I don't usually write down any resolutions, because I forget about them and/or eventually fail anyway. At the end of last year I realized that there was one definite thing that I wanted to do differently this year, and that was to make sure we ate a variety of meals during the month.
Sometime in December I realized that we were eating the same things each week. And when it came to planning for the next week, I really hated it so I wouldn't reach for anything new. I talked with Darren, and we decided that was going to stop.
Before we left for Christmas I sat down with all of my cookbooks and made a list of every meal I could find that we would like to try, or already knew we liked. Turns out we had a list of over 50 meals! When we got back in January I set out to find a way to organize our meal-planning. I got a few free calendars in the mail while we were gone, so I decided I'd use one of them to help us out.
Voila! I took about 15-20 minutes one Saturday morning to plan the meals for our whole month, and it has made life SO much easier when it's time to go grocery shopping. We didn't repeat any meals (except our tradition of Pizza Friday) and it was relatively painless.
Goal met for January! Let's see how the rest of this year goes...
That is such a good idea. I would love to do something like this but Jon is only home like two nights a week to eat dinner with me. I will definitely start doing this more when we move and he has a different work schedule.
ReplyDelete"like" :)
ReplyDeleteI need to do this too. I'm getting tired of eating the same stuff. Send me the recipes to the ones that aren't too hard to make and that you guys end up really liking. :)
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. I didn't cook much when I worked full time so after I quit my job I thought I was going to hate cooking every night, but having a menu has made it so I actually enjoy it. I only do a one-week menu but it has made shopping for groceries a lot less stressful and I think saved us a little money since I can plan on using ingredients together. And yes, you should definitely post some of your favorite recipes!
ReplyDelete