Menu Planning
Menu Planning
This is how you stay on track when it comes to eat healthy and getting meals on the table for your family, especially if you work full-time. Menu planning takes some time up front but saves loads of time in the end, not to mention that it also saves money!
I make a monthly menu at the beginning of each month, then each Thursday I go through and make my grocery list for the next week adjusting anything that I may need to based on our updated schedule at that moment. If I am not feeling like grocery shopping, or if I need to get a few things from a couple different stores I will likely place one of them as an online order (this saves money and calories because I am less likely to browse for items I don’t need or buy junk that looks good at the time).
Get your Meat in Bulk
I order most of my meat from Butcher box, Thrive Market, or Costco. I buy in bulk because it saves money in the long run and you can easily freeze it for when you need it. Butcher box and Thrive Market usually already come packaged in smaller portions to freeze, but when I buy my meat at Costco I just divide it up into portions that I would use for one family meal for when I am ready to defrost it. The freezer is your best friend don’t be afraid to use it.
My Menu
I have a family of five and though I try to make sure that we eat whole foods, my family enjoys comfort food and junk food just as much as others, and I don’t believe in making food off limits so I do my best to balance the indulgent food with the lighter healthier options. So my menu is full of family friendly dishes, that sometimes have a healthier twist and other times are pure indulgent. As I share my menu with you feel free to change it up to your families liking. I am hoping to provide a few other menu options in the future but for now it will just be our weekly menu. To be completely honest and forth coming we are just a normal busy family and their is days that I forget to unthaw the meat, had to work later then planned, or something else just comes up and I am unable to make the meal that we had planned for that night. In those cases, I have a few very easy meals that I throw together (like the one I just posted), or we order takeout. No matter how much planning you do sometimes real life just happens.
I hope you enjoy following me along in my kitchen. I will try and give a few tips that I do along with my menu each week!
