Meal Plan Monday - New Plan!

I've been meal planning week-by-week for a long time now. Lately it's gotten fairly laborious to decide what to eat each Sunday evening. My hubby and I have not had motivation or creativity in our ideas, which has resulted in eating out & grabbing something quick more often than we should. Not only is this bad for the waistline, it's bad for the wallet.

I had to come up with a new plan. I consulted two of my favorite books, Family Feasts for $75 a Week and The $5 Dinner Mom, which have lots of tips for meal planning, eating healthy but cheaply, and many good recipes. A suggestion was to meal plan by the month. I thought this sounded good, but a bit overwhelming. I decided if each day had a theme (Chicken, Pasta, Crockpot, etc), it would be easier to plan and our meals would be diverse. So I created this document to fill out for the next four weeks & nothing repeats (except pizza - I won't break that tradition!).

I quickly filled out our plan for the month and could think ahead to busy weeks to adjust accordingly (this week is a good example of a busy week - I'll be gone 4 dinners/nights this week, so we had to have something easy).

This week, we'll be eating...
Monday: Pork Chops, Rice, & Green Beans
Tuesday: Chicken Alfredo w/ Salad (chicken is ready to go)
Wednesday: Leftovers
Thursday: Chili (from the freezer)
Friday: Take-n-Bake Pizza (from Costco)
Weekend Meal #1: Cuban Sammys w/ Fries
Weekend Meal #2: Grilled Cheese & Can Soup Night (I've got Bunco, so it's got to be easy for my guys)

Looking forward to implementing this new monthly meal plan!

Check out other Meal Plans at OrgJunkie.