I’m off track with my meal planning, and boy, do I miss it.
I never have had an elaborate or complicated meal plan that I followed, but I would sit down once a week, figure out the meals I wanted to make and make a list of the groceries I would need before grocery shopping. I have not been doing that lately, and it sure shows when it comes time to make dinner.
I’ve decided to get back on track, and have come up with a bit of structure to help me in that. I know I need to keep things super simple right now in order to succeed, so I came up with some broad categories that will help guide my meal planning and keep our menu well-rounded.
Eating Meat
You will notice in the below meal categories that we have added meat back into our diet. There are several reasons why, but the main reason was how hard it was to get all the nutrients and protein my girls needed without having meat in our diet. They are much more picky of eaters than I am, and it was super hard to find enough plant protein foods that they would eat. I believe for my own personal health and cancer history that less meat is most healthy for me, but my focus this year has been brain health, and I became convinced that my growing girls and their beautiful brains needed more nutrition than what our vegan diet was providing. Because of this, I added fish, organic chicken, and organic grass-fed beef, and organic eggs back into our diet. I buy our eggs, beef and chicken local, organic and farm-fresh, which makes it much more expensive, so we still eat much less meat than the average household.
I buy enough meat for us to have one meal of ground beef, chicken and fish. That takes care of 3 meals of the week. We love having breakfast for dinner, so that makes 4 meals…throw in a vegetarian meal and some sort of easy pasta dish, and that makes 6 meal categories. I’m not worrying about having a 7th meal category, as there are always leftovers and we order in food once a week for our Friday family nights.
6 Meal Categories + meal ideas:
Fish
Seasoned Baked White Fish
Teriyaki Salmon
Fish Sticks
Ground Beef
Spaghetti Sauce
Meatloaf
Sloppy Joes
Beef Enchiladas
Tacos
Chicken
Chicken Fried Rice
Rotisserie Chicken In The Crockpot
Chicken Enchiladas
Breakfast for Dinner/Eggs
Quiche
Breakfast Casserole
Egg Salad Sandwiches
Vegetarian
Lentil Taco Salad
Bean Burritos w/Homemade Crockpot No-Fry Beans
Stir Fry
Pasta
(I often buy quinoa pasta for the added plant protein benefit)
Orzo Pasta With Caramelized Vegetables
I think I will like having these categories in the forefront of my mind as I make our my grocery list. I have a ton of recipes here at New Nostalgia to choose from, but I also love using my Pinterest boards for recipe ideas.
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What about you?
Do you meal plan? How do you decide what to make each week?
Does it help to break it down into categories?
What are some of your staple dinners?
