Weekly Menu Plan – Nov. 5, 2015
Devising a weekly menu plan is essential for me especially with my restricted diet and all 3 kids in various activities. Why is it that their activities are all around dinner time? With less time on the evenings and weekends, I need to make sure I have fresh food on hand and know what I plan to cook so we aren’t tempted to eat out. It also means quite a few evenings (and weekends) of slow cooker meals!
I’ve been sporadic on blogging since our Travel the World in Books Readathon ended. It’s been rainy here which with my Rheumatoid Arthritis, cuts my energy in half. Still my boys and I need to eat and we don’t want to pay a small fortune to go out to eat, so I continue to menu plan and meals get shifted around depending on my energy levels. The fact that it gets dark by dinnertime doesn’t help either, I’m ready for my pajamas at 5:30pm!
This weekend we have my littlest’s birthday party and that means I have an excuse to make my Easy Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake! Should I make two? One for the party and one for them to eat at home? I’m really going to have to exert will power to not eat this one, it’s soooo good!
The only topic I like to chat about as much as books is food! If you have a menu plan or a delicious recipe you want to share, feel free to link it up with our Small Victories Sunday Linkup. I’m always looking for new recipes to try.
This Week’s Menu Plan:
Friday:
Homemade pizzas
Salad
Saturday:
Spinach Cheese Egg Muffins (cheeseless for me). These are easy to make a ton of and easily reheat for the teen who leaves for school really early.
Slow Cooker Korean Beef with Trader Joe’s dumplings, green beans and rice.
Sunday:
Chorizo and Egg Tacos
Bourbon Mango Pulled Pork sandwiches from Allrecipes and Chipotle Fries from Half Baked Harvest (I’m going to try making with chicken instead of pork, we don’t eat pork roast much anymore).
Monday:
Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal from This Gal Cooks
leftovers for dinner
Tuesday:
Banana Bread
Lightened Up Arroz con Pollo and Colombian Aji Picante from Skinnytaste
Wednesday:
Biscuits with Sausage Gravy from me! (adapted recipe from Bisquick cookbook and a family favorite recipe)
Slow Cooker Chicken Mango Curry from Parents.com with rice
Thursday:
Leftovers
Menu Planning Tools
Note: This post contains affiliate links as indicated by an asterisk (*). These are tools I own myself and recommend. Should you purchase from an affiliate link, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
Last Black Friday, Plan to Eat* had a 50% Black Friday Sale. I bought it and have been loving the tool so much! To date I have 178 recipes in my account and planned 333 meals, that’s a whole lot of good eating! I highly recommend you try it out free for 30 days to see if you like it. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that there’s another great Black Friday Sale but even if it’s not I’ll be renewing my subscription. We can share recipes there too if you’re a Plan to Eat member, just send me a friend request.
I created a couple simple but FREE weekly planner printables to incorporate my menu plans into my week. Check them out and download for free if it will help you with your weekly goal and menu planning.
Free Weekly Planner printable with menu planner based on 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Free Weekly Planner Printable with Menu Plan, Daily Goals and Small Victories & Gratitude Tracker
All Linked Up
This post linked up with Menu Plan Monday.
What’s on your menu plan for this week?
This looks like such a great way to keep everything all organized. Your dishes during the week looked so good…especially those spinach, egg & cheese muffins. Great post to get us ready for the holidays!
I love the idea of menu planning. I always verbally menu plan, but I never write it down. I wonder if writing it down would make me adhere to it more! Thanks for hosting the #SmallVictoriesSundayLinkup! It’s so great!
Writing your menu plan may help you. I know it helps me because I cannot rely on my memory. Between Mommy brain and brain fog from RA, I can’t remember why I walked into a room half the time. I know I’d waste time trying to remember what I bought all these ingredients for. I’m not a fly by the seat of my pants person, I gotta see the plan to figure it out before 5pm and 4 hungry boys are hovering asking what’s for dinner. Give it a whirl and see what you think! I so appreciate your dedication and support of our Small Victories Sunday Linkup. I think it’s pretty great too and couldn’t do it without you all!!
It shows what my week has been like that I am just getting to this weekly plan when the new week is upon us! But I know these ideas are good to try any week. I still haven’t made the pumpkin oatmeal, which I know is a favorite with your family. I shall put pumpkin puree on my list–perfect season for it, right? Hope your coming week is good, sunny and more comfortable!
Well the pumpkin oatmeal keeps showing up on the menu plan but I’ve yet to actually cook it. I need to that’s for sure, I think it will be perfect for fall. The week started out with rainy and cold but I bundled up and volunteered half the day at my kids’ school book fair opening day. I did work even though all I wanted to do was curl up with the books and read. Good thing I thought I’d left my phone at home or I’d have been adding book ideas for my boys to my Goodreads TBR. 🙂 Thanks for commenting and the support Lucy, I love to hear from readers!
I’ve been trying to star organizing weekly menu plans, but I just keep postponing it. Thanks for the tips and great printables!
Hope you give it a try! It really helps me stick to a reasonable grocery budget for our family of 5. Going out to eat is so expensive!
Thank you for suggesting Plan To Eat. I’ll have a look at it.
I’m finally better at meal planning, but having a tool always makes things easier.
And thank you for the invitation to guest post here. I’d love to extend the invitation to you, Tanya. It’d be a pleasure and an honor to host a post from you on my blog.
Have a fabulous day!
I hope you try out Plan to Eat at least for the free trial. I think it’s worth the price, it’s helped me stay on track and even helps me blog my menu plan easily 🙂 I would love to guest post someday! Thanks for the offer and opportunity.