Friday, February 17, 2012

{February Foodfest} Meal Planning

Are you a meal planner?

I am a flaky meal planner.  I love the idea of thinking out our dinners ahead of time, adding the ingredients I lack to my online grocery order so I never have to step foot in the grocery store, and not having to worry about dinner each day.  But this doesn't happen very often.  Part of it is the dilemma of what if on that day I don't actually feel like eating that?  And apparently I like schlepping Seth to the grocery store every day for the one vital ingredient we need for the recipe I've stumbled across on one of the blogs I follow that my pregnant self has to have tonight!  I think part of me actually loves the thrill of finding a yummy recipe and discovering I have all of the ingredients already, or we could just call it what it is: procrastination.

A couple of years ago, in attempt to be more organized (and let's be honest, an excuse to buy stationery), I asked for a meal plan organizer for Christmas.  My mom-in-law commissioned our favorite stationer, Lisa, to create the elusive idea I had given her, and they came up with a cute design that included my plan for the week on one side and room to write my grocery list on the other.  It was so helpful and fun to write out, but it's in a box in my parents-in law's attic along with the rest of our house, so I haven't been very motivated to do this here.  Stationery is a big motivator in my life.

With our first world crisis, my need for meal planning has arisen once again, so I made my own meal plan sheet that I saved into a PDF so I can print it off each week.  Don't let me fool you, I am not computer savvy at all.  Anyone could easily do this as you will soon see evidenced by my photo.  It has been REVOLUTIONARY for my stress level.  It's definitely nowhere near as cute as my original one, but it works just the same (I'm using a separate pad of paper for my grocery list).  Or you could actually order a real one - here is an example I saw on another blog recently.

Here is an example from this week.  I wrote it all out, and then realized I needed to swap two of the days, and knowing that I wanted to post it here. I rewrote it so you would think I was neat and organized, and then Seth got ahold of it, so I guess an arrow would have sufficed (and given me five minutes of my life back).

You can see Seth's handiwork at the bottom half.
At least he knew to draw on the paper and not the counter, right?

I'd stick around a little longer, but as you can see, I didn't really plan for today, and we don't have sufficient leftovers, so I'm off to find a recipe online and then inevitably walk Seth to the grocery store to get our lone missing ingredient.  Old habits die hard.







6 comments:

Anonymous said...

saray is laughing cause i am always trying to plan a nice meal, then i expect saray to execute...she is stuck with going to the store and actually cooking while i sit on the couch and pretend to study my hebrew..

ps-when there is no terriyaki sauce in the house, do not try to substitute szechuan sauce. moms stir-fry will never be the same to me..

-mark

Anonymous said...

you are in a big trouble mark kellam

-saray

Taylor and Robin said...

Ahh, married life! Y'all crack me up!:) Love you both - wish we could all cook together!!!

Anonymous said...

I love that we made the meal plan for the week. Not that we ever need a good reason for Mexican in our house, but you guys are huge motivators to divulge into the shared obsession.

~Sarah

My Homegrocers said...

what's a brief explanation. Thanks for this great article.
indian grocery dallas tx

My Homegrocers said...

Awesome article! It is in detail and well formatted that i enjoyed reading. which inturn helped me to get new information from your blog.
buy indian grocery online

Post a Comment

Anybody out there? Bueller...Bueller?