my very first bonafide contribution to the famous works for me wednesday!

I never did any research into meal planning. I just decided one day that I'd give it a try. Sawyer was a babelet and Rowan a toddler...and it was HARD getting out of the house every day or every other day to make sure there was going to be food on the table every night for dinner.

Let me first say that Kenny doesn't expect a hot meal every single night. The only thing he wants when he's done working for the day is the assurance that his kids and wife are happy. That makes my "job" really easy. However, I have high standards. My standards for cleanliness, organization, and healthy eating is pretty high...and I fail miserably on a daily basis. But that doesn't mean I'm not trying. Because I think that Kenny's right. The kids are our priorities...they're health and happiness takes precedence over a vaccuumed carpet or a picked-up house. Always. (One would argue that a clean house and a nightly homemade meal is beneficial to our kids' health. I agree.)

The only thing that I really schedule every single month is our meal plan. And here's how I do it:

Step One: Equipment - One evening a month, after the kids are tucked in for the night (around 7:00), I gather up all my favorite cookbooks (Moosewood Cooks at Home, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, More with Less, Simply in Season, a few Cooking Light collections, a few Weight Watchers cookbooks, and my binder-o-recipe cards), our kitchen calendar (Kenny gives me a chicken calendar every year. Yes, I'm chicken-addicted. This month's beauty is shown above. Isn't she lovely?), a pen, and a notebook with lined paper.  I settle into the couch, or in front of the tv, or the fireplace (lately it’s been the fireplace).

Step Two: Scouring, Searching, and Creating the Plan - I find several vegetarian recipes, several chicken recipes, several beef and pork recipes and begin plugging them into days on my calendar. For instance:

April 1 – Chicken cacciatore with vegetable
April 2 – French onion soup with homemade rolls and salad
April 3 – Leftover chicken cacciatore with salad
April 4 – Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas

I do a bit of re-arranging to allow for days of leftovers (there are always leftovers to be eaten!) and throw in at least one “out to eat!” evening.

Step Three: Organize - After each day has been filled in, I make my shopping list. Going through each recipe, I write down all the ingredients needed into categories: meat, perishable, weekly (which includes dairy and produce for a week’s worth of recipes).

Step Three: SHOP! - I hit the grocery with my master list, purchase all the meat and perishables (basically anything I need that can be on the pantry shelf or in the freezer for a month) and the dairy and produce for the first week of recipes. This usually takes about 2 hours. It’s hard to do this shopping trip with the kids, so I usually do it when Kenny can be home with the kids. I divide up the meat for freezing, fill up our basement freezer and store everything in the pantry.

At the beginning of each week, I load the boys up and we get a mini-shopping trip of that week’s worth of dairy and produce.

Step Four: Cook, Eat, and Be Merry! - Every night of the week, there is something cooking (or reheating) in the oven, and I pull everything off of our shelves to make it. No dashing out to the grocery every day or every other day, wasting time, gas, and money. It’s so worth the extra monthly effort (and really, it’s only an evening of planning, a few hours of shopping, and a half hour of unloading) to ensure a homemade meal pretty much every night.