I plan our meals for the coming week on Sunday night. Sometimes I cart an armful of cookbooks up to my bedroom and do it in bed. It’s a task I enjoy and one that always leaves my mouth watering and my stomach wanting. Not the best bedtime activity I suppose…
Most of my recipes come from one of my 5 America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks. The others come from miscellaneous cookbooks, All Recipes, Pioneer Woman, my cooking club/book club, and some other random blogs.
I love new recipes, and I wrote about my recipe organization ideas a few weeks ago.
Anyway, I plan out a week at a time on Sunday evenings and do my week’s worth of grocery shopping on Monday morning.
I’ve started a master list of meal ideas that are always winners, which sometimes makes coming up with ideas easier, but I really like to try new recipes, so I usually do one or two each week. In an ambitious week…
I don’t always plan all the side dishes/veggies, So here’s what’s on the menu for main dishes this week:
- Monday: Sun dried tomato, arugula, and goat cheese pasta (Best Simple Recipes)
- Tuesday: Baked brown rice (America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook)
- Wednesday: Mac N Cheese with carrots and peas, asparagus, and chicken fingers (for Elliot’s birthday from (America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook)
- Thursday: Black Bean Soup (from my collection, origination unknown)
- Friday: scraps (one of my favorites)
- Saturday: Buckwheat crepes with yogurt cheese filling (America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook)
- Sunday: Black Bean Chili (Slow Cooker Revolution)
How do you plan your menu???
I usually plan on Saturday mornings and we go shopping on Saturday afternoons. I plan for two weeks out and let the kids choose 1 day that they can plan what we eat. I also love to do the slowcooker meals. easy.easy.easy.
Our family has been getting Bountiful Baskets (equal amounts of fruits and veggies for a fairly low price) and I typically plan around that.
Last time I got two bunches of asparagus which we’re using tonight to make chicken/asparagus pasta with peppers and mushrooms.