#MealPlanMonday: Feb 24-Mar 2

If you've been reading for a while, you know that I don't meal plan every Monday.  I meal plan once a month and it's been a time saver, it's helped relieve stress around "what's for dinner tonight", it's helped save money and assisted me in providing healthy meals to my family.

I know that #MealPlanMonday is a thing on social media, so  I thought I would give it this twist on my blog:

On Monday's, I will try to share my weekly menu for the week which actually starts on Saturdays for me.  I'll share my monthly calendar, since I already have it built, and I'll talk about the meals I plan on making this week. If I've made them before, I'll discuss what I like about them.

I've now been meal planning for 5 or 6 months.  I'm finding that 5 meals is too much for me to do every week.  I either end up with too many left overs, or I'm too tired on a specific day to cook, or we end up other making plans which can mean changing the meal, or going out.  That being said, you'll start seeing me plan for 4 meals rather than 5 on most weeks, unless I know some meals yield no leftovers.

Before, I get into this week's meal plan and my thoughts, I want to share something I did this month with my meal planning that added time saving and more  money savings!!  I meal planned a week of some extremely easy meals that don't require much of a recipe.  Spaghetti using sauce in a jar where I just cooked some ground turkey with seasonings and added it to the sauce.  Beef burritos which is just ground beef with taco seasonings and a few veggies wrapped in a tortilla.  I meal planned for these in the same week, and in the same week that we had pizza, which we made ourselves (minus the crust - we use the StoneFire crusts available at the grocery store).  I saved so much money this week, it was just great!  Look for me to do this again.

A side note, if you don't know the story - we have pizza every 19th of the month.  The short story is that in my mind, it was Preston's favorite food (while I was pregnant) and his birthday is on the 19th, so we make sure to have a special moment for him every month by doing so.

If you are new around here, you'll see that I don't always totally stick when to cook what, but I usually get 3-4 of the meals done every week :)



So what's on the menu this week?  We have:

Sheet Pan Hawaiian Pineapple Chicken
Beef & Potato Stew
Sheet Pan Fajitas
Turkey Tortellini Toss
Sloppie Joes in Peppers

I've made the Sheet Pan Hawaiian Pineapple Chicken before, and I absolutely love it.  The sauce is scrumptiously sweet yet tangy.  I had it slated for Saturday but it's such an easy weeknight dinner that I'll be making it on a weekday.

The beef and potato stew is also really good.  It goes in the crockpot, and I've been making most of my crockpot dinners on Mondays rather than Sundays.  Since my husband works from home, I prep everything and just leave him instructions.  Then I get home, and voila, dinner is served and I didn't lift a finger that day.  #WinnerMom

I've yet to try the sheet pan fajitas, but I'm excited.  I've made a few sheet pan dinners in the past months and they are efficient and flavorful.  Perfect for working moms!  If you ask me, the more of these I can add to my repertoire, the better - assuming they are tasty of course!

I also haven't tried the tortellini dinner.  I added it to my meal plan because it seems like an easy weeknight thing to toss together.  Those are great especially when the commute does not go as planned and you get home with an hour before your little one's bed time.  Yeah, that happened last week... at_least_once...

Finally, while creating my grocery list last week, I decided that I wouldn't make the sloppie joes in peppers.  They are one of my favorites, and while I think they are a healthy substitute for actual sloppie joes, they aren't my husband's favorite (because they involve bell peppers - I know he's crazy :P).  Nonetheless, as I mentioned, I don't seem to get around to making 5 meals a week, and we often have too many leftovers as is it.  So, until next time sloppie joe peppers...

What will you be making for dinner this week? Do you meal plan, or just wing it?