How I Meal Plan

Everyone has their own way of meal planning. Some people are dedicated enough to do it for a whole month. Kudos to you women (or men). But I have found for me and my husband, it works if we do it weekly on Friday nights. We grab the computer, a big notepad, my planner, and a grocery list pad. Find out what works for you!   ​​

      After we review activities the upcoming week that might influence what we cook (ward parties, family get-togethers that sort of thing) we look at the Macey's Weekly Ad. I like to do my grocery shopping on Monday's because I get double the coupons/specials! Again, you'll have to adjust to where you go shopping to fit your needs, but I have found that Associated Food stores in Utah are awesome.  Anyway, then I look at ad and see what's on sale. Summer is a GREAT time for produce and so that's what I fill up on.I'll probably post about reading grocery store ads in the future. After I see what's on sale I figure out what I already have on stock (again, another day, another blog post) and go from there.  I then fill out my notebook to look like this:  ​​   I organize my grocery list  to be in the direction I shop at the grocery store. So in Macey's in Providence Utah, I get produce, then meat/cheese, breads, boxed/baking, dairy, frozen, and misc. It's just a big circle to make sure I don't forget anything.

 Then I plug in my favorite recipes. At our house we have "theme" nights that have made it SO much easier to answer the age old question "What should we have for dinner?" My Pinterest boards are in fact organized around each theme so recipes are easier to find.
Here are my themes:
 Mexican Monday
 Italian Tuesday
One Pot Wednesday
 Thrifty Thursday
Breakfast Food Friday
Slaughter Saturday (credit to Connor)

Comfort Food Sunday For breakfast and lunches we usually stick to the same things as you can read in the future blog post (man do I have a lot of writing to do). I then find my meals and write down ingredients I need. I try and stay under $50 when grocery shopping but I always challenge myself to see how little I can spend. After writing everything in the categories I trasnfer my list to a smaller piece of paper (we won't talk about my O.C.D. quite yet) and I am ready to go!

 ​ And sometimes, because let's be honest being a blonde has it's downfalls, I forget what I planned and so I made this easy menu chart from a sheet protector, a sharpie, and construction paper. SO SO easy. ​​

   If you have any other meal planning tips, please! Share them with me. I love to see how others do it.