Meal Planning for the Slackers

I am a slacker.  I mean, you may have already gleaned this from my previous posts, it's definitely not a secret.  I absolutely love to cook, but I rarely have the necessary ingredients for the meals I want to plan.  So when the opportunity arose to review a cook book, which coincided with the arrival of my new Plum Paper Planner complete with meal planning section, I jumped to it!

Here was a project that I could multi-task like a boss.  Despite my slacker tendencies, multitasking is one of my greatest weaknesses skills.  I sat down with this delight of a cookbook and my planner and got to work.  

Now I know my biggest weakness in meal planning is that I need flexibility.  What if I come home from work exhausted and can think of nothing better than ordering pizza?  What if we decided it's a great night to head out to our favorite restaurant?  To accommodate this, I made a rough sketch of 5 meals a week, that could be moved to any day.

I noted all the ingredients I needed (plus the pantry staples I was running low on) and then on a separate paper organized them into basic groups, like dairy, meat, veggies, etc.  I am a huge fan of multi-purposing ingredients.  Why buy one little tub of sour cream to go bad when I can buy a larger tub to use for several recipes?  Same with veggies, like onions and carrots.  By golly, there will be fresh carrots in our meals until those suckers are gone! I also decide whether to freeze my meat based on expiration and priority.  I have four mouths to feed, so I'm not buying a little pack of chicken for every meal, I'm buying the super bulk package and then individually bagging and freezing those suckers!  Same with ground beef and pork chops.

I highlighted all the ingredients as they made it to my consolidated list.

>> >Side note- I rated all the meals with hearts or partial hearts to show how much my family did or didn't like it.  On another page I kept track of what I changed, or what I should have changed, and which ones I definitely need to make again.

I wracked up a modest $250 grocery bill at my local Lidl, which for four mouths and 20 meals, I'll take that as a win.

>>>Side Note- Grocery shopping is the devil.  Absolutely the worst thing one can do with their spare time.  I hate it with a fiery passion.   

But I digress...

So raise your hand if you have picky eaters at home... Do I see all hands up?  Yep.  I throw that kind of party.  My kids are ungrateful brats a bit on the picky side and don't care that there are starving orphans that don't get home-cooked meals and that they are the luckiest kids ever.  Oh no.  No. NOOOO!!! Is that  >gasp< asparagus!  Carrots!  Oh, the inhumanity of it all!  So they push the food around their plates and complain.  I have learned that including them in my meal prep means that instead of only eating monster kibble by the light of the full moon, my daughter actually -eats-her-food! 

Ok, so cutting veggies is a bit terrifying.  And maybe there are a few to many pinches of herbs.  I'll take that trade off.  

I also have a difficult time following recipes.  Not that I can't, just that I always want to switch it around a bit.  The first one I screwed with adjusted was the Corn and Potato chowder.  I made it in the crock pot.  Instead of cooking everything in stages on the stove, I dumped it all into the pot except the cream and cornstarch and turned it on medium heat.  I also added a whole bunch of ham, because my family's main food group is meat.  I even used one of those epic slow cooker liners

Boom-->      

so when I got home from work all I had to do was add the cream and starch and let simmer a few more minutes and then dinner.  No fuss, no muss.  It was so good even the kids ate it!  

They like it ya'll!  They really really liked it!


via GIPHY


I also busted out those steak sandwiches, which were delicious and perfect, especially since my kids tend to follow our preferences for undercooked beef...

BUT WAIT!  If you cook this, you can throw in this delightful Asparagus and Farfalle pasta for only a little more effort the next night!

I totally used the left over steak to make this a full all in one meal even a meat eater can love!

I'm a bit big on all in one meals, all in one pan, all in one pot... you get the idea.  Overall, this was one giant win for this busy mom.  Full time work, homeschooling, and cooking.  Seriously, I have to lock myself in the bathroom and pretend I'm taking a crap just to read a book these days... if it stands a chance at making my life easier, I'm in!  It's a Keeper ya'll!

What are your favorite dinner hacks?  You know, for sanity research purposes...