I’ve always been the one in our family to create our meal plan. Each week I put together a list of 5 to 6 meals, and then create a list of the things I need to buy at the grocery store to make those meals. I never know what my family is going to want to eat on any given day, so I don’t plan by the day… just meals for the week, then we pick daily which one we’re going to make. I also don’t really plan lunch or dinner. I think of some ideas, and have food on hand, but really… lunch and breakfast, you’re kind of on your own. 😉
Hanna’s always been interested in cooking, but recently she’s become even more interested in the different aspects of meal planning and cooking actual meals (instead of just cookies). She’s decided to help me with the meal planning, and the cooking now. She generally uses different cookbooks to find recipes, sometimes magazines, so she can test out new things, and I usually pick basics, family favorites. This works out well since we started our Recipe 365 Project, her new recipes are the ones most likely to land in our family cookbook.
We also keep in mind any evening activities we’ve got going on, and I usually plan a crockpot recipe if we’re going to be busy in the evening so I don’t have to come home and quickly put together dinner.
So… each Monday I’ll share our weekly menu from last week, the resources we used, and our favorite recipe of the week that’s being added to our family cookbook. 🙂
Simple Weekly Meal Plan {Week 1}
- Mojo Grilled Chicken
Black beans
Hanna picked this one from Cooking Light magazine, the June 2016 edition pg 25. 🙂 This also happened to be our favorite recipe of the week… but of course I tweaked it a little bit. I’ll be sharing it recipe later this week.
- Shish Kabobs ~ steak with an assortment of veggies
We had these for the first night we spent in our camper… pretty easy, and cooked on the grill. We had also just watched the Good Eats episode about Shish Kabobs so we followed Alton Brown’s lead when we cooked them!
- Spaghetti with Salad (Spaghetti with Ragu Hearty Vegetable, and some added spices, onions and garlic)
- BBQ Pork Tenderloin
Green beans
I’ve absolutely fallen in love with grilled pork tenderloin. Hanna picked this recipe from Cooking Light , then decided she didn’t want to cook that night, so I just marinated it really quickly in some KC Masterpiece marinade, and grilled it.
- Tacos ~ which actually turned into Hamburgers ~ I had a Hamburger “salad” and Hanna had Hamburgers on lettuce buns, Ryan had an old fashioned hamburger with a bun.
- Zesty Italian Crock Pot Chicken
over pasta with Salad
I had a library board meeting on Monday night, so as soon as we got back from the grocery store we threw this one in the crock pot. It was absolutely DELICIOUS!! It’s definitely going in the family cook book as well… because everyone loved it!
So there’s week 1 of our simple weekly meal plan. Our weekly menus are part of our ongoing Recipe 365 Project where we create a homemade family cookbook. This week we added Mojo Chicken, and Zesty Italian Crockpot Chicken to our cookbook. They were both super simple, but packed with flavor, I’ll be posting them later this week, so stay tuned! If you enter your email address below, I’ll send you a quick note when they go live.
Recipe 365 Project!
Each week we'll share our weekly menu, resources, best recipe of the week, and which recipe made it into our personal cookbook.
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