Week 1: Steal My Meal Plan! {4 Week Meal Plan Series}
Are you a busy mom who is struggling with formulating a meal plan that works for your family? Do you see other examples online of Weekly Meal Plans but all the dinners are "Pinterest Perfect" and it requires you to do SO MUCH COOKING EVERY DAY?? Yeah, I get it. You need a REALISTIC meal plan that can work for you between soccer practice, volunteering, walking the dog, work, and LIFE! This 4-Week Meal Plan Series will give you all that.
Yup, you read that right! I'm going to give you 4 weeks of meal plans!! And they are all going to be realistic to implement for busy families, they will be healthy, and they will be delicious. (Like I would give you a recipe that doesn't fulfill all those criteria!)
Now, I gotta say a little something first. I've been cooking healthy meals and creating meal plans for a while now. And, with all that practice, I'm pretty good at it now! But I want you to be realistic with where you are at right now. Take my example plans and tweak it so it works for you!
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Steal my meal plans!
Yes, that's exactly what I said. I'm giving you the very meal plans that I have made and used for my family. Tried and true. You can do whatever you want with them but what I hope you will do is either:
Copy it exactly and see how it goes, then make modifications based on what went well and what did not. Trial and error.
OR copy part of the meal plan. Maybe preparing dinner (no matter how easy) isn't in your game plan for 5 nights of the week. Take 2 or 3 nights and leave the rest. However, keep in mind that in order to save time (and money) I often integrate the meal plans for weeknights with one another. (Example: cook chicken on Monday for that night and Wednesday night.)
OR just study my meal plans and analyze how I save time by batching tasks, cooking once to eat twice (or three times), using similar ingredients, etc. By learning these techniques you can try and make your own meal plans that will be more efficient, get you out of the kitchen more, and save time and money on groceries.
Let's get started: Week 1 Meal Plan
Sunday: (Baked) Blackened Chicken (from Blackened Chicken Salad Recipe) with Chimichurri sauce + Roawsted "Crack" broccoli+ Caprese Salad
Monday: Parchment Baked Salmon + Roasted "Crack" broccoli + Roasted Tri-Colored Potatoes + Simple Arugula Side Salad.
Tuesday: Shrimp Avocado Cucumber Salad + Roasted Tri-Color Potatoes
Wednesday: Blackened Chicken Salad with Chimichurri dressing
Thursday: 20-Minute Vegetable Sausage Skillet Meal + cornbread
Friday: eat out or take-out
Saturday: FFY (Fend For Yourself - empty the fridge of all leftovers)
Remember - if you are already a LWL Tribe member you always get FREE access to everything in the Free Library!
KISS
Keep It Simple (Stupid). For many of these meals, by now I know how to make them by heart and without a recipe. They are simple and they are regularly featured on our family's weekly meal plan. But because I like to help make healthy easy, I included all the links to the recipes so you don't have to search and wonder 'which is the better potato recipe??'
Using the same ingredients and recipes more than once
As you can see, I like to use similar ingredients throughout the week and double up on a recipe when I can. For example, I cook Blackened chicken once on Sunday but use it for the Sunday meal and the Wednesday meal. Different meals but using the same type of chicken and the same dressing or dip (chimichurri).
I also used my "Crack" Broccoli recipe twice (it is so freakin' good!) and Tri-colored baked potatoes twice. In both of these circumstances, I'm only prepping the recipe once. For the broccoli, I save half of it (already prepped) to cook the next night. This is such a huge time saver and while you could cook it all on the same night, I prefer the taste of freshly cooked rather than reheated for some things, especially vegetables. I don't mind the taste of reheated potatoes so I can cook those all on the same night and reheat when needed.
Consult your calendar
As you may have noticed, I do more of my cooking on Sundays. I also choose easier meals on nights when we have baseball or swim practice or a busy evening for whatever reason. Make sure you consult your calendar and choose either very simple, easy meals on your busy nights or make it a "leftovers" night.
