Meal Planning

Howdy folks! Today we're going to take a real intense look inside my brain. I'm going to show you how Charlie and I have conquered our weekly dinner schedule ... by meal planning! This is one of the greatest tools I've acquired in the last year. It's made a huge impact on the way we eat, the intentional time we spend together, and has made grocery shopping super efficient. Watch and be amazed.

Step One: Write down the days of the week. Simple enough. We always do our shopping on Sundays so it works out nicely.

Step Two: Check your calendar! We had dinner on the island and a wedding this week, so I wrote those in. No cooking nights!

Step Three: Gather recipes! Go to town! Open up every possible resource. I scour cookbooks, open every tab of my bookmarked recipes, and look through ones I've saved on my computer. An added bonus, now that we've been meal planning for nearly a year, is the accrued meal plans from previous weeks. Charlie likes to look through these for ideas.

Step Four: Write down your meals! You don't want to tofu two nights in a row, no sirree. Make sure you don't have two nights of Mexican or pasta or ... you get the idea.

Boom! You've gotcherself a menu!  Let's celebrate with ...

Step Five: Making a grocery list. Look at each night's menu individually. Check your fridge and pantry for the ingredients you have already. Write down the ones you need. Your grocery list may end up looking something like this:

With or without the bones.

Now you are ready to take your list to the store, purchase ingredients, and make all sorts of wonderful planned meals. I really don't know how we'd do it without this menu. We eat the food we buy and don't waste the way we have in the past. It has worked wonders for us! I hope you try it and like it too.

By the by, Tracy has some awesome meal planning tips over at Homefries. Check it!