This year, I have made it a goal this year to post my menu each week. To see my past meal plans, check out What’s Cooking. It takes me no more than an hour to plan my meals and make my grocery list. I have a system established that works for me. Here is what it looks like…
{Have a place to WRITE IT DOWN}
I shared before that I use & love the May Book Meal Planner.
There are some fabulous printables online as well.
Here, Here & Here are some I found.
{Make a Plan}
I find a quite place Saturday or Sunday morning. I make myself a cup of coffee, take out my computer and start planning. It’s a time each week I look forward to.
-When Planning-
Consider what your week looks like.
Mark down nights you’re eating out.
Figure out how many meals you’ll need to cook.
Also, go through your pantry & fridge to see what you already have.
What do you need to use up before it goes bad?
How much meat is in the freezer?
Going through your food before you plan will surely save you money.
{Find Recipes}
I have my list of ‘go to’ places for my recipes.
I try to pick one pasta, fish, beef, chicken and turkey meal.
Of these meals, I try to make one or two crockpot meals.
I also make sure the recipes chosen will use the food I already have at home.
Another goal is to make recipes with the same ingredients.
If I’m buying carrots or celery for one recipe I likely won’t use them all.
So I will make sure to pick another recipe that has those ingredients.
While I’m picking the meals, I make my grocery list.
Instead of printing the recipes, I bookmark them or put them in my reading list.
This makes them easy to pull up when it’s time to cook.
It sounds like it takes a lot of time, but it’s really simple.
-I get my recipes from…-
my RECIPES board on Pinterest
my Simply Made with Love blog
I also subscribe to these sites and get recipes delivered to my inbox:
Kraft Recipes
Cooking Light
Betty Crocker
*I pick EASY recipes with less than 10-15 ingredients*
As you make recipes, start a master list of family favorites.
You can print the recipe and add it to a binder.
or
You can create a Pinterest board of your favorites or a bookmark folder.
You can go to this list as you plan in the future.
The more favorites you have the less you’ll have to search for new recipes.
Hubs and I enjoy leftovers. I take this into consideration when planning my meals. If the meal the night before won’t provide enough for him to take to lunch, I add lunch items to my grocery list.
Another thing you can do while planning is look at the coupons for the week. If I have time I do this. I’ll look to see what is on sale and if there are any coupons for the things I am buying I’ll clip them.
Lately, I haven’t had the time to do this but it DOES save extra money.
{Go Shopping}
Try to stick to your list.
Get what you NEED.
Don’t buy something just because it’s on sale.
Because you have a list, your trip should be short and sweet.
{Check Your Recipes}
The night before I am supposed to make a meal, I check the recipe. This way if meat needs to come out of the freezer, I take it out. I see if I need to do prep in the morning for crock pot meals or how much time I’ll need to make dinner the following day. This eliminates the 5:00pm “oh **** this dinner takes two hours to cook” happenings.
So this is it. It works for me. I’m happy because I’m putting home cooked meals on the table each night. Hubs is happy that he doesn’t have to cook. Our bank account is happy we’re not eating out every night.
If you have any questions about how I plan my meals, don’t hesitate to ask!
Great post! Do you mind if I share your link on my blog later this week? I planned on doing a post all about my meal planning over the last few years and what we're doing different as well as what I see in the future… Linking back to yours would be a great reference. You've definitely got smart ideas and I love your MP 101 course! 🙂
Sounds a lot like my meal planning! Great post!! I love seeing how other people do their meal planning.
I'm going to be making a bunch of crock pot and casserole meals that can be frozen, for a sick friend and his family. Do you have any that you would suggest? I am definitely not the cook in our house so anything easy/ tasty would be great!!
This is so great! I have tried many times to plan like this but it seems like we NEVER stick to it. I'm going to try harder!
Meal Planning has been SO helpful in our house. We used to be so unorganized with meals and it stressed me out. Now that we have swimming or gymnastics most nights after school – meal planning is a must.
By the way, I'd love one of the May Day Meal Planning books. Right now I just use a notebook. I won your May Day Giveaway – but haven't heard anything about how to claim my prize.