plan out weekly meals

I’m not much of a cook, so when I stumbled upon a cookbook for vegetarian recipes for slow cookers, I grabbed it up! Many of the ingredients can be used for multiple dishes and of course, you just do a little prep work then let it sit—so much more like my cooking style! I’m giving it a try this week to see how I like it.

I have planned out our meals for a week or two or paycheck period or what have you since 1998ish. Basically, since my boyfriend (now husband) and I started eating meals regularly together.

This is excellent for saving money at the grocery store. You plan what you you are going to eat for the week or whatever time period you are planning for, create a grocery list, and go with it. Sometimes meals get changed because they don’t actually sound good the evening they are planned for or something else comes up.

It also saves the time spent wondering what’s for dinner—just check!

We didn’t do this for a couple months when we first got married and our grocery bill increased drastically, as well as then dinner was sometimes really late because we couldn’t decide what to eat and it took extra time to get dinner on the table.

I have kept our meals for the past couple years of planning so that if I can’t think of anything, I can just refer back.

If someone needs ideas, I can post our week of planned meals and you can borrow those or adjust from those.

Ok, since the idea of planning out the entire week’s menu is apparently too daunting for me to actually start in on trying to do it, I’m just going to plan out the fruits and veggies this week to make sure I get enough of them. Once I get in the habit of doing that, I’ll add other stuff. Hopefully it’ll help ease me into the habit of doing this.

for a number of different reasons:

1) I think it will help me eat more healthily

2) Planned meals help me consume fewer calories and snack less

3) I can track my progress more easily

4) It will (probably) lower our grocery bill as I’ll only buy the ingredients we need to have for that week and not just impulse buy.

I’m hoping to sit down and figure out our first week’s menu later today. Wish me luck!