Meal Planning Monday

Mondays are my meal planning and prep days.  I know…it’s somewhat unusual.  Most people like to plan, shop and prep on the weekends.  I find planning and prepping during the week, while the older amigos are at school, is not only easier but gives me time to be more creative with the meals I choose.  With Bean and Keegs approaching teen years, their appetites have increased significantly in the last year.  I’ve had to get rather creative with meals and snacks to keep them appeased and well fed.  Someday soon I will have 4 boys who are teenagers and older and I suspect that I will feel like I am a cook for an Army Brigade.

Because I know I’m not the only one who grows tired of kids and sometimes spouses continually asking ‘what’s for dinner’; and because I like to not have to think too terribly much about what I will be fixing each night I thought I’d share some of my tips for meal planning and prepping.

First and foremost is I found I needed a well-organized outline to write which meals I wanted to fix for the week as well as what ingredients I would need to purchase.  After quite a bit of perusing the internet, I decided I needed to create my own outline…and above is what I settled on.  I love it because it has spots for each meal (in this case dinners) and I can write the ingredients needed for each one underneath.  Then the bottom portion is for added items I just need in general, things I’ve run out of and would like to replace.  When I am intense meal planning, like when we are doing a macro diet or the Whole 30 diet, I have one of these pages for breakfast, lunch, and dinner…and sometimes even snacks.  Then when I go to grocery shop, I take the papers with me, clipped onto a clipboard so that I have a visual front and center.  Doing this also helps with keeping the unnecessary purchasing of fattening snacks.

If you’d like to use my layout as well just click below.

Meals for the Week of

I use my instapot several times a week, it has completely replaced my crockpot.  The Lemon Garlic Chicken and Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork were huge hits with the amigos and Mr. Man last week.  AND…each recipe was SO easy to cook.  Click on the pictures of each to find the recipes.

Happy meal planning y’all!

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