Meal Planning 102

It's been a while since I've posted about meal planning, and wanted to follow up with a few tips and tricks, as these are some of my favorite posts on the blogs I read.

I love having a rotating selection of dinner options, I've never been a "Monday meatloaf, Tuesday tacos" kind of gal.  And while as a family we love variety, we also depend on consistency. I've slowly built up an arsenal of meals that are crowd pleasers for myself, husband, and kids.  However, even then, I do find myself getting bored of our usual go-tos, especially as the seasons change, and shepherd's pie just isn't going to cut it in the heat of summer.  I'm always prowling popular new cookbooks (borrowed from the library), blogs, pinterest, and the like for fresh finds to rotate into the mix. Our criteria for a complete meal usually involves a protein, vegetable or two, and occasionally a bread/starch component.

First tip I have to help keep myself grounded and not too repetitive is to keep a dinner diary.  Bear with me, I realize this sounds ridiculously type-A and difficult, but basically it's a journal where I jot down what we eat for dinner every night.  One sentence.  Quick. Easy. Simple.  It's also helpful to remind myself "ooh, I forgot about that...we should try that again!" Or a reminder, "yuck, that was disgusting and way too much work.  Never again."

I typically meal plan on the weekend, looking ahead to the week, and planning meals based around various evening activities that might through a wrench in the actual making of dinner (e.g. one parent working late, one parent out, dinner at my parents' house, etc).  I write it all out and post on the refrigerator.  In a perfect world there is some recipe overlap (i.e. dill for salmon one night and dill for a salad another) in an effort to maximize ingredient use and simplify our grocery list, however that's definitely not always the case.

A few of our go-to Spring/early summer favorites include

+ Greek sheetpan chicken and spanakopita with Greek salad

+ ground pork bahn mi sandwiches (or lettuce wraps) with tamari roasted broccoli

+ BBQ pineapple hard shell tacos (we use fresh pineapple) with caprese salad

+ roasted Sriracha salmon with coconut rice and crispy kale

+ slow cooker Korean beef tacos and roasted veggies

+ homemade pizza on the grill with fruit salad and grilled corn

+ favorite turkey burgers with corn on the cob and carrot salad

+ slow cooker chicken tikka masala with Indian creamed spinach over coconut rice

+ p.f. changs style chicken lettuce wraps with roasted carrots and broccoli 

What are your go-to weeknight meals?

Meal Planning 101

I'm on a meal planning kick, and I want to keep the momentum going!  After investing in this handy dandy little kickstarter cookbook (worth every penny), researching meal planning, finding templates that work for our family, implementing said system, and spending Sunday nights mapping out the week - our meal planning adventure is off and running!

Some of our tips and tricks:

+ Prior to kicking off our meal planning, I spent a few weeks bookmarking our favorite (easy) weeknight dinners.  I perused my favorite cookbooks that had been collecting dust, pinned my favorite recipes on Pinterest, and saved all the links in a google drive spreadsheet, categorizing them by their main ingredient; i.e. fish, pork, veggie, etc.

+ On Sunday mornings/afternoons, my husband and I plan out of meals for the coming week.  We take into account nights out (i.e. curriculum night for me, dinner out with the boys for him, etc.).  We take into account everything: not only dinners, lunches, breakfast, snacks, and food for our baby, and create our portions accordingly to add to our shopping list.  This also helps us stick to our budget as we're not making multiple trips to the store for ingredients throughout the week.

+ We plan for certain foods.  For example, fish goes earlier in the week, as it doesn't have as long a shelf life in the fridge.  Apply this wisdom to other finicky ingredients that may not hold up 5+ days without wilting to the point of inedible.  If we for some reason need to do fish on a Friday, we add a note that this requires a separate trip to the grocery store to pick up said ingredient.

+ Before we make the shopping list, we scour the pantry to ensure we don't buy duplicates of any ingredients.  No one needs 2 more cans of chicken broth when we already have 6 chilling on the shelf.  

+ Take turns.  We alternate who does the cooking.  My husband prefers to grill over bake.  I prefer to bake and saute over grill.  We trade off, we share the load.  It works.

+ Make and plan enough for leftovers.  This ensures lunch is taken care of for our work day, one less meal to plan lightens the stress significantly.  

So now that I've wet your appetite, I'd love to hear - what are your favorite weeknight recipes?  Or "go-to" recipes.  As two full time working parents, we want to provide the staple of a consistent weeknight dinner for our daughter as she grows up, but we recognize we're not Julia Child, nor will we ever be whipping up coq au vin Monday nights like it ain't no thang.   

So...tell me.  What are your favorite weeknight recipes?

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