Menu and Meal Planning

 CHALLENGE - ENSURING THE FAMILY EATS A HEALTHY MEAL

Our evenings are busy almost every night of the week.  If we are not running Daniel to football/wrestling practice, we are running Savannah to gymnastics/soccer practice...all depending on the season.  In the midst of all this, Mike and I have to fit in our gym time, we have to make sure all homework is completed, and we have to feed everyone.

This makes meal planning essential!!   The crock pot needs to become your BEST FRIEND!!   

Every Sunday morning, we sit down and make a menu for the week, we will sometimes include a Chipotle night .  Rarely do we deviate from this menu. The written menu is only for supper, but we also plan breakfast and our lunches.  I use this plan to make my grocery list.  This also helps control the costs.  The kids buy their lunches, and that is a huge time saver in the mornings.  I found it to be a money saver as well...for $2.50 a school lunch, it is pretty balanced and it is hot (I was spending much more than that on lunches and they were cold).  Our school district has done a really good job ensuring the lunches are healthy. 

This week I tried something a little different.  Usually I do some meal prep on Sunday (lunch stuff and breakfast), but today I meal prepped almost our entire menu and put it in the freezer.  This will make my mornings go so much smoother.

I pulled three of my menu items from the following blog as well as the idea for freezer bags : http://www.graciouslysaved.com/2013/08/12-easy-paleo-ish-crock-pot-meals.html

Here is our week's menu:

 

And here are the prepped meals for five nights of supper:

 

Let me lead in to this with - I am not a coupon clipper and I often don't buy generic.  

I ran the numbers, only counting the ingredients I had to purchase today and prorating the cost of those ingredients that I will be able to use more than once, suppers for this week only cost a total of $50.75.  For a family of four, that comes to about $2.54 per person per meal.  These menu items are gluten free, so that adds a little bit of cost to some things like the soy sauce for Tuesday's meal and sausage for Wednesday's.  The most expensive menu item was the salmon and the most inexpensive was the chili.  But, it is a good well rounded menu that will not get too many groans from the kids and will provide leftovers for Sunday's supper.  

It took me just over an hour and a half to prep these five meals as well as cook some chicken for my lunch salads and make a breakfast casserole (eggs and gluten free sausage) for the week. 

Very often people tend to stop at fast food restaurants or lean on prepackaged meals for their convenience and ease.  But with a little time and planning, it is easy to make meals that are healthy and not overly time consuming.