Meal Plan Monday (Except that it’s Thursday. Get over it.)

 meal plan monday  3 Responses »
Apr 212011
 

Yesterday I shared why I prepare meals in advance (you’re welcome) and today I will share the what. The menu, in all its wrinkled-up olive oil-dripped scratched-out revised-to-death glory was the smartest thing I have done since taking on this role as domestic, um, engineer? HOUSEWIFE AND MOM. There. I said it. If you work full time (or part time or hell, even if you’re lucky enough to stay home) creating a meal plan will save your life. How many times have you come home from work, unloaded the kids in front of the TV and stared blankly at the contents of your refrigerator? I would do this every single day; it was as if I was waiting for inspiration to hit or a can of beans to come flying at me screaming COOK ME!! I WANT TO DIEEEEE!! And of course neither scenario would happen. My family eats a lot of stir fried vegetables and udon noodles because of my lack of preparation. That is the easiest and fastest meal ever (not to mention cheap!) but it gets boring. Eating the same thing, even your favorite thing, five nights a week gets monotonous and will have you reaching for the phone to order pizza.

For our foray into meal planning Jacob and I opted to do two weeks’ worth of meals. We are still in week one so I don’t know if this was a good idea or not. I’ll let you know how that tenth meal tastes at the end of next week.

The following is our meal plan for the first week (this week); what we did was pair a protein with two vegetables. You will notice that there are no meals with pasta or rice (except for the stir fried noodles in week two). We are trying to reduce our intake of simple carbs. Anyway, I have kept you waiting long enough:

 

You probably noticed that there are a lot of fish in our menu and WAIT A DAMN MINUTE! LAUREN, AREN’T YOU A VEGETARIAN? I want to address this. Absolutely. Just not in this already way-too-long post.

Friday evening I will be uploading and posting this week’s meals’ photos with recipes, tips and tricks. Hopefully it will inspire you to give extreme meal planning a try!

And she can cook!

 meal plan monday  4 Responses »
Apr 172011
 

Today hubby and I cooked; we: grilled, roasted, baked, sauteed, steamed, boiled and pureed our meals for the next two weeks. There are ten hard-boiled eggs peeled and waiting for me to pop into my lunchbox and take to work every morning. There are portioned-out containers of tuna salad and baggies with lentil burgers and the more exotic salmon burgers (I am going to either love or hate those). Every dinner is in its own aluminum pan ready to be put into the oven when I get home from work. I will not have to do any cooking.

Hubby also made hummus. It’s garlicky as hell so if you are a vampire do NOT let me breathe on you. We will eat the death-by-garlic-breath hummus with baby carrots and celery sticks (not pita chips, wah wah).

I am excited about this week. I won’t feel stressed out about having to hurry home to make dinner so that we can eat by 7pm in order to stay on our earlier-than-normal-but-now-it’s-the-new-normal bed time routine. This? Is exhausting. It’s draining to work all day, spend over an hour in the car, come home and try to entertain the toddler while cooking dinner. Last week we ended up ordering pizza one night and there were a couple of nights where I cut up some fruit and cheese for the toddler and didn’t even bother to eat or feed my husband. He’s a grownup and can fend for himself but I ended up not making anything for myself because I was just that tired. On those nights my dinner consists of coffee and bites of whatever I give Avery. It isn’t satisfying in the least but hey, I didn’t have to turn on my stove!

Since the weather has turned warm I have been craving grilled fish and vegetables. Since I don’t know how to operate the grill and don’t care to learn that means that it’s all up to Jacob to do it. His work schedule doesn’t exactly allow for him to take time out of his evening to work the grill so by having him do the grilling now instead of later I get all of the grilled tuna and salmon I can stand without having to do it myself. Win!

Since we usually buy groceries every two weeks we decided to prepare two week’s worth of meals. Thankfully there is enough room in my freezer for eight of the ten pans (tomorrow and Tuesday are in the fridge, ya know, just chillin’) along with my containers of tuna salad and boiled eggs.

I will not be going out to lunch this week or next week. Restaurants kill my diet and I have been backsliding HARD. To say that I’m disappointed would be an understatement but rather than dwelling on it I’ll just move on and focus on the positive changes I’ve made. I will get to eat freshly prepared foods without having to do any cooking (just reheating in the oven) or cleaning. Not only will I be less stressed out but I can spend time with my kiddo instead of cleaning up the kitchen. Bonus!

If you are curious about this process fear not! I will be posting my meal plan, recipes, photos, etc., all this week. For those of you who are interested in the nutrition information I will share that as well. You know I count calories so I may as well include it, right? I’m here for you, readers. All four of you.