Meal Planning for the Win! (With two late in the meal planning calendar recipes)

One of the things I've been most thankful for in this time, is the skill of meal planning. Meal planning, like any other skill is something that is practiced. For some people it is easier, and for some people it's more difficult, but we can all always be getting better at it.

I wanted to share what meal planning looks like for me, especially right now.

1) Find recipes. I do this in a variety of ways, through cookbooks, past recipes, magazines, but mostly through pinterest.  If you have not tried pinterest, it is worth it-just for the recipes it is worth it. But, hopefully you'll be able to find some recipes on here too!


Look for recipes that sound good! Try to find some that have the same ingredients. Try to find variety, not just all pastas or all rice bowls or all pizza, pay attention to how much time each one takes and try to add some variety in there too.

Try to find recipes that stretch-these often are things like rice bowls, pasta, quinoa, gnocchi, lentils, or tons of veggies etc. Recipes with things like these help stretch the other food you buy-making more with less, and they store well.

Pay attention to ingredients-can you realistically get all of these ingredients right now? If not, is there something you could sub in or leave out? If the answer to both of these questions is no right now, that's okay! Save it somewhere so you can come back when all of this craziness is over and try it then :)

I try to meal plan for at least 2 weeks at a time, so I do my best to find 12-14 recipes (the 12 is if I know there'll be a lot of leftovers and I want to plan for at least one leftover night).

With planning for 2 weeks at a time, I try to once again be intentional with variety of ingredients, finding recipes that use fresh veggies but also some that don't-these can be eaten later because you don't have to worry about veggies going bad.

2) Make a list using your recipes. Pretty straight forward :) Try to take note of things that might have to be subbed in or that could be left out as needed.

3) Shop. Whether this is online shopping or in store shopping, or a combination!

4) Store your food well. Don't leave produce in bags..just don't do it. I kid you not, I have lettuce and apples and peppers and cilantro and all sorts of things that stay good for at least 2 weeks in our fridge. Look up how to best store food-google has all of the answers. For example-if you put a paper towel or small cotton towel in with your lettuce/spinach it keeps waaay longer. With shopping for two weeks I always freeze our meat and just pull it out the day before.

5) Plan out your food schedule. When you officially have all of the things you need you can figure out when you will eat what. This can seem tedious, but at least for me this has been super important. This allows me to look at what foods need to be eaten sooner-making sure none of the produce goes bad, but it also let's be plan if I have a busier night for a quicker meal. Try to pay attention to what's going when, so you aren't having all of your pasta meals in a row etc. Planning your meals out ahead of time also allows you to pull that meat out the day before like I said previously. Plus, it honestly makes me excited to see what we'll be eating when. I love food.  

Here's the important thing though, just because you have it scheduled one way doesn't mean you can't change it. You can still be flexible! If something comes up, so you have more leftovers and you hadn't planned for that, re-arrange! If you check and that spinach isn't staying happy as long as you thought it would, re-arrange! I have our meals written on a dry erase board calendar which makes this super easy.

6) Enjoy your food. You've done the work, enjoy it!

For this one I'm including two recipes that are ones I plan for later on in the meal planning schedule-because the ingredients keep well, or live in the pantry or  freezer. They're both suuuuper easy and delicious. 

For the Risotto all you need is arborio rice (or you can sub in brown rice), chicken broth/stock, Parmesan cheese (which stores for forever), white wine (can be as cheap as you'd like), and frozen peas. That's it. Tadaaa! Does it take 45 minutes to cook? Yes. BUT-it's completely hands off, you toss everything in and then just walk away and when you come back it's done (minus adding peas). This is seriously one of my all time favorites and everything in it keeps well for the end of my meal planning window Parmesan Risotto recipe

 

For Spicy thainoodles you need pasta (like linguini), oil (vegetable, and sesame oil both if you have it but you can sub that out as needed), red pepper flakes, soy sauce, honey, and chili paste (but I subbed in sriracha..because it's something I actually have unlike chilli paste). Then i just cooked up some frozen stirfry veggies to go with and that's it! The longest part of this recipe is cooking pasta, so easy and so yummy.  Spicy Thai Noodles