I've just recently discovered the absolute joy of meal planning! I don't love to cook. But I do love to provide for our little family and honor the budget that we've set and that means we can't order pizza for every meal. My husband loves home cooked meals and I fought it for a long time (sorry honey) but once I got the hang of meal planning, my tune was changed. So I'm going to start sharing my meal plans and recipes to keep myself accountable! In this post I'm also going to share how I meal plan and grocery shop. Because I love reading how other people do it! My method is not glamorous or intense, it's just what worked for me. It got me into cooking and now it's something I look forward to every day. And we don't cook gourmet meals and I am huge fan of frozen pizza and salad in a bag so don't look for that here! But we do eat like real people and we have a real budget so here's how I do it!
I write my meal plans and grocery lists in this notebook. I've had it for like 3 years and it's had various uses over it's life but since we've been married I've used it as a grocery notebook (that shows how much I've grocery shopped in our 3.5 years of marriage. Ooph) But anyways!
I start out by writing down the days of the week that will happen after I shop and I fill in our date night out or any evening plans we have that would mean one less meal we needed to eat at home. We are both home generally every evening for dinner so I plan for at least 5 meals a week. That allows for a date night and leftovers because I hate throwing out half meal! I also half most of our meals or make half in a container I can freeze! I will include the side we are going to eat next to the meal so that I buy accordingly. I like to have sides with my meals, it makes me feel fancy (insert sassy emoji here)
So as you can see I wrote out all the meals for this week and then below that I write out the recipe. I do this for every recipe even if I think I don't need too. I need too. I have learned that if I don't get all the recipes written out then I don't make an accurate grocery list and I forget to buy things! And that's a bummer when you open the pantry expecting to have something and lo and behold you didn't buy it! So that's my method. I don't like toggling between pinterest recipes and ones I have written on a card so this works great for me!
Next, I make my list! It always looks like this. I make up my own headings and they are always this and always in this order (it just works for me, ya'll!) I draw a little box next to everything so when I get to the store I can check them off and I know I have it in my cart. I know they make lots of cute grocery lists but I just can't justify buying them write now. This paper is free and I like my little boxes. Meal planning and grocery shopping are so fun for me. It's a way I can honor my husband and provide for us and so I find a lot of joy in making my little lists. And I'm sentimental so I keep the lists and look back on them. I know, I'm weird.
Anyway! The little numbers next to some of them signify that I need more than one haha it's so simple, ya'll. I don't want to overcomplicate it because then I just feel overwhelmed standing in the aisles surrounded by potato chips and swiss rolls and I just buy those and eat them all on the way home (#truelife)
One last little bit, I grocery shop pretty exclusively at Aldi. I can do a week's worth of groceries for around $60. I also buy things for Adam to have for lunch and cinnamon rolls because we have those every Saturday morning. Aldi has great prices and if you don't need to have the brand name on your packaging, then get your little self to Aldi and stock up! I want to do a little post on my favorite Aldi products so you guys know the gold. I mean, it's all gold, but some a little more than others.
Hope this helps someone! I'll post my meal plan for this week a little later today :)
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