Back into meal planning

My experiment with the one month meal plan was a success. We ended up cooking 4 meals per week and each was 4 servings, which works out to 16 servings per week. That seemed perfect for us most weeks. D doesn't take leftovers to work every day and we like to leave some space open for having dinner with friends.

In the real world, not all recipes make 4 servings, so just aiming to cook 4 nights a week doesn't quite work. Instead, I try to plan for approximately 16 servings per week, however that breaks down with the meals.

I have a hard time thinking of meals when confronted with a blank page, so I use categories to jog my memory and make this more mindless. My categories are meat (1-2x per week), beans/lentils (1x), pasta (1x - can also include pizza because hey, it's all carbs!), eggs (1x). I don't use every single category every week but it helps keep things from getting too repetitive. Eventually I'd like to get my recipe binder re-organized into these categories so that I can flip through easily and pull things out.

{meal planning sunday}

On Sunday morning (ideally) I figure out what ingredients I have left over from last week, like an open carton of broth or sour cream. I try to pick out recipes that will use those up because I hate throwing away part of a container.

I fill in the grid with the recipes we choose. If they're in my binder I pull them out, otherwise I make a note of which cookbook I'm using and what page it's on.

At the top of the page I quickly jot down our schedule for the week, if we have anything coming up. We usually make plans with friends first, then work in our krav classes around that, then figure out which meals make sense where. This is flexible during the week because we make last minute plans pretty frequently (the major upside to no pets and/or kids!). I schedule the meals based on the prep time vs. my free time. If I know I'm going to have extra time one night then I'll assign some prep tasks for meals later in the week. I had a free night on Monday this week, so I caramelized onions and made pizza dough for later in the week while my lentils for that night were cooking. If I know the week is going to be crazy I'll choose recipes that make a lot of servings and are good cold, like this orzo salad or this couscous salad.

I check the pantry to figure out what we need and then make a grocery list split into a few parts - there's a space for that on the right hand side of the page that I can tear off. The planning system takes a long time to describe because I'm so wordy, but it's actually quick. I do this over my Sunday morning coffee and the entire process takes 10 - 15 minutes tops. I go straight to the farmers' market after I make the list and get the bulk of my produce from there. Regardless of my list I always get 1 - 2 heads of lettuce, chop them and wash them and then leave them in the salad spinner in the fridge. This way I can throw together salads to go with the meals. I used to be really reliant on the packaged greens from Trader Joe's but this is much cheaper and takes me about 5 minutes total.

I pick up the other groceries as needed during the week. I tend to not buy any meat until the day we're going to use it. There's always a chance something will come up and we won't cook according to the schedule and wasting meat drives me crazy. I always buy meat from the counter so I can get exactly the amount we need and I don't have to figure out what to do with two extra chicken thighs. (There's more info on how I handle eating meat in this post.)

If we're having friends over I can usually just pick out the best sounding meal on our list for that week and double it. Or I'll swap in something more company worthy at the last minute. And add a dessert.

So far this is going really well and it has the added benefit of allowing me to keep our grocery spending in check. If I'm making something that uses three kinds of pricey cheese, then I'll try to have the other meals that week be a little more spartan. Having lentils/beans at least once week helps a lot. We're still working through that giant bag of black lentils I ordered a few months ago. I've been feeling good about our $350 a month grocery budget and then realized the other day that it's actually only $300 a month. No wonder it's sometimes tight the last week. I might give us another $20 - $50 a month.

I'm not sure if it will be useful to you or not (cooking habits are so specific!) but I'm including the PDF of my planning list here. I know that trying to come up with meal ideas can seem difficult, but I find it so much easier when I break it down into categories.

Click on the little down arrow icon to download the file for your own use or you can just view it and print it out directly from Google Drive.