A few friends of mine have asked over the last weeks and months or even years if I do a menu plan or how I do grocery shopping and menu planning. I just made up my grocery list and menu plan for the week and thought I’d just write it down here just to give you an idea of what our meals look like and what my weekly menu plans look like. I try to go to the grocery store on Saturday afternoons when Eric is home and the kids are taking a nap. Today we are all going to go together though. Sometimes it’s a fun outing to all go together.
So where do I get my recipes from to do my meal planning? I have 2 recipe boxes of collected recipes from various resources such as family, friends, cookbooks, library books, websites. I keep new recipe ideas in a folder on my desk. Usually, if I make a new recipe and we really like it, I transfer it to one of my boxes - although I’m really behind on this at the moment! One box is mainly for dinner type items, appetizers, holiday, etc. The other is breakfast, breads, muffins, cookies, dessert, beverages and the like. I also have about 10 cookbooks and I use pinterest. I did not come by this quasi organization naturally and it is still a work in progress. It has taken me years to get to this point and I’ve tried lots of organizational methods. Mostly, I remember how my mom did/does it. My mom went shopping every Tuesday for as long as I can remember (and still did up until she turned 65 last year and has now switched to Wednesday because she can get a senior discount on Wed at her grocery store). She always makes a list and arranges it by aisles (I haven’t gotten that organized yet!) and does a kind of menu plan before hand, although she’s gotten more lax with it lately. I think she generally tries to have enough meat and veggies for the week and basic staples on hand so she can make whatever she wants. I do that a lot too! Also, lately, I’m all about the easiest and simplest recipes I can find that don’t require much prep or time.
So here's how I do it. I plan for 4 or 5 meals and I try to have one each of chicken, fish, and beef each week plus an extra, usually chicken or sausage. And with all our meals I try to have some raw veggies on the table. I usually have a super easy, quick meal for Monday and Wednesday because I’m doing all our laundry on Monday and prepping the house for our small group on Wednesdays. I usually cook my new or more involved recipes on Thursday - but they are still fairly quick and easy. On Friday’s we usually have pizza and Saturdays we either cook out burgers or something else. Sundays we have leftovers or something simple I can whip up with what we have like omelets or a quiche or soup or sandwiches or pancakes or we eat out with folks from church. Lately, I’ve tried to have either a freezer meal or a healthy frozen meal from the store on hand, or ingredients for spaghetti, etc that I can throw together fast if I don’t feel like making what I have on the menu or our plans change and we are crunched for time, etc. Right now I have two bags of chicken stir fry from Trader Joe’s in the freezer and some jars of homemade soup for such an occasion.
I usually just do a written out plan for dinner. We eat oatmeal and sausage 3-4 times a week for breakfast, with eggs and toast or yogurt and muffins thrown in between, pancakes or waffles or french toast on the weekends. For lunch, I try to do left overs, pulling out whatever is in the fridge, trying to use it all up or sandwiches with veggies and fruit.
So here’s my menu plan I made for this week.
Roasted Chicken - Easy!!! (probably Monday) - make broth with the chicken carcass and we’ll use the left over meat for a meal later in the week - I have several recipes for this in various places
- left over sweet potatoes, mashed
- Brussels sprouts
- pears
Balsamic Glaze Salmon (probably Tuesday) - a recipe on pinterest I just found
- roasted cauliflower
- squash (we have a lot that we bought at the pumpkin farm!)
- grapes
Crockpot Beef Stew with potatoes and carrots (probably Wednesday)- from my box - from allrecipes.com
- green beans (I’ll either roast, saute or boil them)
- salad
- apples
Crunchy Baked Chimichangas (chicken left over from roasted chicken) (probably Thursday) - from my box from Family Feast for $75 a Week (Ha! In my dreams!!!)
- southwest pumpkin soup
- salad
- oranges
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