|

Simple Meal Plan for Easy Prep and Cleanup when Cooking With Arthritis

Here’s one of my family favorites super simple meal plan for easy cleanup if you’re cooking with arthritis featuring sheet pan and slow cooker meals.

Note: This blog contains affiliate links or referral links. Purchases from these links provides a small commission or discounts towards future purchases to me at no extra cost to you. Medical and health information and these recommendations are from my personal experience and do not constitute medical advice. Please seek professional medical advice for your health. Refer to my Full Privacy Policy and Disclaimers here.


A couple weeks ago my focus was my simple freezer meal plan and it was a delicious week, lots of slow cooker action again and I gotta say it really helps me get dinner on the table with my Rheumatoid Arthritis and the freezer well stocked for days when I don’t feel like cooking, which happens more in cold, cloudy/rainy, wintry days.

Stay tuned, in this post I’m sharing my meal plan from the last 2 weeks, what was good and worth making again and next week’s meal plan of family favorites.

Last Week’s Meal Plan

Last week I cooked half and stocked up the freezer so I’ll be using two of Passionate Penny Pincher freezer meals plans. Here’s what we had/froze.

Passionate Penny Pincher Freezer meal plan week 8 is:

  • homemade beef meatballs for spaghetti or subs – froze for later
  • cheddar ranch burgers – 5* – ate it fresh, these were simple and awesome!
  • sweet and spicy barbecue chicken – froze for later
  • incredible baked oatmeal – 4* – i’ve made this before and it’s awesome for grab and go breakfasts. one of my favorite recipes for using overripe bananas. this one doesn’t normally make it into the freezer cause it smells so good when it’s baking. I put it in a muffin or brownie pan to make individual servings. Really I should double it so i can put half in the freezer for later.
  • slow cooker cilantro lime chicken – 5* – ate it fresh, a family favorite, so flavorful!
  • chocolate chip cake – didn’t make it.

Passionate Penny Pincher freezer meals week 5 is

  • slow cooker steak chili – 4* really good – a comforting warm stew on a chilly day.
  • slow cooker sausage and white bean soup – 4* we’ve had this before and I added more broth this time and extra veggies. we ate it fresh but I froze a small container for later.
  • breakfast burritos – 5* these don’t usually make it into the freezer cause my boys love them.
  • sausage and cheese quiche – didn’t make it this time but it’s good!
  • slow cooker orange chicken – 4* my middle son said he’s “obsessed” with this chicken.
  • the best chocolate chip cookies – didn’t make it, i’m trying to avoid the sweets!!

This Week’s Meal Plan

I’m trying to stick to 2 breakfasts and 3 dinners per week. that seems to work well for our family (4 at home every day) without wasting food. This week I’m using Plan to Eat to plan out our meals and grocery shopping list. I love Plan to Eat for:

  • you can import recipes from the web and it imports the ingredients, photos, nutrition facts and instructions
  • you can add meals to your menu planner and autogenerate shopping lists
  • you can sort shopping list by different stores
  • you can print your list with a recipe key so you know which ingredients are needed for the recipe. this comes in handy, for example, when the store is out of the meat or key ingredients you need, so then you know you don’t need the other ingredients in that letter recipe.
  • you can share recipes with other Plan to Eat users. so you can grab my recipes in Plan to Eat here.
  • you can tag recipes so you can easily find what you’re looking for (like slow cooker, sheet pan, freezer meals, etc).
  • you can organize recipes so all your recipes are in one place.
  • you can scale recipes easily if you need to make more or less than suggested serving size.

Anyway, Plan to Eat has been a helpful meal planning tool and I’ll be using it in 2023 to try and get all my recipes digital and in one system. You can get a free 14 day trial of Plan to Eat here to decide if it will work for you.

Ok, enough about Plan to Eat, here’s the meal plan for the week:

If you’re new here, grab my favorite meal planning resources! 

Grocery Restock List Freebie!

I made you a copy of my grocery restock list. If you want it, subscribe to my simple cooking newsletter and it’s linked in each of the emails I send out. You’ll get my weeklyish menu plans, cooking tips, meal planning resources AND my free spices to keep in the pantry printable so you can make your own super easy and delicious seasoning mixes to save money and are better for your health.

.


The restock list has the most commonly used items in our household. I print them up and hang it on the side of the fridge so whenever we run out of anything, we can highlight/write in what we need. This really helps me not forget anything that I or my hungry crew needs. 


You can rearrange the restock list in the order of your favorite grocery store’s aisles. It’s a huge timesaver if your list is in the right order so you aren’t running all over the store and backtracking.  

My Favorite Meal Planning and Prepping Tools and Cookbooks

If you like to plan on paper, the Erin Condren Meal Planner is my favorite. You can see how I use it on my Instagram.  (the newer versions are less colorful on the inside and have some additional pages like a price tracker, recipe log and conversion chart which is great!)

If you prefer digital meal planning, Plan to Eat is my favorite tool. I just renewed my subscription for the next year, it’s a super deal and a great time saver. Get a 14 day trial to see if it works for you before you commit to a one year subscription.

Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat

Be sure to head to my Exclusive Subscriber Library and grab my free meal planner and homemade seasoning mixes) I’m still looking for a good blender and food processor so if you have one you love, let me know!



Happy cooking until next time! What looks good to you? What’s cooking this week in your house?

Tanya  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *