Are you one of those people that plans out their meals for the week? Or do you just wing it every day? My momma always taught me to make a menu for the week and then make your grocery list. And I’ve found that this method has been so wonderful! Plus, I have a good time trying to fit everything together. Its like a puzzle that I have to solve every week!
Not only do I get a little kick out of planning our meals, but it has really been helpful in several ways. My husband is a health nut. He enjoys exercise and most of all eating healthily. Now, I’m a southern girl, so I’ve learned to cook with lots of butter, frying food, and always having plenty of sweets on hand. Even though my husband was brought up on the same type of food, he has since changed his view and desires a more healthy diet. So, here I am trying to adapt – trying to keep that southern taste that I love yet cooking our food in a more healthy way. But that is a topic for another day.
Back to eating healthy… I’ve noticed that planning out our meals for the whole week helps me to really balance our diet and give us a nice variety of foods. Not only does it keep me on a healthy track, but it has also helped to save us some money as well. After I make the menu, I head into the kitchen and make my grocery list. I get everything I need for the whole week’s meals. This way I cut back on impulse buying – I really don’t need those fresh, sweet smelling donuts or that frozen pizza – and my hubby is a lot more happy with the lower grocery bills!
So, now that maybe I’ve convinced you to start thinking about planning your weekly meals, you ask,
Where do I go from here? How do I organize my meals and grocery lists?
Well, you could do like I have done for the past year of our marriage, and get out several pieces of paper – one for breakfast meals, one for lunch meals, one for dinner meals, and one for your grocery list. Then get a hand full of the most helpful of the cookbooks that you have, and search for recipes, trying to keep variety and still pick something that the family will like. Having last week’s plan close by to make sure not to duplicate meals too soon.
Shew! A lot to juggle, right?
Well, yesterday I found a website that has changed my meal planning life! Meals Matter is amazing! After a couple
minutes to register a user name and password, you’ve got all the tools you need to plan your family’s meals! This site is so helpful – it covers all the bases! Includes a calendar where you can enter each meal for each day (even snacks, if you choose), shopping list, and recipe search. Sounds pretty basic, huh? So, what’s all the fuss, you ask? The amazing part is how each of these tools work together and compliment each other!
Say you are planning out your week, but you’ve run out of ideas for a fresh and exciting dinner. No problem, you simply search the recipe database – maybe I want to have chicken, I know I won’t have much time to prepare the dinner that night so I need a fast recipe, and I only need to feed myself and my husband. So I enter all of that into the search, and I get a list of recipes that all have these requisites. Now, I can click the link on the left and add that right onto my meal plan calendar!
Not only that, but once I’ve assembled my meals for the week, I can click on one button that adds all of the ingredients for the recipes that I’ve selected onto my shopping list! Then I simply go back through and delete all of the items that I already have in my pantry or fridge. Need to pick up items that aren’t on the list of ingredients? That’s ok, just add them to the list by typing them in yourself.
I’m so excited about this new set of tools that I’ve found in the Meals Matter site! Check it out for yourself, and let me know what you think. I hope you find it as helpful as I did!
