Meal planning take two plus an awesome app

A few years ago I wrote about our method for meal planning. It was a good enough method but still involved picking out which meals to make each week and compiling a grocery list. With our family’s allergies I was having a hard time meal planning each week; it was something I looked forward to as much as the Sunday before a miserable workday.

 

I decided that the only way I could make cooking the slightest bit pleasant was to eliminate the planning part. So I slowly compiled a six week meal plan. Basically I have different meals planned for six weeks straight along with their coordinating grocery lists. As I find new recipes that I like I plan on expanding it even further so that I have up to eight weeks of meals, almost all different from each other (I get bored easily).

 

I go shopping with the girls once a week on Friday mornings. First we go to Aldi to get whatever they have in stock that we need (love that place- can’t beat a 3.19 gallon of hormone-free milk) and then get everything else at Kroger before heading home.

 

I have a spreadsheet on my computer and fridge with each day of the week’s meals. I also have a document on my computer with each week’s grocery list. That way, I don’t have to make one each week. I print it out and add any staples on the bottom. NO BRAINER. NO THINKING. All I have to do is check the fridge to see what is for dinner and I have everything right there in my fridge. Only shop once a week. Not bad. It is also nice because if you have a regular scheduled weekly event or work schedule, you can make your meal plan with that in mind.

 

In my typical OCD fashion, I went a step further and color-coordinated my grocery lists. Every Monday is ‘green’ and every Tuesday ‘red’, etc. on my spreadsheet. The ingredients for that meal are then listed in the same color on the grocery list. It makes for a colorful grocery list, but it has a major purpose. If we have something out of the ordinary planned one night like a dinner out or guests coming, I don’t have to go through the list and figure out what ingredients to cross out. I cross out all the ‘green’ ingredients or all the ‘red’ ingredients. Easy peasy. And yes, slightly OCD. Embrace it.

 

There are a few tricks to making it work. If you really want to shop only once a week, you must make sure all your fresh produce and meat is used towards the beginning of the week while your frozen veggies and meals that don’t spoil as quickly are used towards the end of the week. It’s not easy; sometimes a thing or too will go bad. Make sure you check the expiration dates when you buy. If this doesn’t work for you, you can also make a second run to the store mid-week to get more produce and meat.

 

As for repeats, we only have a few on there. These are inexpensive meals that we like (spaghetti and nachos are eaten every 3 weeks or so). As for new meals, I don’t particularly like to try new recipes but I think it’s good to do now and then, so one meal every six weeks is listed as “New Recipe”.  Like I said, as I find more recipes that we enjoy we will continue to expand the meals beyond six weeks.

 

There are some meal planning websites that do this kind of thing for you. However, they don’t work with allergies. Secondly, I don’t like all the meals on their list (not a fish eater though I do try to give the girls canned salmon every week for that DHA stuff ;).  They also cost a little bit of money. Either way, they don’t work for us. This takes some legwork up front but it works super well for our family. As you can see below we try to eat inexpensive meals; lots of beans, vegetables, and light on the meat when possible.

 

Here is our current 6-week meal plan. It is constantly changing as our preferences change or as we find new foods we like. Since I go shopping at Friday, the meal plan starts on Saturday because that is the day of the week where I need to use the freshest foods. You would start your meal plan on whatever night (or following night) you go shopping. I plan the grilled foods for the weekend when I know Ben will have time to grill. The fish sticks and CN (chicken nuggets) and other alternate meals for Anna are because she can’t eat what we have that night. Apart from our church’s small group which eats a weekly dinner at our home, we eat meals that Anna can eat except on Fridays. Fridays are when Ben and I eat our favorite food and give Anna something different.

 

Here is an example of a grocery list. This is week one’s grocery list. Each color is coordinated with the spreadsheet. I have them listed in the order you would find in Kroger (deli, produce, processed foods, meat, dairy, frozen foods, natural/health foods). I have a “circle if needed” on the bottom to make sure I don’t run out of our staples I need that week.
 

 

 

There you have it. Yes it takes a lot of legwork up front. But delayed gratification is definitely worth it when you never have to meal plan again!

Lastly, check out the amazing app called Fooducate. If you want to eat healthy but have no interest in finding out exactly what ingredients are bad for you (besides the obvious) then get this app. You scan the food’s barcode and it immediately labels the with a score of A through F. What could be easier? If the food isn’t up to your standards, it even gives you alternative brands that scored the highest. This app has seriously changed the way we eat. I don’t have to time to figure out what foods to buy on my own, but I do have time to scan a barcode and see its score. We try to avoid artificial flavors and colors, hydrogenated oils, unhealthy oils and tons of added sugar. Of course our budget doesn’t always allow for that but we do the best we can.

 

Fooducate automatically determines whether your food has a lot of sugar in it for its type of product. It isn’t always easy to tell on your own because lots of foods have natural sugar that is reflected in the sugar content. If you have nutrition or diet goals, you can include them in your food-searching, as well.

 

If you purchase the Plus app for $10 (lifetime subscription), it will also tell you if the food is GMO. Awesome feature. They have an allergy Plus app as well, but I’m so used to checking for allergens that I don’t need an app to do it for me. I probably wouldn’t trust it anyway!

 

Happy eating!

(I posted twice today so check below to see Anna's new leg!)