Meal Planning

I have to admit that I despise meal planning.  I hate sitting down every week to plan what I am going to cook each day for the coming week.  It takes a lot of creativity sometimes to walk around examining what is in our fridge and pantry, trying to figure out what kind of meals to make out of what we have on hand.  However, there is one thing that I dislike more than meal planning, that is, not meal planning.  If I don't plan out my meals ahead of time we either go out to eat somewhere, which gets really expensive really fast, or I find that I don't have the ingredients on hand that I need to cook what I want, so I make an emergency run to the grocery store, which isn't an efficient use of time or money.  Another alternative is that we eat cereal or sandwiches, which is okay sometimes, but it gets old fast.

It always feels great once I do plan out my meals, though.  I can plan ahead for what I need to buy at the store so I only need to make one trip per week.  I plan out my meals around sales at the stores and around what we already have at home.  I can plan ahead for what I need to defrost from the freezer so that dinner is done on time.  If I know that a particular day is going to be really busy and I'm not going to have time to cook, I plan ahead to either make something simple or to thaw out one of the leftover meals we have in our freezer.  Overall, spending a few minutes each Saturday to plan out meals saves me headaches during the following week!

Here is my meal plan this week.  All the recipes can be found under the "Recipes" tab at the top.  I plan out 5-6 meals every week and allow the 7th day to be leftovers.

French Bread Sandwiches
Sausage and Green Peppers
BBQ Chicken and Bacon
French Toast - I made bread this week and it was a disaster so I'm trying to find a use for our nutritious paper weights!
Southwest Chicken - defrosted from the freezer
Chicken Tortilla Casserole