Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Meal Schedule

When it comes to meal planning there are a ton of different ways to do it.
I usually use my Google Calendar to plan my meals, but I taught a class on meal planning and decided that I needed a cute display and came up with this...

Start with a dollar store frame (take out the glass). And print out a cute calendar, I found mine HERE at Anything but Perfect. And more HERE!

Place a couple of sheets of tin tiles behind your calendar, and your almost done!

Then you need to make a list of all of your 30 plus favorite meals that you know how to make... type out a list of them, here is mine if you want. Print them out on a few different colors of paper, you will need to space/size them to fit on your calendar. Then make magnates out of them. I traced some with pebble marbles, cut out, and Mod Podged them to the back.

Then hot glued a magnate to the back.

Others I just stuck a magnate on the paper.

So WHY meal plan?
You know what to buy at the store because your meals are set and you know what to get!
It makes being in the kitchen more enjoyable.
Your eating more of a variety, and it should be healthier and cheaper, because of your planning.
And the best part is NOW you KNOW what's for dinner!

Try throwing in a "New recipe night" or maybe buy something that you have never cooked before (because it's on sale) and try cooking it. Always have a "fill in meal" or a "fall back meal" something that is easy and requires no prep, so that way if you had a "leftover" night but you have no leftovers you still have a meal. Like potstickers that you pull out of the freezer, or cans of soup. Canned beef is a great one to have on hand... you can mix it with BBQ sauce and throw it on a hamburger bun (that you keep in the freezer). Or you can take that same can of beef and mix some green chili sauce with it, bust out some beans and tortillas and you have green burritos.

3 comments:

AC said...

Wow! I love what you did with the calendar! I have August, September and October up now too ;) Thank you for the link!

Leslie said...

Super cute! And a great idea. Something I do is I have a list of "Use these foods" on the side of my meal calendar for stuff that is getting old in the cupboard or fridge.

Thanks for sharing your list of recipes. It all sounds so good!

Jana said...

This is so clever....
xo Jana