means that other than supplemental items like produce, cheese, or bread (basically the things we get from WIC), I could feed our family pretty well for 8 weeks without needing to buy groceries, other than replenishing staples like flour, spices, etc.

The kids loved the elk bugling, and thought it was pretty cool when these two started fighting!

When I wrote this week's plan on the calendar yesterday, I just copied it from my master plan. A few hours later, I thought about the fresh produce that we have right now, and realized there were meals later on the master plan that would be perfect with what we've got, so I traded meals so that it would work well with our fresh ingredients.




A gorgeous fall day

  To make meal planning easier, I created a general rotation, with some help from PH. I've been meal planning for about 2 years, but have just started using a rotation, and it is SO much easier this way! I highly recommend coming up with a rotation that works for you. Here is our rotation:

Sunday: Casserole/Double Batch Meal
Monday: Meatless Meal
Tuesday: Mexican Meal
Wednesday: CrockPot Meal
Thursday: Chicken Meal
Friday: Frozen Meal (Leftovers or a second batch from a Sunday)
Saturday: Ethnic Meal (Chinese, Italian, Indian, German, etc)

This rotation works for us because on Sundays, I usually have extra time to cook, so I can cook a really big meal and freeze half for later. Usually on Fridays, I am pretty tired from the week, so it's nice to be able to just pull something out of the freezer and have to do very little prep. But going back to the flexibility of the meal plan, if I have plans on Tuesday, I will just switch Tuesday and Friday's meals. Wednesday tends to be the day I grocery shop, when I can (two of our local stores do double ads on Wednesdays), or the day I go to the food bank, when I can't shop, so Wednesday is a good day to do a slow-cooker meal. But, if I know I have to run errands or be out on a different day, I will switch that day with Wednesday so that I can have a slow-cooker meal going while I am out.

This was right after PK2 tumbled head over heels right into the lake!

Now that I've explained how I came up with our meal plan, here is our plan for this week.

Sunday: Veggie-Loaded Shepherd's Pie + 1 to freeze (I used elk Italian sausage as the meat and a number of veggies I had in the fridge- kohlrabi, pattypan squash, zucchini, carrots, and chard in the filling, and potatoes and kohlrabi mashed with a little bit of yogurt and butter with some shredded cheddar cheese for the topping)

Monday: Black Bean & Quinoa Burgers with Potato Wedges (we ended up eating leftovers instead)

Tuesday: Chicken Enchilada Casserole (using frozen cooked chicken)

Wednesday: CrockPot Cabbage Rolls (I have 2 big cabbages left from our recent trip to the farm that will be perfect for this!)

Thursday: Oven Roasted Split Chicken Breast with Quinoa and Broiled Cabbage Wedges

Friday: Sausage Apple Stuffed Zucchini (I have a few large zucchini in the fridge for this meal)

Saturday: Homemade Pizza

Thursday's vegetable may change... in fact it probably will, based on what we get from the food bank for veggies this week. Cabbage rolls and broiled cabbage wedges are pretty different, but really no one needs to eat that much cabbage two days in a row!

An afternoon surrounded by views like this is what I call a rich life!