What we have here, aside from my poor handwriting, is meal planning in action. I usually do the grocery shopping and try to plan meals that everyone in my family will eat. This morning I was browsing recipes and came up with White Chicken Chili (recipe here) and Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup (recipe here). So I scribbled the ingredients I need on the list along with a few other life essentials (coffee and cake mix).
You can see I have Fall on the brain with these meals.
And this only covers two meals for the week.
I find it hard to plan for meals. I also notice it's not a typical topic of everyday conversation. These days I hear people talking about fantasy football, craft beer, and Pinterest, but I don't regularly come across people talking about what they make for dinner.
You can file this post under Mundane Moments of Everyday Life (click here for my roasted broccoli post as another example). Meal planning, while not exciting, is an important part of my routine in an attempt to make meals for my family that taste good and are budget friendly.
I'm glad you're writing about this for meal planning, sociologically speaking, is totally under-valued and overlooked. For me, too, the way I got about meal planning makes a big difference. It structures my week but only if I do it right, i.e. if I manage to settle on at least three meals, buy the ingredients for them and then make them on the assigned date (usually: Sunday lunch, Sunday dinner, Wednesday dinner). If all that works out family life is really relaxed because when the working week starts we simply warm up leftovers, and the leftovers from Wednesday take us through to Friday. - All of this of course sounds super mundane but these things influence the quality and content of our inner-family interaction around meal times.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for commenting! Much appreciated. And much love for leftovers. Leftovers make a huge difference in our house -- I try to make big meals as often as possible so that my wife and I have an easy lunch the next day. Sunday I made chili in the crockpot, and last night I made a big batch of chicken/ziti/broccoli. Plenty of food for multiple meals. Saves time and $$$$$$. Thanks for reading!!
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