Tag: weekly meal plan

Bi-Weekly Meal Plan – April 24, 2017

Posted on by Sarah Marshall
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Meal Plan Monday

Meal planning for two weeks at a time has proven to be really effective for us. I’ve found it really beneficial to be prepared and ingredients on hand for double the number the meals. It allows me more flexibility which has been vital in the past few weeks where I’ve gotten sick (strep is the worst!!), kids have gotten sick, and Keith’s spring sports/work schedule can be changed at the drop of a hat.

It took me a little while to get in a groove of the two week meal plan. Now that I have, I feel that our grocery budget has been reduced. We’ve have some anamolies, such as spring break in March, that keeps me from declaring with certainty that this method is saving us money on groceries. But at this point, it seems quite possible.

Our breakfasts and lunches have become very routine so planning for them has become quite simple. We’ve found some new dinner recipes that are a hit with everyone and hope to share some recipes here on the blog real soon. Brooke has plans over both weekends & Keith will be gone the second so I left the weekends open because Leah & I are pretty easy to please and I’m sure there will be leftovers to throw into the mix.

Meal Plan for April 24 – May 7, 2017

Breakfast

Eggs & Toast
Smoothies
Yogurt & Granola
Breakfast Bars

Lunch

Leftovers
Salmon & Veggies
Sandwiches
Salads
Homemade “Lunchables” (Brooke’s lunches)

Dinner

Cheeseburger Pie
Oven Tacos
Garlic Parmesan Pork Chops
Baked Penne with Sausage & Peppers
Burgers
Creamy Italian Chicken
Slow Cooker Southwest Chicken Stacks
Easy Taco Salad
Mexican Pizzas
Weeknight Creamy Sausage Pasta

Below is a screenshot of my Plan To Eat planner to give you an overview of how I have meals planned each day. As always, nothing is set in stone.
BW Meal Plan 2017.04.24-05.07

Have you tried meal planning for longer than a one-week period? What did you like or not like?

Meal Plan & Aldi Grocery Haul | January 23, 2017

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

This week I’m sharing a meal plan & grocery haul combo!! I’ve tried something new which was to have planned & shopped for two weeks’ worth of meals. I hope this will prove to help us save both time, money and possibly even the amount of effort put into the meal planning & grocery shopping process.

Meal Plan Aldi Grocery Haul

We do the majority of our shopping at Aldi – we love that place!!! As with almost all of the meal plans I’ve shared, I used PlanToEat.com to organize my recipes, schedule our meals and create the shopping list.

And here’s our family meal plan for the next two weeks – note it is very likely these meals will get switched around:
Monday – Taco Salad Leftovers (http://bit.ly/1XmHyzs)
Tuesday – Chili from the freezer (http://bit.ly/2jrlEfj)
Wednesday – Breakfast Burritos
Thursday – Meatballs & Noodles Leftovers (http://bit.ly/1TQBKhM)
Friday – Aldi Deli Pizza
Saturday – Chili Dip (coming soon!)
Sunday – Meatball Stew (http://bit.ly/2jT6jXZ)
Monday – Pasta & Meatballs
Tuesday – Chili Dip Leftovers
Wednesday – Slow Cooker Pot Roast (http://bit.ly/2jLEyhR)
Thursday – Open
Friday – Pizza Night
Saturday – Sunday Chicken Dinner in Slow Cooker (http://bit.ly/2iYISgt)
Sunday – Open

Below is the video of our two week meal plan as well as our Aldi grocery haul. If you enjoy it, I hope you will subscribe to be notified of future videos and check out my playlist of Grocery Haul videos.

If you’re interested in using Plan To Eat to simplify your meal planning and grocery shopping, they offer a free 30-day trial!! You can import your recipes and use them to quickly and easily make your meal plan. Print the shopping list organized by category for you and head to the grocery store (or send your husband – that’s what I do!!)

Do you meal plan on regular basis? If so, do you do it weekly, bi-weekly or monthly?

{This post contains affiliate links. Purchases made after clicking these links may result in compensation for me. All opinions in this post are honest and completely my own.}

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 9, 2015

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 9, 2015

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

Welcome to my weekly meal plan & goals. The main purpose of these posts are for my own record keeping & accountability however I hope others can find them useful as well.

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals

Like always seems to happen to me, after a couple good weeks of meal plans I get complete planners block. I have just no idea what to cook for dinner the upcoming week. Saturday I carved out some time to go through my folder of recipes to make sure there weren’t any go-to recipes I’d forgotten to enter into my Plan to Eat recipe book. While I did come across some that needed to be imported, I still felt stumped.

My biggest hurdle was Monday night. Every other Monday is Girl Scouts night. We have to be at the meeting at 6pm. The girls and I typically get home around 5:30pm after work/school/daycare. The meeting lasts until at least 7pm. Not really enough time for dinner before hand and after the meeting is kinda late for us since we typically start bedtime routines as close to 7pm as possible.

And most weeks it really isn’t too much of an issue because at some point Keith will take Leah and they can have dinner while Brooke & I are at her meeting. Then she & I will eat a quick dinner when we get back home. Not an ideal situation but good enough.

Unfortunately, Keith’s first women’s basketball game conflicts and mama is tacking it solo. I had to come up with a solution that would allow us to get home, eat and be ready to head back out in 20 minutes. I tried to find a slow cooker dinner but nothing would work and I thought were gonna end up with PB&Js for dinner.

Then, during worship at church, the perfect idea popped into my head – salad in a jar!! All the ingredients could be prepped & assembled, didn’t need to be heated up and the girls are pretty much guaranteed to eat (please don’t say I jinxed it!) especially since I cooked up some taco meat to make them into Taco Salads!!

Once I got that figured out, the rest of the week seemed to easily fall into place.

Breakfast

Eggs in lots of different forms – scrambled, fried, in a hole, hard-boiled
Peanut butter toast
Bagels w/ Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese (LOVE when Aldi has this!!!)

Lunch

Leftovers
Sandwiches
Salads

Dinner

Taco Salads in a Jar
One Pot Spaghetti
Mexican Pizza (post on this hopefully soon!)
Grilled Cheese (easy for swim class night)
Chili for cook-off at church

This menu plan is linked to Org Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday link up.

Next we have the progress (or lack of) on my goals.

I may have been a little ambitious in my first week and I definitely should have considered that Keith had a super busy week at work and I would be flying solo at home most nights.

I’m not getting discouraged though – with some better preparation I think I’ll see great progress soon.

Mail a “Thinking of You” note to a friend
Bible study 5 of 7 mornings
Lunches packed at night
2 blog posts & 1 video posted
Schedule social media posts the night before
Walk at least 20 minutes 3 of 5 workdays and at least 1 weekend day
One Fit2be session each day (at least 10 minutes)

Going through this I couldn’t cross a single one of these off the list. Not a great start but most of them I did at least once more than I would have otherwise so I’m going to give myself grace and consider that progress.

I’m going to repeat those as my goals for this week and I can say I’ve already got a better start than last week.

Here’s to a great week!!!

via GIPHY

Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat