My Meal Planning Strategy

I have always been a meal planner. My husband is not a fan of a lot of repeating meals, so while I have a set of our favorite meals, I very rarely make a recipe more than once. This is the complete opposite of the way I was raised. We ate the same 20 or so meals all the time.

Another mitigating factor is that we live 30 minutes from a major grocery store, so we don't "run to the store" for anything. Also, we only have a Denny's, Arby's, Sonic, Backyard Burger, a Mexican restaurant and a few local joints within 15 minutes, so we really don't like to eat out very often. Meal planning is a must.

How do I start?

I typically review our weekly plans to see if we will be eating out, if one of us has evening plans, how many lunches we need, etc. I try to pick out one or two slow cooker meals, one or two oven meals and several stove top meals. I also like to make sure we have chicken, fish, beef, and pork every week.

I list out the days of the week and fill in any dinners we plan to eat out and if we will be having Taco Tuesday (Taco Tuesday used to be a weekly meal that was easy to plan, but I have started to pull back on that a little). Then, I consider how long I will have to make a meal. If I need a quick meal, I choose a quick meal to cook or a slow cooker meal.

I like to pull recipes from Pinterest because I find it to be the easiest way to collect recipes and then, after I try them, I move them onto different boards...Tried and Loved or Tried and Hated. If a pull a recipe from a magazine or cookbook, I mark it on my plan so I know where to go to get the recipe.

As I chose meals for the week, I check the recipes for ingredients and add it to the shopping list I keep on the same page. If I think I have an ingredient in the cabinet, I mark it with a question mark. However, a lot of the time, if it is a commonly used ingredient (diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, coconut milk, frozen veggies), I usually buy more so if plans change that week or another week and I need a different meal, I have most of the things I need to cobble together a meal.

After I figure out dinners, I decide if I will have enough leftovers for lunch. If I don't think I have enough, I plan an extra meal to cook up for lunches or I add Lunches to the shopping list so I can pick up Lean Cuisines or another pre-packaged meal. Breakfasts are pretty much always the same, though with Chris's new job, we are working on finding a breakfast that works better for him.

So here is this week's meal plan and grocery list.