Meal Planning Update

Our meal planning has been going great, I found out that although I make a menu list, I end up not cooking one or two of the recipes because there were so many leftovers! And somebody I live with (my hubby lol) is not too fund of left overs, so it sits in the fridge for far too long. Anyway, another new thing is that I've been eating a lot of salads and beans (not together) and very lean meats, so not a lot of cooking required. How is your meal planning going?

Meal Planning Monday (err Thursday..)

So I have been seriously slacking on putting out my meal planning on the blog, but trust me I have been following through, I have it noted down in my handy dandy note book that I take everywhere with me, so far this is what my week has looked like-

Monday: 

Potatoes and Sautéed Kale with red peppers and Turkey

Tuesday: 

Pesto Pasta and Salad

Wednesday: 

Corn and Spinach Salad and Salmon

Thursday: 

Brown Rice tomato stew and sautéed carrots and butter beans

Friday: 

Pineapple Teriyaki Chicken and sweet potatoes or brown rice

Saturday: 

Mediterranean Quesadillas

Sunday: 

Leftovers of anything!

My philosophy in meal planning is really easy, eat a healthy variety, avoid too much rice, save money on grocery shopping, and no red meat!

Some tools that have helped me so far is finding recipes on sites like wholefoods.com, some favorite food friendly blogs like budgetbytes.blogspot.com which I routinely add to my pinterest, (you can follow me here) I also find awesome recipes on pinterest.

When I don’t have any specific recipe I just throw anything together, an example is Monday’s recipe (Potatoes and Sautéed Kale with red peppers and Turkey), this recipe is a hit with my husband especially, I always have potatoes on hand (red or white), so I either bake or boil them with a pinch of black pepper and salt. 

Kale is always handy in my fridge too, I chop up three bunches and sauté with onions and red peppers and I usually buy a huge batch of turkey legs from my butcher (I go to the butcher once a month), I prep them by cooking it and storing in several Ziploc bags so that they are available to use whenever I need some sort of meat. I diced the already cooked Turkey into the sauté and it came out delish! If I didn’t have Turkey I would substitute with shrimp, equally yum!

Seriously Need to Give Meal Planning a Try

Pardon my absence, this past week has been quite busy with going back to work, I had to adjust to missing my babies and getting my brain back to work mode. Alas, I have survived one week and this long holiday weekend could not have come at a better time.

Something I have been meaning to try but failed and failed again is meal/menu planning, its a wonderful idea for many reasons:

• Shop for groceries within you meal plan in mind which would save dollars!
• Not having to think too much of what to cook for your family - less stress
• See if you have variety or lack there of in your meals 
• See if you are eating healthy week to week
• Eat out less, again saves BIG dollars!
• Less trips to the grocery store
• Plan for busy days - leftovers anyone?
• Waste less groceries since you will use exactly what you have

So the main reason for my many failed attempts is that somehow I deviate for the plan, which totally defeats the purpose, or I write recipes (from the tons I have saved on Pinterest) and when it comes to executing them it's and ultimate failure, or my hubby requests to eat something different even though I have shared the meal plan with him.

To make this different, I am going to work with what I have in my fridge since I did my bi-monthly grocery shopping already :-(, stick the meal plan on the refrigerator with a magnet so that its constantly visible for all to see, and I will prep food a few days before it is needed e.g chop onions, marinate meats etc

The next big thing for me after this is to buy a slow-cooker, I've heard great things about using this for one pot meals, I can throw my ingredients in it the night before and have it ready the next day, how cool! Any recommendations?

Will share my meals and give you an update in the next post!