5 Lessons Learned From Planning Weekly Meals

Last week was our first week planning out all of our meals, and I gotta be honest, I had to be brave and go to the store by myself. With all of the new things I had to buy, I basically had to coach myself through it. Not kidding.


I stayed far away from planning weekly meals for a long time because just thinking about it gave me stress. What if I’m not in the mood for what I’m supposed to make that night? What if I don’t have the time to make dinner? What if we don’t have all of the ingredients? Silly questions, thinking about them now.

I personally have hardest time keeping track of recipes, and I get really nervous about cooking new things. Thankfully, there is Allrecipes (which is awesomely set up like Pinterest), and it has made the process a little less stressful.

If you go to my Allrecipes page, you can see all of the recipes I have saved. You can also see what recipes I have made and reviews I have given after making something. In my reviews, I try to say what we did differently or what we should do next time, so I can easily go to my reviews page and find it.

Here are some things we have already learned since we’ve been planning weekly meals:

1.   I really like cheese. Dallas has learned that I don’t know how to cook things without cheese. Or cream cheese. Or cottage cheese… But Dallas says cheese makes him fat, so that’s why he got to plan this weeks meals! (hehe)

2.   Less trips to the store = Saving time. Listing all of the ingredients out for the week is so stressful for me, but so worth it. We went to the store once last week. ONCE! That is seriously unheard of around here.

3.   Left overs. Usually we make enough that we can have all of the left overs for lunch the next day. That means I don’t have to plan lunch the next day! Score.

4.   Variety. Other food is delicious! And not as hard to make as I was thinking it would be. Why has it taken me so long to jump on this??

5.   Less likely to waste food = Saving money. Since we plan meals out before going to the store, I only buy what I know we’re going to use that week. And I’m happy to say that Dallas has been eating less freezer burritos…

So, do you plan your meals in advance? How do you decide what to eat every week?

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