Meal Planning

Meal planning is something I am quite passionate about and by the end of this post, you will see that I am certifiable!

Every evening was the same old story of B and I going "What do you want for dinner?", "I dunno, what do you want?", "Blah Blah sounds good...", "I don't have everything for that, I have to head to the store", "Nevermind, let's just have bloo".

Needless to say, we both got sick of it and I think it is something so many couples and families. Then and there the magical and wondrous Meal Plan was born! This is something I spend a good amount of time on and I totally think it is worth it. Below is a picture of my beautiful plan, ain't she cute?!

All I use is an Excel worksheet and make different tabs for the things I use to create my meal plan.

• First I have this year's meal plan - I will go into this a little more
• Then I have Recipes to use - I get these from looking through my Recipe Binders, favorite websites, and cookbooks
• Then I have the Food Inventory - this is something I am not very good at keeping up to date because it is a little time consuming but it allows me to create meals around what I already have in the house

For the actual Meal Plan, I have it broken up into:

• Date - I just start the whole year and drag it down for the entire year of meal planned goodness
• Day - I also include that because who honestly can tell me what day of the week each date is, other than those genius people...
• Main Dish - the entree of the evening - oooh sounds so fancy!
• Side - two columns because you should always have a balanced meal - so I am told
• Dessert - Sadly this does not get filled very often because my loving B is not a fan of sweeties
• Source - this is where I found the recipe so I don't scramble the day of

That is my madness in a nutshell - I love meal planning and I have even thought of developing them for others. If you are ever interested, I would assemble the meal plan to include snacks, and other meals if necessary and then the shopping lists so you don't have to do too much brain damage. 

I hope this helps someone develop their own Meal Plan!