I am sure that smarter, more organized and domestically inclined folks have been doing this for eons…so it’s probably not going to be a big revelation to most (any?) of you guys. But I am so excited, that I am going to share anyway! A week and a half ago I had the brilliant revelation to PLAN OUR MEALS BEFORE GOING GROCERY SHOPPING. I always have good intentions of cooking yummy things, but it seems that every day around 3:30 I go into panic mode and can’t decide what to make, and then once I DO decide, I discover that I’m missing one crucial ingredient or another which was leading to Hubs getting increasingly irritated at our late/thrown together meals and me becoming resentful about all the suppertime stress, so something had to give.
This is a great visual of my suppertime feelings pre-planning. See how she's daydreaming about having a live-in chef?
So the Saturday after payday, I asked Hubs what kinds of things he’d like to have for dinner and he named off two or three things – one being that he would like to try salmon (something he’d had a few times before and I’d never tried) – and then I scoured Tasty Kitchen for two weeks’ worth of easy, high-rated dishes. Total success, my bloggy buddies! I didn’t plan it down to the day, just picked 10 days’ worth of dishes that we could opt to eat when the mood struck us.
Post-Meal-Planning: Happy Days Are Here Again!
Tasty Kitchen is FULL of fabulous, easy recipes – if you haven’t check it out already, you really should. Take Friday night’s dinner, for instance. I invited my Dad and my brother and his family over for dinner. I made Italian Drip Beef Sandwiches, Cowboy Caviar (if you’ve never had this, you need to NOW. It’s healthy, delicious and addicting!) and Zucchini Fries. All of it was easy and incredibly good. Over the course of this experiment, we’ve also had Salmon in Foil Packets (drooool), Balsamic chicken (SO easy and good!), Frozen Pizza (what? I can’t cook EVERY night), Tacos, Chicken Enchiladas Verdes (my Dad came over this night, too – he loved it!), Baked Chicken Legs, Spicy Chicken Peanut Noodles (I am in love with peanut noodles) and more. It’s been totally awesome. Who knew?
What are you waiting for? Go get your plan on!
Becki
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s so funny that you posted this today because I literally just figured out that it would be easier to cook if I knew what I was going to make and I did the exact same thing! I got my recipes mostly off of pick-palate.com, and the ones I’ve made so far were good good. I’m going to go look at your site for some more!
I love picky palate!! I am pretty sure that her cupcakes are the first ones that I tried “from scratch!”
I used to plan my meals for the week when Trent was like 5. I’ve tried it a few times since then but I have found it very difficult with Walter. It gets to the night of and he’s like ‘uhg, I don’t want that’ or ‘I’m really not that hungry’ which generally result in scrounge nights. I guess the thing is to just make it and let your husband and children deal with it 🙂 And if I ever stop working nights I’m going to try again because it really does make life easier.
Make it and let them deal is definitely the way to go, Nina. At least that way you’ve provided a healthy option…what they choose to do with it is their deal. If they don’t eat it at first, LEFTOVERS! YAY! 🙂
I have been trying to meal plan for a while. I think I started that around the time I started couponing- I try to plan meals around what is on sale/I have coupons for. I guess it is probably easier for me because Brian is typically only home for dinner 3 nights a week. The other 4 nights I usually eat leftovers or something quick, easy, and cheap. The stress of planning a meal every night sounds like a great problem to have, to me. You are lucky that Dave also tells you what he likes to eat. I ask Brian and he is always like “I don’t care, you know I will eat whatever.” Ugh. I hate that. The only thing he (and Jake) really wants every week is to order pizza. So that takes care of Sundays. This week is easy because we are going to a cookout on Saturday so that takes care of Saturday too. And I am excited about Friday- I actually got a couple pounds of cube steak for FREE from Homeland using coupons/sales and we have some good hamburger buns in the freezer (leftover from the bbq) and I am pretty sure I have an onion or two… I think I am going to make PW’s “Marlboro man’s favorite sandwich” http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/marlboro_mans_f/ Have you made those yet???
Some weeks though, believe it or not sound like what you describe your meal planning time was like. Every 3-6 weeks or so Brian will be home for a night or two (he was last week) during the week. I usually only get about an hour or two’s notice that he will be home for dinner so that gets kinda frustrating. Not that I don’t want him home, it just would be nice to have dinner planned and thawed out by the time I need to start cooking it. Those nights it seems like we usually end up eating around 8 or 9.
One thing that does kind of help though is that we buy most of our meat once a month at Sam’s. We shop for meat at Sam’s together, and then we come home and portion it out and package it up in saran wrap and put it in the freezer. This helps with meal planning because for example right now, I know we have ground beef, pork loin, and whole chicken in the freezer. Those are our only choices until we go to Sam’s again unless I can find more cube steak recipes (I frequently get those for free at Homeland, it just seems there is only so much you can do with it).
I think it is great that you are doing this meal planning. Takes the stress out of *what are we having for dinner* I think if you continue to do this your Dad may just want to move in. The meals you are cooking sound wonderful.
By the way, the photo of the girls is sooo cute!
Meal planning is an amazing tool and time saver! I cant wait to try some of your recipes….we LOVE cowboy caviar!
Oooh, thanks for the link.
I am TERRIBLE at planning meals. I have the pickiest eaters that ever lived, and being single I feel like I’m running a zillion miles an hour most of the time. I know I would benefit from planning better but I feel like I don’t even have time to plan!
I guess I need to just sit down and do it. If you can do it with a baby and a toddler in the house climbing up your legs, I bet I can do it too.
Sitting down and planning it out using meals from the internet is easy! Just search your favorite recipe site in between catchin up on blogs!
I’m such a dork that I have a chalkboard in my kitchen where I can post the meals for the week.
Oh and as for Tasty Kitchen, it’s true I’ve found a few good recipes there, but, this is going to make me sound incredibly lazy, I think the site is far too much for one person to undertake. Navigating that thing makes me nuts. So I always grow tired of it quickly and move onto something like allrecipes.com or foodnetwork.com
I know. I’m weird.
Whaaat?! that’s so funny, cause I get overwhelmed at allrecipes. Heh! With TK, I like to just search for “main courses” and then sort by rating and scroll through them that way. If one sounds good to me, I read the reviews to make sure it really is easy and tasty enough. That’s also how I search it for specific things – “brownies” and either sort by “photos” or “ratings.” Works for me!
Fun blog! I was attracted to the photo on a blog hop cuz I thought it was of someone holding a gas mask to a child’s face! 🙂 Good luck with your meal planning – yeah, it makes grocery shopping much easier! 🙂 And once you know the store by heart, you can even write your list so that it’s in order of how it’s found in the store! okay, I don’t actually do that, but I’ve always dreamed of it. 🙂
Gas mask…hah!!!!
I have tried to sort my lists by area…but that makes me die a little inside. TOO MUCH WORK.