Keep It Simple Series : Part TwoI am from the south and we call our evening meal supper. You may call it dinner. My point is why must they want to eat every night?! I could have a bowl of soup for supper every night. I would open the can and heat it in the microwave, in the bowl I am going to eat it out of. There would be so few dishes to do! My family, however, craves variety. While they will eat most anything, my husband and children do not like casseroles. We are a meat and potatoes family. This distaste for casseroles limits our meal possibilities. No tuna helper for us! Meal planning helps me avoid the late afternoon panic of what to cook for supper. I also save money by not making last minute trips to the grocery store. Meal planning can also rev up your weight loss plan. While I do not always plan our meals my life runs a little smoother when I do. Over the years I have tried several different methods of meal planning. I have paid for a couple of different subscriptions services. There were some strange dishes with weird ingredients that my family would not eat. I have tried matching coupons and sales to plan our meals. That method is very time consuming. The easiest kind of meal planning I have found is assigning a type of meal to each day of the week. I can be flexible in what to prepare but have a starting point. This one meal plan can be used over and over without coming up with a new menu. It is like a perpetual calendar. I plan different kinds of dishes bases on our activities for the day. We eat lighter on Sunday night because we eat out for lunch after church. Wednesday nights are also church night so we fix something quick. Below is an example of this kind of meal plan. ![]() Sunday - salad/ leftovers Monday - pasta Tuesday - beef Wednesday - sandwich or rollup Thursday - Mexican/Italian/Chinese Friday - EAT OUT NIGHT Saturday - chicken/fish You do not have to have a complicated meal plan. If you want more variety than my menu example then make a list of meals for two weeks or four weeks. Then use that list over and over. No more thinking required. Meal planning is done. Forever. Life. Simple. I would love to know how you plan your meals! Comment or send me an EMAIL to share your ideas.
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Dawn
5/25/2014 12:33:51 am
I love this idea! I also try to plan crock pot meals 2X per week on our busiest days. Recently I discovered that cooking a bigger meal on Saturday means we can have leftovers for lunch on Sunday. We have a plan to not eat out for 6 or 8 weeks, and so far, we've been successful using the plan. We also began using My Fitness Pal to help plan healthier meals - or to check out our disaster calorie meals. I appreciate your blogging - keep it up!
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This is a fantastic idea, although I have to say that I like variety. Here in Uganda we have an even simpler menu plan. It is beans and kwen everynight and meat/fish and rice for lunch on Sunday. Eating out is not possible where we are. Oh how I crave variety. I love my life, but the menu plan is really bad.
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