About Me

My photo
I am a cloth diapering, breastfeeding, cosleeping, baby led weaning, extended rear facing, eco conscious, married mommy to two beautiful children. They have changed my view on the world we live in. It is now my number 1 goal to make it the best I can for them to grow up in. I find myself always rethinking how I want to live my life and often feel like sharing my findings and thoughts with others. So I guess here's my chance :o) I will talk about topics that interest me. If you dont like them or dont agree, well... there's nothing much I can do!

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Our monthly meal planning

Over the past couple weeks, I have had a couple people ask about how and why I do my meal planning for the month. I plan for the month because I find it easier to space out different kinds of meals (like bbq, pasta, chicken, specials...). There is also lots of flexibility as well since most of our weekly menus change a bit by the time we arrive to it. So here it is...


  1. First, on a empty monthly calendar, I write down any evening appointments, special days and when the New York Giants are playing football.   
  2. I write down what I would like throughout the month. I put easy meals on nights where I have little time to prepare anything. I put pizza on Fridays since we have fun making our own. I choose something fun for game days. I plan fresh meat meals for earlier in the week. And I always leave Saturdays empty because there is normally once during the week that we dont follow our menu so we basically make something with whatever food we have left.                                            
  3. On the weekend, I take a look at what I have planned and do up a quick grocery list. I once made all my grocery lists for each week at the beginning of the month but I found myself making slight changes as the month progressed and then my lists were no longer good. So now I save myself the energy and just list out weekly.
  4. I write the menu out on her weekly menu board. Joyful Abode showed us how she made a cute board for her kitchen. I made mine a bit bigger to include more elements

 Meal planning has allowed us to only buy what we need which also allows us to save money. I also make extra of certain meals and freeze them for later. I dont really use the lunch and snack sections right now but definitely will once our second baby blesses us with its presence and I go back to eating all my meals at home. I also plan on possibly watching someone else's child in our home so those sections will be very useful when that happens.

Do you plan your meals weekly or monthly? Let us know your tips.

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nat, fIrst off I'm so sorry Keegs has you tracking the Giants tell him to get a real team like the Eagles lol...
    I'm very interested in your posts and I may also dabble a little in the "granola" zone by following your blog and FB page. I hope you share some of your favourite recipes with us along this journey of yours because these would be the ones I would have to try first. Thanks for the introductions to new and heathy eating lifestyle. I look forward to hearing about your journey and learning from you as well.

    Best of luck,
    Jay

    ReplyDelete