On Meal Planning

How do you usually make it through the week? Food-wise, that is.  Do you skip breakfast, eat a can of soup for lunch and, exhausted yet ravenous when you get home, have a beer and chips and guac and call it dinner? Because that's exactly what I did my first few years out of college, which is strange when I consider that for the first 22 years of my life I was a three-squares-a-day kind of girl. Then people stopped making food for me and something about figuring out how to work 40+ hours a week and fit in all those things you find personally fulfilling at the same time, like baking (which is another dinner option) and reading and working out, my meals were the thing to go. 

When I got married I discovered that my husband grew up in a household where each night's meals were affixed to the side of the fridge schedule-style, conveniently communicating each night's dinner. The boy also gets hungry, a lot hungrier than I am for dinner so chips and salsa were not gonna cut it. So I started meal planning for the first time in my life. And I love it.

I hear that you can save money by meal planning but I think that's for people who have much more restraint than I when grocery shopping. So far I haven't mastered the concept of buying what's on the list and only on the list. But hey, I would never buy cereal or frozen waffles if I did. I tend to meal plan on a quiet evening while watching Netflix. I love reading food blogs and recipes online, but for some reason I'm very attached to my cookbooks and cooking out of those is much more enjoyable than saving recipes online. Sometimes I don't get much accomplished or nothing sounds good or I end up planning beef every night for dinner and only realize it after the fact, but sitting down and thinking about what's in the fridge and what we'd like to eat next week just helps. It's also nice to come home from work and not have to think about what to make but just have to make it. We ended up eating a lot of meat last week so I went vegetarian with this week's plan:

Monday

Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas

Tuesday

Veggie Burgers

Wednesday

Potato and Chickpea Stew

Thursday

Green Lentils and Spinach w/ Hard Boiled Eggs on Toast

As you'll notice I don't tend to plan side dishes, etc. and I usually only plan 3 or 4 nights a week to leave some flexibility for leftovers or simple meals like spaghetti if I feel like it. Also, the days don't really mean anything to me that's just how my current meal planning template is organized. For instance, so far this week we've had the Green Lentils and Spinach (really, really good) and the Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas (also very good) and I think tonight I'm going to make spaghetti. I'll probably also buy some good bread to go with the stew and some salad to go with the veggie burgers, and we try to always have frozen veggies in the freezer and some quick-cooking grains in the pantry to fill in meals as needed. I will echo the general advice of meal planning, shopping, and cooking on three different days so as to not go crazy. 

For several weeks in a row I did a big cooking day on Sunday and filled our fridge with casseroles. As lovely as it was to know I only had to warm a nice meal up every night, there's only so many types of dishes you can make ahead, casserole and stew-type things, and I try not to spend my Sunday afternoon cooking if it feels like a chore and I'd rather take a walk. So now I leave a little more flexibility in my schedule and my menu for the week.  What works for you? How do you keep costs low and taste and nutrition high for weeknight meals, if those are some of your goals?

Happy Wednesday!