Meal Planning

This post is a bit different as it will not be including any recipes, but I will give insight into my meal planning. Meal planning a perfect way to make my grocery shopping trips less stressful and more budget friendly. Although I love to cook and try new recipes, I strongly dislike meal planning. Meal planning can be a tricky and time-consuming, but the benefits of meal planning far outweigh the torture it seems to put me through. Most of the time I have a really hard time planning what to make and I have to turn to the internet and cookbooks to give me inspiration. I do admit that if I am lucky that week, I may have some cravings for particular foods and that makes the whole planning process easier.

The first thing I do when meal planning is log onto allrecipes.com as that is the site I store most of my recipes. I also utilize http://crockpotgirls.com/about-us/ for some crock pot inspiration and pinterest. I typically scan my folder in allrecipes to see if I can cook up an old favorite or a recipe I archived in months past. When I find a recipe I want, I add it to Word doc to keep my weekly menu organized. I then look at my crock pot website for more inspiration and typically pick something simple to make so as to make at least one of my meals per week is effortless and easy :) Then if I haven't filled up my Word doc with a full weeks worth of meals, its usually time to look through my cookbooks and browse pinterest for meals worth making. Sometimes meal planning takes me 10 minutes and sometimes it takes me an hour. Yes- an hour! Can you hear/feel my agony of sitting for an hour to make just 7 days worth of food and then repeat the following week. Ok, I'm a bit dramatic.

Once I have a plan, I open a text document to make a list of things I need to buy for each recipe that is not already in my pantry. Here is where I probably get too technical, but I absolutely hate making multiple trips to the same aisle to get everything off my list SO I divide my list into grocery departments according the store layout and that way I don't waste time in the store and I don't miss anything off my list. I print my list and I'm ready to shop!

The torture is over, I can grocery shop, and soon be making delicious meals w/o that inevitable question creeping into my mind: "Oh no, what should I make for dinner?"