Meal Planning

[SPCFan409]

Wondering if any of you meal plan? If so, what are some staples on your meal plan rotation?

I want to start meal planning and to just standardized a 7 day rotation to start. For example, So far, I have planned

Mondays - leftovers
Tues - fish based dishes
Wed - beef stew over rice
Thurs - meatless meals - bean chili etc
Fri - spaghetti and meat sauce with green beans
Sat - ??? maybe some sort of casserole? or may taco/fajita night?
Sun - rotating every other week will be pizza and wings and then the opposite sundays will be oven roasted chicken and veggies

I need a saturday night staple... Feel free to share your ideas

[SPCFan409]

once i can get a system down for weekly meal planning, meal preps (ie chopping veggies and freezer starters) i will start to get more adventurous with different meals and maybe planning 14 dinners that will be doubled/frozen for the month or something like that.

[Darth Penguin]

have you looked at freezing in bulk

https://www.google.ca/#q=28+day+cook...eals&gws_rd=cr

there's plenty of websites there for bulk cooking and most only take a few hours of prep work

[Angela273]

I was just working on my weekly meal plan earlier this afternoon. One of the things that I consider when meal planning is the temperature outside. This is supposed to be a cool week, so I'll be roasting a whole turkey. At this time of year I also try to consider the produce from my organic vegetable garden. Always keep flyer sales, freezer, and pantry stockpiles when meal planning. I have a new home daycare, so I nor have to consider which meals that I will have additional mouths to feed. There are also busy evenings, so meals will also reflect this.

[beckie.c]

I don't have set nights, but I make a list of 14 meals and we pick something from that list each night for the next day's supper. I make/freeze 1 or 2 portions extra so that DH can take leftovers for lunch. He gets 'sick' of the same thing quickly, so at most he will take leftovers the next day, then I freeze another portion for a week or two later.

I mostly base my list on what I have in the fridge that needs to be used up, meat in the freezer, and then build from there. When I buy meat, I separate it and freeze it right away so that it is easy to just pop into the fridge to un-thaw the night before. I keep ground beef, chicken breasts and roasts on hand.

Tacos, fajitas, wings, greek chicken, parmesan chicken and creamy tomato pasta make an appearance a couple times a month. I've also been using a lot of new recipes lately, so I print off them all at the start of the two weeks so that they are ready when I get home from work.

[Frugalbigmama]

I plan my meals usually from the sale flyers and what I have on hand to use up usually.

I also plan based on our evening (hockey?) and my kids favs then I know they will eat every bite.

I try and make things ahead for the freezer so I have stuff ready to pull out if needed (burger patties, taco meat, homemade pasta sauce etc)

[Frugalbigmama]

Since we are back in school/hockey we are making Sunday night "roast" and fixings night. We have roast beef, pork roast and whole chickens in the freezer that I want to use up over the next few months on Sundays.

[Frugalbigmama]

Yesterday I bought 2 family packs of lean beef and 2 crock-pot roasts.

I made one tray of beef into 8 hamburger patties and put them in the oven to cook. My teen will have something quick to grab the next few days.
I made the rest into meatballs and put them in the freezer on a cookie sheet so they freeze individually. They are put into separate freezer bags to be pulled out for a quick dinner of meatballs, perogies, veggie and ceaser salad- A meal both my kids like.

The other family pack was cooked into taco meat. Another fav of my kids. Happy to have a few quick dinners done!

The roasts will be for mid-week big dinners as needed.

[ashp]

How is meal prep going with everyone?

I usually do my meal prep on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights for the work week. I'll cut vegetables and put them in sandwich bags for each day of the way. I'll also marinate chicken, place 2 pieces in individual bags to marinate and then place them in the freezer. That way, I cant just grab one and pop it in the over the night before, and I have a easy prepared lunch.

Another tip I have is I'll always buy the store bough rotisserie chicken from Costco.We'll have it it for dinner one night and use the leftover meat for lunches. So we make fajitas, wraps, chicken soup and so forth.

For dinner, we usually make vegetables dishes 4 days of the week and meat dishes 2 days of the week. The other day of the week is either leftover. Anyways, we just make sure we bought the groceries over the weekend using sales and flyers.

[juliemadden]

I like the tips. How do you guys keep inventory of pantry, fridge and freezer items? Any good apps or tricks?

I like this for meal planning:

Food blog Lunch in a Box has a brilliant, simple tip for freezing meat in small portions easily and without wasting too much plastic wrap.

First put the food into a large freezer bag and press it out as flat as possible, eliminating air pockets. (Making it thin speeds up defrost time due to the increased surface area, and pressing out excess air guards against freezer burn.) Use a long chopstick or ruler to create divisions within the food, forming individual portions. This way when you freeze the entire bag, you'll be able to quickly break off just as much as you want to use, no more.
If you don't have chopsticks handy, any straight edge will work, like a ruler

[Frugalbigmama]

I like the tips. How do you guys keep inventory of pantry, fridge and freezer items? Any good apps or tricks?

I like this for meal planning:

Food blog Lunch in a Box has a brilliant, simple tip for freezing meat in small portions easily and without wasting too much plastic wrap.

First put the food into a large freezer bag and press it out as flat as possible, eliminating air pockets. (Making it thin speeds up defrost time due to the increased surface area, and pressing out excess air guards against freezer burn.) Use a long chopstick or ruler to create divisions within the food, forming individual portions. This way when you freeze the entire bag, you'll be able to quickly break off just as much as you want to use, no more.
If you don't have chopsticks handy, any straight edge will work, like a ruler

I usually start meal planning around what I have on hand. (at the moment our freezers are full so we have lots to use up)
Plan my meals and figure out what I will need and make sure I grab it on the weekend.

I had no plan for tonight but read that it is National Taco day or something like that. Well, I have cooked taco meat in the freezer, wraps, cheese, sour cream, peppers and green onion. Guess what we are having for dinner

[SnowFlakey]

I always check my flyers to see what the best deals are for meats, fruits and vegies. And that`s what i will buy that week. But 95% of the time, i just check the freezer and see what i want to defrost. Its just me and hubby, although i have my son and his kids over twice a week. So for those days, i plan to make things the kids like. They arent fussy and their favs are spaghette or tacos. Hubby doesnt like frozen vegies or canned vegies; vegies have to be fresh. but even the best plans can go the way of all things. Sometimes we just have soup or cereal. Just dépends.

[SnowFlakey]

Great deal on pork loin at Metro this week at $1.99 lb. I bought one, cost just over $10, so it was quite large. Hubby cut the pork loin into 24 nice size boneless pork chops. Put them in freezer bags, 4 to a bag; dont know when im going to make pork chops but i know they are in the freezer.

[thriftygranny]

I did the same yesterday with the pork loin, enough for 6 meals for under 20.00.

[FallenPixels]

Rather than have a set night for stuff which gets old quickly, we plan the week ahead based on what needs to be used up and what is on sale. So if chicken is cheap, we may have 3 different chicken meals that week (a roast, a stir fry etc).

I try to mix it up so we don't have the same meat the next night and plan for busy nights (Thursday for example are a bust for me, no way anything taking longer than 20 minutes would actually get cooked so I plan something super easy for that night).