Meal Planning

Meal planning used to stress me out.

Every weekend I'd sit there with my pen, paper and the Big Y flier in front of me and think: "What are we going to have for dinners this week? Chili? No, just had it last week. Pot roast? No, it's not on sale."

Then I had the idea to make a list of all the different dinners we made. I typed them all as they came to mind, then separated them into categories- Seafood, Beef, Chicken, Vegetarian, Breakfast, etc. All of a sudden, meal planning got much easier. Every week I make a note by each meal we're having, so that way when I go to meal plan the next time, I'll know which meals we had least recently.

It's worked very well. Last time I counted, I had 50 meals on that list. 7 days in a week, therefore we have an 8 week meal rotation! Not bad! Not all is dictated by "the list"- what's on sale has a big impact on my shopping, too. For example, this week pork butt was finally on sale for $1.99/lb. It meant I could make BBQ shredded pork in the crock pot, something that had been out of our rotation for months simply because it wasn't on sale. (The best way to eat BBQ shredded pork, by the way, is with coleslaw for a topping, in a bulkie roll. Yum).

What doesn't get eaten that night, gets eaten as leftovers for lunch. There is little to no waste in our house. I buy for the week, within budget, and that's it. Our fridge looks almost completely empty by Sunday (I go shopping on Monday). I cringe when I think of how much food I wasted before I planned meals properly. I would buy veggies and fruit I didn't really care for, thinking that somehow they'd get eaten. They didn't, and that's mainly because I bought a lot of junk in addition. When I got serious about losing weight two years ago, I knew I simply couldn't have cookies or sweets in the house. They tempt me too much! I bought my dark chocolate, and that's it. It has worked. Thus why I like this:

Meal planning doesn't have to be stressful. As soon as I stopped making it a guessing game, and really thought about the food I bought, life got a lot easier.