Meal Plan for the Week

Something that I'm trying to do a better job of these days is meal planning. I grew up doing meal plans for my family so naturally, when I got married, it carried over. I slacked off on it when my daughter was born though and have had a tough time getting back into it. Now that she's 16 months old, I feel like she can no longer be my excuse! What I have been doing is buying the same old stuff and figuring out our meals when I go to make dinner each evening. Sounds good, but in reality it wasn't. More often than not, I would discover the chicken wasn't thawed, or I didn't have an important ingredient, or not enough time to make the dish, or we would just eat out. But finally, I'd had enough, it was high time to get back into planning out my meals and start doing a little bit of couponing to save my family some money. So that's where I am today.

Get Free Weekly Meal Planning Sheets

I created some meal planning sheets to help me out with the entire meal planning process. You can download the free meal planning sheets here.

We pretty much eat the same things for breakfast and lunch so I only plan out dinners and anything that I want to make like muffins/granola bars/cookies/ect. I plan 2 weeks at a time, work a leftover night on the sheet once a week, and pick up any pantry staples that we're running low on when I grocery shop. By doing these things, I'm usually only grocery shopping once every 2 weeks. I also like us to eat by the 80/20 rule. Meaning most of the things we eat are whole foods/clean/healthy.

Meal Planning Printable

So, here's my plan for this week ~

Breakfast - cereal, oatmeal, eggs, pancakes, fruit

Lunch - sandwiches, salad, leftovers

Dinner -

Monday ~ Homemade Pizza and salad

Tuesday ~ Crockpot Honey and Sesame Chicken, Rice, Steamed Broccoli

Wednesday ~ Summer veggies with sausage and potatoes

Thursday ~ Pizza at our weekly bible study

Friday ~ Chicken Tacos (using leftover chicken from Tuesday)

Saturday - Date Night

Sunday ~ Leftovers!

I also want to make ~ Banana Muffins, chocolate chip granola bites, and/or Chocolate apricot nut bars

Meal Plan Printables

I share more on my meal planning process here, so check it out to get more info. In addition to meal planning, I like to do some meal prep for the week ahead. Good kitchen tools are essential for success in the kitchen, you can also see the kitchen products I love and use.

What's on your menu for this week?