I have posted on this before, but it has come to mind again because my days (and nights) have been so hectic lately. I love to cook and I try to ensure we eat healthy and whenever possible we all eat together. This is a difficult combination to achieve at the best of times, and when both parents work, the only possible way to make this happen is meal planning. As I pointed out before, Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine has a handy meal planning feature called Grocery Bag which includes five days of meals and their recipes and a tear out-shopping list.
I have also decided to try this meal planner app called Relish ... I will let you know how that works out after I give it a go. It isn't free, but it is pretty cheap if it does what they say it can.
Allrecipes.com also has meal plans and an app called Dinner Spinner which has good reviews and I will give it a try as well.
I also heard about this idea of spending one day cooking a month to make a month's worth of freezer meals and I found this interesting site: Once a Month Mom
That Once a Month Site looks really good. I am not the chef of the house, but I'm usually the one who's home in time to cook. But I look in the cupboards and think there's nothing there! If I have a recipe or an idea I'm okay though, so maybe something like this will help me a little.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
PS: Remember the Cozi Calendar you posted about a while back? It's awesome! I've even got hubby using it!
Isn't the Cozi Calendar cool? We use it a lot - I am kind of addicted to it now.
ReplyDeleteAs for Once a month cooking: I love the idea of coming home to a home cooked meal all ready to go. So even if I don't do 30 full days, having a few freezer meals ready seems like a good plan.
So I've got everything all printed out and ready to go for the October Traditional Meal Plan. The way it works is pretty neat, they leave out enough days for things like entertaining, eating out, etc. I'm off to the grocery store tonight and I'll be cooking it all over a few nights. I don't usually have an entire day to do it all at once. And I love that it included lunches too. I'll see how it goes!
ReplyDeleteOh please, please do me a guest blog post on this!!!
ReplyDeleteI would love to!! How did you want to do it, wait until the 30 days are up or do updates in the middle?
ReplyDeleteWhatever you want and whatever you have time for! :) I can't wait to hear... Maybe we'll start a revolution!
ReplyDeleteSounds good! I'll send it to you in a few weeks once we've started eating some food :)
ReplyDeleteHave you tried any of Sandi Richad's cookbooks? We use a lot of recipes from 'The Healthy Family' & 'Life's on Fire: Cooking for the Rushed'. The recipes simple, tasty & are written out step by step. The chapters are divided into weeks and color coded so you can plan your week based on when you have time to cook and when you have to eat & run. She makes use of a lot of convenience food that a lot of people ignore thinking they HAVE to cook from scratch. Essentially she acknowledges that while you CAN do everything from scratch you don't always have the TIME... which is usually when we bail on prepping supper & order out.
ReplyDeleteShe also had a show on the food network called "Fixing Dinner". I think the food network.ca has some of her recipes on there if you want to try them free.
Sorry for the super long post... I'm a fan of meal planning - it really is cheaper – and this author because she managed to make a cook out of my husband! =)