Meal Planning Last Week

My weeks end up being pretty busy with work and teaching dance in the evenings and as result I end up having very little to no time to prepare dinner on weeknights. I decided that instead of scrambling for something to quickly put together on the weeknights I would try to do a little preparation beforehand and see how that worked. I took five and a half hours last Friday to prepare a couple of weeks of meals to keep in the freezer. Although the cooking was exhausting on Friday (I don’t have the normal stamina I’m used to right now with being pregnant!) I found it to be extremely helpful this last week! I just thought I’d share what I did in case anyone’s interested. 

1.      I started out by writing down a bunch of meals that sounded good to me. My list looked something like this:

Hamburgers

Saucy meatballs and potatoes

Veggie casserole

Teriyaki chicken

Stuffed peppers

Spaghetti

Lion house potato casserole

Chicken croissant sandwiches

Pineapple chicken and rice

Verde chicken Mexican lasagna

Etc.

2.      I then thought about what meat I had in our freezer (the meat at Smiths goes on clearance a couple of days before it expires so I only buy meat that’s on clearance and then freeze it. That saves us quite a bit of money) and I put together a more specific list of what I wanted to make for the week. 

My list looked like this:

Friday- Stuffed Peppers

Saturday- Crouton Casserole

Sunday- Hotdogs and Potato Salad

Monday- Chicken Enchilada’s

Tuesday- Veggie Casserole w/Rice

Wednesday- Saucy meatballs and baked potatoes

Thursday- Chicken Salad Sandwiches

Friday- Spaghetti

Saturday- Pork Loin with Rice

Sunday- Verde Chicken Mexican Lasagna

 

3.      Notice that I did not plan any nights for leftovers, date nights, or family dinners. I did this because the first week that I cooked I cut all the recipes in half or fourths and planned on multiple nights of leftover. We had no leftovers and ended up trying to throw food for dinner together last minute. Throwing together food at the last minute did not work well because since Josh and I just moved into our house there were only a few recipes I could find that we actually had all the ingredients for and we are very short on time in the evenings! We were missing lots of basics. I figured it was better to over plan and have extra meals in the freezer at the end of the week than it would be to under plan again. I didn’t cut many recipes in half when I made them either, I followed the recipe for the most part. I figured if we have a ton of food leftover we would eat it for leftovers or freeze it and do it for a meal another week.

 

4.      Because I knew I couldn’t make most of the meals on my list because we didn’t have the ingredients to make them I then took a Word Document and assigned one page per day with details on the meal for the day. This was helpful because I don’t have any recipes memorized, with my pregnant brain right now it helped me to remember what I was planning on for dinner each day (I looked at our meal schedule to know what we were going to have for dinner), and it really helped reduce stress for me. Each page of my Word Document looked something like this:

 

Page 5

Veggie Casserole w/Rice

Meal will consist of:

            Veggie Casserole (pull out of freezer)

            Rice (pull out of freezer and heat up)

            Milk or Water to drink

Recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup mayo, 1 cup miracle whip, 1 tsp salt, 4 tbsp lemon juice, veggies (carrots, celery, onion, peppers), chicken, cheese (whatever looks good), sliced almonds (optional for top), sleeve crushed Ritz crackers with butter (optional for top)

Cooking:

Cover and cook @ 350 for 60 min

 

5.      I then took my typed up list of meals for the week and went through the kitchen to figure out what I did have and what I was going to need to buy. I wrote down everything we needed to purchase as I went through each recipe. I also wrote down how much of a certain item I needed to buy (for example I’d write down 1 cup miracle whip for this recipe, potato salad also calls for miracle whip so I wrote down the amount for that recipe too, that way I ensured I had enough for each recipe). After figuring out exactly what groceries we would need for each meal I added on the couple of other items we would need for breakfasts and lunches (such as yogurt, milk, fresh fruits and veggies to snack on)

 

6.      Next came a quick grocery trip

 

7.      I got home and cooked and cooked and cooked. It was convenient to be able to cook all the chicken for the week at once, all the ground beef and ground turkey at once and then slice up all the veggies. I took any leftover veggies from the meals and cut them into veggie sticks (like the celery, carrots, and peppers) so that we would be likely to snack on those or eat those for lunch throughout the week. I froze any leftover meat so that I could use it for meals the following week. I simply made each meal and put each into a different glass dish that I would be able to pull out of the freezer and pop into the oven.

 

8.      I taped a sticky note to each dish that I put in the freezer with the name of what was in the container (such as: “Chicken Enchiladas”) and cooking instructions (such as: Cook at 350 for 60min or until heated through). This way I didn’t have to look up baking instructions when I pulled out the meal for the day. Josh and I use google calendar to schedule each hour of each day and I created another calendar for our meals so that about 15 minutes before I started teaching for the day a reminder would pop up on my phone reminding me what we were eating for the day and I would put it in the oven on a delay start for the amount of time needed. This way the meal was ready to take out of the oven within minutes of my students leaving and I could pop it back in the oven on warm for Josh to pull out when he got home from work while I was teaching another class.

All in all planning out our meals proved to be super helpful for us! I posted this thinking that maybe these ideas would be helpful for some of you to (even if it just means you get an extra 30-60 minutes to read with your kids or relax during the week instead of trying to quickly pull together dinner). Honestly, this past week we ended up only using a couple of the meals, we had our date night one evening, family dinner another, pizza another, and a couple nights of leftovers so I only cooked the stuffed peppers, chicken enchiladas, and chicken salad sandwiches. Oh and we ate some of the potato salad with our leftovers last night. I’m hoping to cook up replacement meals for the ones we used this week (different meals but something to replace them in the freezer) and stay on top of having meals prepared in the freezer so that I don’t get stressed out about trying to put on dinner while working in the evenings and being so tired with pregnancy (and to save another Friday of only cooking!). There are freezer bag meal recipes that I’ve seen online for the crockpot that look pretty handy to me (people have also said they lay really flat in the freezer) I didn’t make any of those though because I stick to the clearance meats and didn’t want to have to go to the store for the meats that they all call for. I am curious though, have any of you tried them? Did you like them or find them helpful? Would you do them again? Any other great fast go to meals that you use during the week (with little to no prep other than quickly putting it in the oven or crockpot)?

Love of love!

           Sheri