Week 10 addresses meal planning. Finally an assignment I am already doing (and a post I had already written) that won't take time to implement before reporting about! I've been meal planning for several years and the effort is definately worth it. I try to do a cooking day each month for two reasons- I don't have to put as much thought into what to make (once the cooking day plan is made) or as much time into making it. Here is what I made last week:
Breakfast:
2- Buttermilk Oatmeal Bread
Lunch:
2- Buffalo Chicken
2- Spinach Rice Casserole
8- Black Bean Burgers
8- cooked chicken breasts
Dinner:
2 + 1 lunch portion- Italian Chili
2-Chinese Barbecue Chicken
1-Balsamic Beef
1-Balsamic Chicken
2-Teriyaki Beef
1-Crockpot Chicken Fajitas
Red Sauce in the crocpot that was used to make:
2-Meat Sauce with homemade turkey sausage
2-Meat Sauce with turkey sausage, peppers, and onions (to be used as a pizza topping)
2-Plain Red Sauce
I think I've been striving for more variety than is necessary. I'm trying to find ways to make meal planning easier. In the past few months I've developed themes for breakfast and lunch and this month did the same for dinner. It really helps when I find myself thinking that I don't know what to cook.
Breakfast:
Sun: protein bars/shakes/smoothies
Mon: eggs
Tue: protein bars/shakes/smoothies
Wed: oatmeal/cream of wheat
Thurs: protein bars/shakes/smoothies
Fri: eggs
Sat: cottage cheese pancakes/waffles
Lunch:
salads- 4 times (2 types twice/week)
leftovers/sandwiches (2 times/week)
bean and rice casserole/black bean burgers- (1 time/week)
Dinner:
Sun: Loaded Chicken Salad or Tuna Salad (I try not to cook on Sun)
Mon: Soup
Tue: Beef
Wed: Dinner at Church
Thurs: Fish
Fri: Pizza
Sat: Chicken
In coming up with my cooking day plan I picked two recipes to make for each theme and we'll eat it twice. This really made the freezer cooking plan easy to come up with. I've already strayed from eating the theme night meal on the day I specified, but in the end it doesn't matter. We're eating, I haven't been cooking as much, and I know the meals we'll be eating this month!
3 comments:
Jackie, would it be possible for you to give a few more details on what you do, how you decide on what to fix, and how you get started with this? I'd like to try it, but my freezer is small for one things and Kent tends to start looking at me funny when I talk about cooking for the month. He's very anti-anything leftover-ish, and to him frozen then reheated sounds like leftovers, so I've not pursued this very far. What do you do for the defrosting? Thanks!! I'm very impressed with how organized you are on this :).
I will work on a post about this in the near future :)
I would so love to hear more too. I like the idea of less work throughout the month, but I have a hard time seeing big tasks in small steps, so this feels huge to me.
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