Completed - 2 Meals per Week
55. For one month, plan and make at least 2 meals/week (9/7/2017)
For our whole marriage I've been really bad at planning meals and making healthy dinners. We usually eat terribly. But I want to change that! So during the first weekend of August I planned about seven meals and did some major grocery shopping. I later came up with a few more.
These are the meals I planned and the weeks I made them:
Week of August 6th - Chicken & Broccoli Casserole, Chili & Cornbread
Week of August 13th - Salisbury Steak, Chicken Taquitos
Week of August 20th - Rainbow Wraps, Italian Dressing Pasta
Week of August 27th - Mock Tacos, Oven Baked Chicken
Week of September 3rd - Chicken Burritos, BLTs
(There were a few small meals that I "planned," like I decided the night before that I was going to make Mac & Cheese the next day, but I didn't keep track of those. Obviously.)
A few things that helped this goal go smoother:
- Shredding chicken in the crock pot and freezing it. So handy! Knowing that I didn't need to spend extra time cooking and shredding chicken before I made dinner was so nice.
I used this as my guide: https://www.yourhomebasedmom.com/slow-cooker-shredded-chicken/
- Having Jonathan's help. He was great to help decide what we should make/buy and even did the majority of cooking for a few of the meals (I'm pretty indecisive with a lot of things, so this was definitely needed)
- Breaking up my grocery list into categories/stores. This was probably kind of overkill, but after I made the shopping list, I went through it and picked which thing we would get from which store and put down the basic section it was in. It made the shopping trips go a lot faster, and I wasn't dreading going either.
I can definitely tell planning helped me. When I was tired or didn't want to cook, I still did it! Even deciding on super easy meals the night before was helpful. The whole experience turned out really well, and I already started my meal plan and grocery list for the next few weeks! I'm so excited to start this habit!
For our whole marriage I've been really bad at planning meals and making healthy dinners. We usually eat terribly. But I want to change that! So during the first weekend of August I planned about seven meals and did some major grocery shopping. I later came up with a few more.
These are the meals I planned and the weeks I made them:
Week of August 6th - Chicken & Broccoli Casserole, Chili & Cornbread
Week of August 13th - Salisbury Steak, Chicken Taquitos
Week of August 20th - Rainbow Wraps, Italian Dressing Pasta
Week of August 27th - Mock Tacos, Oven Baked Chicken
Week of September 3rd - Chicken Burritos, BLTs
(There were a few small meals that I "planned," like I decided the night before that I was going to make Mac & Cheese the next day, but I didn't keep track of those. Obviously.)
A few things that helped this goal go smoother:
- Shredding chicken in the crock pot and freezing it. So handy! Knowing that I didn't need to spend extra time cooking and shredding chicken before I made dinner was so nice.
I used this as my guide: https://www.yourhomebasedmom.com/slow-cooker-shredded-chicken/
- Having Jonathan's help. He was great to help decide what we should make/buy and even did the majority of cooking for a few of the meals (I'm pretty indecisive with a lot of things, so this was definitely needed)
- Breaking up my grocery list into categories/stores. This was probably kind of overkill, but after I made the shopping list, I went through it and picked which thing we would get from which store and put down the basic section it was in. It made the shopping trips go a lot faster, and I wasn't dreading going either.
I can definitely tell planning helped me. When I was tired or didn't want to cook, I still did it! Even deciding on super easy meals the night before was helpful. The whole experience turned out really well, and I already started my meal plan and grocery list for the next few weeks! I'm so excited to start this habit!
I don't think making your shopping list as detailed as you did is overkill at all...because that's what I always do! I think it's super helpful to group by by store and then by category so you know what to get in each section. Otherwise I'd be going back and forth between them all over the store, haha. Having a good shopping trip definitely makes cooking easier. :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you guys have been so successful with this!
Thank you for the validation and encouragement! :D
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