What's for Dinner?

After a couple of 'odd' weeks this last fortnight what with our trip to Chicago and a lil' ole marathon (!) I'm happy to be joining in with Laura from Mommy Run Fast and Jill from Fitness, Health & Happiness and their Menu Planning Challenge.

Menu Planning Challenge

This is our first full week at home and a little easier to plan for than those whilst travelling. I normally try and do our grocery shop mid week just so I can keep weekends free for 'fun' stuff (or pure self-indulgent lazy time!!). So I tend to plan out our meals then aswell. My method is ridiculously basic. This is what is looks like;

It's a screenshot of a reminders page on my iPhone. I plan out 6-7 meals to see us through a week. Then I check what we've got in the fridge/pantry/freezer already and write out a shopping list based on what we need to get in to make those meals. In an ideal world it would mean I only shop once a week (we're working on that part!).

I don't plan out meals each day. Once we know we've got everything in for any one of those meals we tend to 'go-with-the-flow' day by day and pick something we fancy. (Like today is chilly, grey, rainy and a little bit miserable - perfect for a cosy evening and a good bowl of soup! - BBQ somehow just doesn't really appeal - right?!) Some meals Chris typically cooks, and some are 'my' meals - and that can also dictate what we have when if I'm working a long day. If it's a crockpot meal then I normally decide the night before so I know I have to allow time to prep before I go to work, but usually what we are having that night is a texting topic at some point during the day!! ;-)

I 'tick' off the meals each day when we have them and we know what we have left. It's been our tried and tested method now since probably the beginning of this year and it really does work pretty well for us :-)

Tomorrow we'll be having my Crockpot Veggie Lasagna - you can check out the recipe for that here.