Meal Planning Goal

I'm starting out 2011 guns blazing, I'm taking my goals seriously. No flippant goal-making over here. I'm ready to kick these goals in the tail and knock them out!

In an effort to make my #1 goal of meal planning come into fruition, tonight I sat down at the kitchen table armed with my self-made recipe notebook, my favorite black pen, several copies of this awesome meal planner and set to work.

I had a goal in mind to plan out all of our meals for the entire month of January.

THE ENTIRE MONTH OF JANUARY.

I might as well have made a goal to climb Mt Everest, in the middle of winter, WHILE PREGNANT.

I mean really, the entire month of January? It's just comical.

I most definitely did not get the whole month planned, but I did manage to get two entire weeks planned.

A couple of other people mentioned that they have a similar goal to meal plan, so I decided to share my meal planning method.

You know, since I've done it about 5 times in my life, counting tonight. I'm pretty much a pro now. Heed my advice.

When Luke and I first got married, I found myself printing a lot of recipes off the internet. I had random pieces of computer paper floating all over my kitchen, so I decided to make my own notebook to keep them all sorted.

I even made a cover for the front of the binder titled "Tree Recipes" with various pictures of the newlywed couple on it.

It gets made fun of often.

I think it's cute.

But that is neither here nor there.

The tabs in my recipe notebook are:

- Recipes to Try

- Beef Recipes

- Chicken Recipes

- Crock Pot Recipes

- Desserts

Please do not make fun of my photography skills. Remember it is one of my goals to learn how to use my camera properly. Today I am focusing on meal planning, photography learning will have to wait.

I have TONS of recipes under the "recipes to try" tab so I should be good to go for awhile in the "try a new recipe every week" area.

So I sit down in a comfortable spot, tonight I chose the kitchen table. I then go through my recipe notebook, and pull out recipes that I would like to eat the next week.

Easier said than done.

It seems that when I begin meal planning I lose all ability to pick out meals, to decipher what sounds good, and memory of what I've cooked in the past.

It took me about two hours to plan two weeks. I'm hoping that I will get better at this as the weeks go by.

Anyways, I write down the meals on the appropriate day of the week, and then to the right I jot down what ingredients I need for my grocery run, and then I put said recipes and weekly meal plan in the pocket in the front, like so:

So that way when I go to cook I have my meal plan and recipes all ready to go and lined out for the week.

And tada, I've got a week's worth of meal's ready to go.

Now I just need somebody to come cook them for us.

Any takers?

I probably won't detail every aspect of my goals like I did this one, but I was just so happy that I actually did it!