weekly dinners.

I had a friend ask me how I do a weekly menu and meal planning. I am no expert on this...but just wanted to share how I do meal plans for each week. It's been working for us since we got married and I've just stuck with it. Now, I don't have kids yet, so I can only imagine how hard it is to get dinner on the table every night with little kids. I am sure my way of doing this will change a lot when I start having kids. This way of planning meals works for us personally. It also helps us to save a lot of money by not eating out every night. I also love cooking...so this stuff is fun for me.

I go to the grocery store once a week, usually on Monday (depends on my work schedule). On Sundays when we have some down time, I write down 5-6 meals that I want to cook for that week. I love to go on Pinterest and find new recipes to try. Here are all the recipes I've pinned. I also ask Todd if there is anything in particular that he wants me to cook. If I like a recipe I've found, I print it out and put it in our file cabinet.

Once I have the meals jotted down, I go through the recipes and see what I need to buy at the store for them. I don't assign a specific day for each meal. We decided on that day which one we want to have for dinner. 

I like to have the meals for the week displayed somewhere that Todd and I can both see. Then we know what we are having and there aren't any questions of what we should do for dinner. 

Also, I try to not plan too many complex meals/recipes in one week. I mostly do easy dishes that I can whip up in 45 min or less. And some nights, I throw in the towel and we call it a YOYO night (you're on your own) with mac and cheese and cereal.

If you have the meals planned out and all the ingredients in the house, it's easy to make it happen.

So there ya have it. I found a great grocery list on Pinterest a while back and decided to make my own. You can download it here.

♥