First, a victory: The kids got up at 6:30 am and then went downstairs and entertained themselves for an hour! I have been waiting for this life phase for quite some time and have to say it was pretty glorious.
Second, here’s our menu next week. Does anyone follow any great blogs who share weekly meal plans? I know lagliv is great about sharing ideas (and used to post her whole plan) – are there others like that?
Meals 12.13 – 12.19
Sunday: I’m making latkes & applesauce!! Not the world’s most balanced dinner, but I think we will survive.
Monday: salad with chicken, pecans and apples using this recipe. Will pick up rotisserie to make it easy.
Tuesday & Wednesday: turkey burgers, (frozen) sweet potato fries, & a veggies – broccoli one night, green beans the next.
Thursday: rainbow soba noodle salad from Run Fast Eat Slow + tofu
Friday: various leftovers
Saturday: takeout night!
Sunday: TBD vs something from the freezer vs pantry cleanout!
23 Comments
Wish i could get as excited about meal planning as i do about planners!!!
I do enjoy the “cook once, eat all week book”. I usually cheat and dont do it allll ahead, but its broken down into steps so i can still do a little here and there in random time pockets if i want to. BONUS = grocery list included for each week!! (Not many things i hate more than making a grocery list!!) also GF/DF subs…
But the real reason i’m commenting: just discovered the “Alistair method”… are you familiar and what are your thoughts? I don’t really know anything about it and not convinced I want to try, but as a BLP follower, my first thought = what would SHU do 🙂 haha! Thanks for being my go-to for all things planner related!!
Thefrugalgirl posts the past week of her family’s meals each Friday 🙂
Love the frugal girl!!
I get the free version of The Family Plan newsletter by Debbie Koenig and often get good ideas from that.
Seconding this idea!
Everyday Reading has weekly mean plans on Sundays.
I’ve been cooking through a lot of https://cupofjo.com/2020/10/easy-quick-fall-dinners/ these, and especially like the sausage tray bake and butternut squash pasta. I’ve also been making lots of cilantro lime chicken burritos which are delicious.
Hey SHU! Skinnytaste often does menus and I like a lot of her recipes. I posted a bunch of my recent favorites in this post. It’s a lot of soups because it’s been chilly here (the Autumn Wild Rice Soup by Gimme Some Oven is amazing; we add chicken to it), but there have been some really good ones. I’ve actually missed posting my menus too because looking back at them is often how I build menus for future weeks and my blog was my only record of them. Looking forward to finding more in your comments.
i’m not very good following meal plans. so I basically wing out everyday and write down few recipes that I might try 🙂
I’m looking forward to reading the comments here. Your blog and Frugal girl are often where I get ideas. I also love Carlsbad Cravings and Pinch of Yum. Pinch of yum has a couple go to recipes I love. One is a cashew Alfredo with Kale and the other is a pad Thai type noodle dish, that she actually serves as lettuce wraps.
Do you visit thekitchn? They have a ton of plans and many of them are archived: https://www.thekitchn.com/plan-prep
Ooh this looks great! I’m
going to do a round up post of all these recs too.
I use the weekly meal plans from Weelicious and Cool Mom Eats. I also frequently find recipes on the Hello Fresh website. We aren’t subscribing right now, but all of their recipes are free on their website.
Just curious – what do yall do for lunches? I really struggle with this during the weekends.
On the weekends usually one day is either sandwiches or leftovers and the other day is usually eggs w stuff like toast, avocado, fruit, veg. Sometimes chicken sausage if we have it.
That is quite a victory! I dream of my kids waking up and being independent. It’s not looking soon for me…
All the healthy things often posts weekly
Menus. And, I bet you’d love her recipes. Easy and healthy.
Somehow I missed this one. I get a lot of ideas from The Kitchn and also the NYT. I also just bought Tiny Boy for Hanukkah an America’s Test Kitchen kids cookbook and he made a big deal about picking out something he wanted to make for dinner, so…
I rip out recipes from magazines and add them to a binder that I keep in the kitchen. I also print out recipes from blogs that I like (many of which were mentioned above!). As I add more recipes to the binder I also cull ones that I have never made; maybe they look good but are too complicated, or who am I kidding? We’ll never eat that. At the front of the binder I keep a running list of our favorite dishes– no recipes, just a list, so that when I meal plan for the week I can look at that list for ideas as well as flipping through the binder. Throughout the week I write down meals on a piece of paper I keep in the drawer next to the fridge, and as I do so I add ingredients to the grocery list on the fridge. Saturday I complete the grocery list with whatever we need outside of a meal (milk, yogurt, nutella), take down the old menu plan and put up the new one. It may seem complicated, but now that the system is in place it takes 5 minutes a day to manage and is really flexible.
Love it!!
How Sweet Eats has weekly meal plans, and her recipes are usually very good. (https://www.howsweeteats.com/what-to-eat-this-week/)
For me personally, I actually have a bookmark in Google for ‘Recipes’ and then it’s organized by files of meal type and main ingredient (e.g. Recipes -> Main Meals -> Chicken; or Recipes -> Side Dishes -> Soups, etc). When I find recipes that I like (which is almost always online) I save it in the associated folder. This makes meal planning easier, for example if I want to have a seafood night and then a chicken night or whatever. Plus I can use the search feature in the bookmarks manager to search out specific recipes that use specific ingredients as needed (i.e. I have some cheddar to use up, I wonder what recipes I have saved that use cheddar?)
I started doing this on my blog because I loved Lag Liv’s so much. I’ve only been posting menus for about 4 months on Mondays, but it has been so helpful to help me keep track.
Just remembered that Mix & Match Mama shares her meal plans every Monday. She may be taking the holidays off, but has a huge backlist on her website https://mixandmatchmama.com/tag/meal-planning-monday/. Have a good week!