Planning Meals

In our ladies Sunday school class our fearless leader handed out blank weekly meal planners.  We are talking about ways to have less stress during the holiday season.  Most of the ladies looked at the piece of paper and then back at her like, what are we to do with this?  I was surprised at how many ladies did not plan their families meals each week.  We were to do plan our next weeks meals and bring it in that next Sunday.  Only two of us completed the assignment.

Is meal planning that hard?  Maybe too time consuming for some.  But hard .....  I don't think so.  I am at a different stage of life then some in our class.  My children are grown and it is mainly just my dh and I.  However, even when my children were small I planned.  It was one less headache at a very rushed time of day.  I could take out the meat the night before or even do most of the cooking before bed.  It allowed me to enjoy my children more or if I was working at dinner it gave me the piece of mind that my dh was not serving them fast food.

How do I meal plan?  Well, I inventory my proteins first.  This means going to the deep freeze or pantry for me.  I also will inventory main ingredient carbs, such as pasta and beans.  I also look in the fridge to see what needs to be used up before going bad.  If I can plan my entire two week menu on this then great !!!  If not I will in what I can then figure out how many meals I still need to plan for.  My grocery list is then what items I need to fill out the meal plan.

My inventory for this coming planning session:

Frozen:
2.2 lbs of white fish
2 lbs of ground beef
1 meal of cubed ham
1 pkg of chicken thighs
1 pkg of chicken tenderloins
1 pkg of turkey bacon

Pantry:
3 cans of tuna
2 cans of chicken
6 cans of soup
3 boxes of pasta
4 jars of spaghetti sauce

To be used up:
carrots
celery
zucchini

I need to make a two week meal plan around these items.  I will get back to you when I decide what I am doing.  We do have homemade pizza once a week and have date night on payday.  That leaves me with 11 dinners to plan.

Hope this helps anyone reading this.  This is what works for me.