Meal Planning

Some mama's are amazingly prepared and great on the fly.

This is not me. I like a plan. I like lists. I like to know what's coming. And so meal time in our house needs some sort of order.

Enter the meal plan! I know, I know, that totally overwhelms some people, but having a plan (at least for one meal a day) keeps me just a little more sane- especially in the summer.

So let me tell you how I meal plan in the summer - because it's different than during the school year.

First I come up with 5 or 6 meals I know my family will eat. I let the kids and the hubby help me pick. In the summer I can always count on at least one night of grilling! I write the list of meals on the bottom of my grocery list then pull all the recipes I'll need for the week.

I like having my meals on my grocery list so I know why I'm buying certain things. It's also my "safe guard" against forgetting certain things. I'm notorious for making things and realizing I'm missing a key ingredient (cant have spaghetti without noodles).

One thing I DON'T do when meal planning is assign meals to a specific day. In the summer our schedule varies, and the weather where we live is ever changing, I like to have some flexibility.  So these were our meals for the week:

Bellon Tacos
Grilled Chicken Kabobs
Snow on the Mountain
Brats/hotdogs and pasta salad
Grilled cheese
Greek chicken pitas
Sandwich for 12

So we had lots of suggestions this week, I'll move any we didnt have to next week. We had some cooler weather this week so I chose to make snow on the mountain that night because it involved the oven and stove.

This is a family favorite. Albeit kind of weird, we love it. And it's super simple. The kids love it because they can make their plate however they want. Here's the recipe:
Shredded cooked chicken in gravy
Cooked rice (brown or white)
Toppings:
Shredded cheese
Tomato
Green onion
French fried onions
Peanuts or cashews
Shredded coconut
Pineapple tidbits
Pile it up however you want!

Now back to the meal plan... like I said I don't assign meals to days. Ive tried it and it caused too much stress if something unexpected happened and I couldn't get dinner ready in time. Now I look at our schedule for the day and look at the list of meals and choose which meal makes the most sense for that day.

Example: I might have some labor intensive meals on the list but if we spend the day at the pool I dont want to spend an hour at the stove after that. Pull out some brats and hotdogs to throw on the grill and we're good to go.

*Lunch plans: I dont really have a written plan for lunch but instead make sure we have things for sandwiches - different lunch meats, cheese, tortillas, bagels, bread etc and then we do mac and cheese once a week. Throw a fruit and a veggie on the plate and you've got a meal! *More on grocery shopping later.

Like I said, NO STRESS! That's what's important to me. It's an easy way to make sure we have dinner every night. Dont let the term "meal plan" stress you out!

What do you want to see on the blog?!