Meal Monday

This is our first week of Meal Mondays, the day where I share a recipe, menu, or cooking technique. Today I'll be sharing a small glimpse into our family menu. I've already shared our planning process and how we menu plan. Here's a small glimpse in our world of meal-planning and why we think it is so important.

Last week Jarrod and I were out of town for a conference. We left Dallas on Tuesday morning, dropped Wesley in Oklahoma City, flew to Kansas, stayed there for a few nights, flew back, hosted a baby shower, and drove home late on Saturday. It was a chaotic week and we left out house pretty empty of food. Before we left we made our October meal-plan and knew that it would be important to get cooking as soon as we got home.

On Sunday afternoon, after going to the grocery store for the week, I made a tamale casserole. Super easy, reheats well, and makes lots of leftovers. We ate that for dinner on Sunday night. Jarrod was in charge of dinner on Monday night. He made barbecue chicken in the crockpot. This was easy and also made lots of leftovers. We had leftovers on Tuesday night for dinner as well.

On Wednesday morning I hit the road again for another conference. I would be out for 3 days and my boys were on their own. Jarrod has choir on Wednesday nights, so there was no need for a meal that night. Every Thursday we have our small group over for dinner and this week the theme is soup. (Other themes have been breakfast, appetizers, Italian, and Mexican.) I arrived home after dinner on Friday and we planned to grocery shop and menu plan for the duration of the month on Saturday.

Normally we plan a month at a time...but normally I'm not out of town quite this much. IT was challenging, but by planning ahead like this we were able to avoid eating out and buying expensive pre-made foods. By taking a few minutes to plan out before things got busy, we were able to save time and money later.

Obviously I'm a huge fan of planning. It saves time and makes things easier. There are times to completely disregard the plan, but at least it gives you something to discard!

How do you plan meals?