7 Easy Meals for a Delicious, Nutritious Week

As you may know, last week I scheduled an entire Vegan meal plan. It went pretty well. I didn’t eat any meat (I did have some Parmesan cheese on some pasta one day). I didn’t stick with the meal plan I created and felt pretty lost. Quite a few nights I was the only one home to eat and it seemed crazy to cook this huge dish for just me. It also  seemed once I found a dish I liked it was easier to just keep making that lol…

Well, that was fun, and I felt pretty good but this week ends planting season so my husband will be back to eating dinner with us again, which pretty much (unless I wanna cook 2 separate meals ~ which I don’t… ) ends Vegan dining. I did like it though, and I’m going to try to create Meatless Mondays and cook one night with no meat.

I have also found that by just identifying 7 meals ~ I haven’t actually made them. I tell myself I want to leave room for “flexibility” so I can make what I am in the mood for that night. Yeah, that doesn’t really seem to be working very well. I think I might need just a little more structure. 🙂 So this week I’m going to give the meals days, and see how that goes.

Here’s what’s for dinner at our house this week:

Sunday: (Father’s day)

Grilled Steak, corn on the cob, salad and bread ~ we also had my mom and her husband over. YUM.

Monday (meatless)

Ratatouille Polenta Bake ~ this sounds so good, and the picture looked so yummy I just had to try it. Of course I live in the sticks and no one even knows what Polenta is… I asked my mom and she told me corn meal mush would work as well… that they had. So we shall see.

Tuesday:

Chicken Wild Rice Salad

Wednesday:

Sheppard’s Pie with Salad

Thursday:

Taco Salad

Friday:

Chicken Quesadillas

Saturday:

Grilled Pork Chops
Baked Zucchini Fries

After my interview with Michelle Stern of What’s Cooking with Kids (which will be live next week) ~ I was so inspired by her, and picked up her new cookbook The Whole Family Cookbook while I was in town shopping for Ryan’s Father’s Day present. It is the best cookbook I think I’ve ever bought. I kid you not, I will make every single recipe in the book. I don’t think that’s EVER happened before. The zucchini fries on our menu this week are out of that cookbook. We also made the Baked Apple Puff for Ryan for Father’s Day and it was very good. 🙂

He received a new fangled Ice Cream maker for Father’s Day and we’ll be experimenting big time with some homemade natural delicious  yummies for sure. We’ve already made Strawberry ice cream. I’ve got chocolate ice cream in there right now. I can’t wait to test out Blueberry Coconut Milk Ice cream and well as Chocolate Coconut Milk Ice Cream. YUMMO.

Meal planning has seriously saved me. It saves me money at the store. It saves me time in my day. It saves me GRIEF! If you’re not meal planning I truly recommend trying it out.  If you’re having trouble coming up with menu ideas here’s a couple tips.

• Identify the meat on sale at your local grocery store.
• Choose your protein from what’s on sale.
• Go to Allrecipes.com and look up recipes for that protein
• Grab my free month of meals worksheet, and as you find meals your family loves write them down so you can grab one or two a week to make a couple days really easy. Finding “go to” meals your family loves will make planning really simple.

Last but not least, jump over to OrgJunkie.com for Meal Plan Monday. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas for your meal plan or need tips getting started, Laura is a great place to start! There’s hundreds of other people who link up their meal plans ~ the ideas are endless.

Good luck with your meal plan!