Seasonal
This meal plan is very much a summer meal plan. I don't particularly enjoy eating salads in the winter so I wouldn't choose a plan like this for the cold months. However, in the summertime, salads are very much welcome! Be sure to plan accordingly. Warm, comforting meals in the winter and refreshing, cool meals for hot summer nights.
Give yourself a night off!
I also firmly believe in giving yourself at least one night a week off of cooking or preparing dinner. Unless you absolutely LOVE being in the kitchen all the time (not I!) then give yourself the grace to not be. I usually choose Fridays as our "eat out" or "take-out" night because it works for our schedule.
FFY (Fend For Yourself)
No matter how much I try to calculate how much food to cook, there is always more food than we need. Much of the time I actually make an effort to cook more than enough so we can have leftovers for lunches or whatever. By Saturday, whatever didn't get eaten throughout the week is on the menu for dinner! Fend For Yourself is a great way to clean out the fridge and make room for all the groceries and food for the upcoming week.
Notes on this Meal Plan
On the second page of my weekly meal plan I have it divided into 3 sections so that I can get food prepped and cooked ahead of time. I either build this time into my day, or if I have some free time I will take a glance at my notes and I know exactly what needs to be done without spending precious time thinking about it!
For this reason, I love doing my meal plans on paper. I find taking notes to be so much easier on paper and then I can hang the meal plan up in the kitchen. Now everyone knows the plan and I can also more easily assign kitchen help tasks. Sometimes just referring to the Weekly Meal Plan is enough for my husband to know what he can help with. On paper, I can also cross off the prep tasks that have been completed.
Here is what my "notes page" looks like for this meal plan:
Marinades/Sauces/Dips/Dressings I can Make Ahead:
Rub for Blackened chicken
Chimichurri
Lemon/olive oil dressing for arugula salad & Shrimp salad
Food/Dishes I can Prepare/Cook Ahead:
Caprese Salad
Blackened Chicken
Shrimp (serve cold on salad)
Cornbread Muffins
Veggies/Produce I can Prep Ahead:
Veggies for shrimp salad and blackened chicken salad
tri-colored potatoes- cut, add oil and spices, put in Ziploc
all the ingredients for the one pan skillet
Additional Notes for this week's meal plan:
MONDAY - bake ALL the potatoes and just reheat for Tuesday dinner (recipe calls for red potatoes but I used tri-colored)
Use parmesan in place of pecorino cheese to reduce ingredient list (I like to use similar ingredients when possible to save money.)
The dressing is THE SAME for the shrimp salad and arugula salad!
Prep veggies for meals ahead if you have time
check garden for fresh herbs!
buy pre-made cornbread muffins if you run out of time
Make extra for lunches
Remember - if you are already a LWL Tribe member you always get FREE access to everything in the Free Library!
You hate printing, paper, writing, and all that...
My friend, there is a digital answer to EVERYTHING! Meet my new digital friend, Plan to Eat. This amazing app can do so much I'm going to have to write a whole different blog post on how incredible it is.
See how I did this week's meal plan on Plan to Eat? You can watch my Plan to Eat video tutorial here.
You do need a subscription to use the service but it's like $3.25 per month. You could save more than that per meal just by meal planning and saving money! If you are a digital person, this app is SO worth it! If you are interested, click on my link here. (That's an affiliate link and I may earn a very small commission at no extra cost to you!)
You can watch my Plan to Eat video tutorial here.
Stay tuned for more!
That was kind of long...but I had to let you get to know a little bit of the thought process behind how these meal plans are formulated. With 3 more weeks of meal plans coming your way, you could have a whole month of realistic, healthy and delicious meals plans done, just like that!
So come back here next week to steal another week of meal plans! And, could you do me a favor? Can you share this with a friend who is struggling to get healthy meals on the table because life is crazy busy? Sharing is caring ❤️.
Happy meal plan stealing,
P.S. When it comes time to make your own meal plan, be sure to read The 9 Worst Mistakes People Make When Meal Planning. And, yeah...avoid those! Also check out No Time? 9 Easy, Quick Weeknight Meals for some great (easy) recipes to add to your meal plans.
P.P.S. Get your own blank Weekly Meal Planner template in the Free Resource Library.
