Remember earlier in 2012 when I was struggling to even plan one week of meals? It was on my goal list for months, yet I never managed to make it happen (mostly because of the difficulty in planning meals when you’re half living together. And extreme laziness on my part). I’d even found an adorable template to use and I still couldn’t get my shit together. Eventually I dropped it off my goal list because I couldn’t take the stench of failure anymore.
When we moved in together, our pattern of frequent take out continued. Until Mr. Dollars suggested one day that we not only meal plan, we meal plan ALL OF NOVEMBER.
Picture pizza instead of eucalyptus, and that was me.
I told him he was insane. But then agreed that if we wanted to try and eat healthier and actually do more of our own cooking, we weren’t going to get there by buying takeout and getting delivery all the time. And it’s nice to either come home to all your ingredients and a recipe, or a meal your crock pot slaved over for eight hours (so you didn’t have to). We agreed that easing into it would probably be the best approach, so we started meal planning almost two weeks ago. It’s gone well so far and I’m really looking forward to making it our regular routine (it’s already become a Sunday tradition that we sit down and plan the week of meals out).
We started meal planning by making a list of all the meals we like to eat on a regular basis. Then I went all Typical Virgo/Type A on that mother and made my best spreadsheet yet:
So now, we go to the spreadsheet to find meals for the week, and I can see what unusual items we may need to add to the grocery list. Although I haven’t quite mastered the shop once a week thing, I figure it’s ok because we basically live in the parking lot of a grocery store.
Here we go…
haha cute pic…Kudos to you guys! I plan a week at a time because I base our meals around what is on sale. However I keep a list in the kitchen of meal ideas for quick reference. Good luck!
That’s a good point that I forgot to add – I do make sure we pay attention to the sale items for the week! So we too are doing the planning by the week. Thanks for reminding me!
Wow – you guys are warriors! We plan 1-2 meals per week, and eat easy things 2-3 times per week. After that, we eat out. Be careful of Pinterest recipes – sometimes they aren’t very good.
Agreed on Pinterest meals – I try to evaluate the recipe before I pin it to see if it’s actually a good recipe or if it’s an awesome picture of a mediocre recipe. Some of the pictures don’t even lead to actual recipes, which drives me insane.
We’ll go back to takeout I’m sure, and I like your ratio of planned to unplanned or takeout meals!
Adding ingredients to your spreadsheet is an amazing idea! I might have to steal that one. And great goal – you can do it!
Good for you two! This is something that we need to do as well.
I really need to get my sh** together to and do this! Me and the BF have been talking about it for ages but it just never happens!
It’s hard to actually start doing it, but it gets easier. We just had an easy start date since Mr. Dollars suggested we meal plan the whole month. Voila! Maybe try planning a few meals a week, like Eemusings or Daisy?
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Good luck! Structured meal planning doesn’t work for us but having a general plan definitely does.
Thanks! I think we need this month to get back in the swing of things and get used to shopping with bigger lists and a grander plan in mind. Once we’ve experimented with that, we might scale back to more of what you guys are doing.
Cute! Good luck !!!!
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