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While doing a little more research on meal planning during the wee hours this morning.. thanks to being pregnant... I came across a few more helpful links that I wanted to add to yesterday's post.

Stephanie over at KeeperoftheHome has totally inspired me! Here are some posts she has done:

Favorite Recipe Lists

21 Meals

Creating a Homemaking Binder

I spent many hours today pulling together our "21 Meals," a month's worth of menus, and I'm almost completed with our grocery lists for the month. I have one list for meat that I will buy at the beginning of the month (and also grains), and then four weekly grocery lists that will be for the veggies and fruit corresponding to that week's menu. I am so excited to see how the month of August works for us. As I mentioned yesterday, we are paid at the beginning of every month, so I believe this system will work beautifully for us!

I have kept my menu planning simple since I'm pregnant and our life is about to get busy as the school semester starts back up. (My husband is in seminary and I am actually hoping to take a class as well this fall.) In order to cut costs, I have one night a week set aside as breakfast foods (eggs, pancakes, etc...), one night a week as soups (mainly vegetarian), and one night as "fun foods" like homemade pizza, spaghetti, burgers, etc... This will allow us to have healthy homemade "comfort foods" as well as keep the budget smaller.

My husband offered to laminate my monthly meal plan for our fridge. It will be perfect because I can use a dry erase marker on it if I need to make any changes or keep track of where I am. Yay!

Enjoy working on your own menu planning!

So I'm finally back to menu planning again. I've really reaped the benefits this last week of planning and shopping all at once, which saves me so much time, money, energy, and sanity! With me trying to cut out foods that turn into sugar in my body (in order to get rid of my Candida) this has further limited my menus. However, we are persevering and enjoying new recipes. I've also found that planning a lunch menu is helpful (although some days I'm lazy and do left-overs... which neither of us mind!) As I post this meal plan, know that we almost never stick to it strictly. It's more of a guide for me. A lot of times I'll end up switching meals to a different night. However, with our schedule being fluid during this season of life, I've found that being flexible is best.

Sunday

Lunch - Bar-B-Q Chicken (with homemade sauce) / carrot bake / okra
Dinner - Community group

Monday

Lunch - Greek Salad / Ground Beef / Cultured Veggies
Dinner - Quinoa Tabouli with Mint Garlic Dressing / Roasted Squash and Zucchini
Prep: Boil eggs, make salads for Tuesday, grill burgers

Tuesday - (class night)

Lunch - Cobb salad / turkey, hard boiled eggs, red bell peppers, almonds, etc.../ Cultured Veggies
Dinner - Grilled burgers / green beans / corn
Prep: Prepare salads for lunch

Wednesday

Lunch - Roasted Chicken / Salad / Cultured Veggies
Dinner - Scalloped potatoes / broccoli / sautéed carrots / all topped with Luscious Lemon Butter Sauce
Prep: make homemade almond mayonnaise, soak buckwheat flour

Thursday - (class night)

Lunch - Tuna fish salad lettuce wraps (using homemade almond mayonnaise) / Cultured Veggies
Dinner - Homemade buckwheat noodles / pesto sauce / steamed cauliflower and carrots

Friday 

Lunch - Leftovers / salad / Cultured Veggies
Dinner - Date Night out

Saturday

Lunch - Onion pie / salad / Cultured Veggies
Dinner - leftovers / salads/ sandwich for Kyle


Most of my recipes from this week are taken out of the Body Ecology Diet book.

Oops! It's Tuesday... oh well... haha!

Here are our meal plans of for the week. I left off the days because I always change them up anyways. haha...

- Mexican Style Salmon Patties, broccoli, salad.

- Roasted Chicken, carrots, squash.

- Lentil Sloppy Joes with salad.

- Greek Salad

- Chicken Spaghetti over Spaghetti Squash

- Turkey Burgers with Avocado-Walnut spread and broiled squash

Here's our meal plan for this week. I'm excited about trying three new recipes. I hope they all turn out great! :-)

Sunday - Chicken Burrito Skillet - such a quick, simple, and yummy meal! It would be super yummy without the chicken too. We also made it this time without the cheese.

Monday - Zucchini, Carrot, Black Bean Quesadillas using Corn Tortillas; salad.
Soak and bake rice for soup and veggie rice.

Tuesday - Emergency Soup and Corn bread

Wednesday - Veggie Rice; salad

Thursday - Leftovers

Friday - Taco Salad

Saturday - Attend Foxhollow Farm Fall Festival - eat there

Oops! Is it really Tuesday? Sorry for the delay in posting my meal plan for this week! Here it is:

Monday - Garden Salad and Chicken/veggie casserole (pulled from freezer for hubby)
Tuesday - Minestrone Soup with Cranberry-Pecan Corn Muffins
Wednesday - Arroz Con Pollo and Salad
Thursday - Leftovers
Friday - Date Night - Pumpkin Soup
Saturday - Greek salad, falafel, hummus

Life is getting back into full swing this week because my work schedule is back to normal. These last three weeks have been great but at the same time have thrown me off my weekly schedule. I'm glad to be back to normal pace around here.

With the beginning of fall here in Kentucky, I'm seeking to try a new soup each week. This week's new recipe is Pumpkin Soup. Kyle and I picked a fresh pumpkin at Huber farm on Sunday afternoon and I can't wait to bake it and make soup and muffins from it! I've never baked a fresh pumpkin before so if any of ya'll have advise, I'd love to hear it!!! :-)

So I made up my meal plan a couple days ago for this week before I went shopping. However I forgot to grab a couple things at the store so it threw off my plan for tonight. I decided to quickly revise the week's menu. It's pretty simple this week because we are so busy! I'm working till late in the evening several nights and have meetings or class after that, which does not leave time for extravagant dinners! So, here it goes:

Sunday - Community Group Dinner

Monday - Italian - Loaded Veggie Spaghetti

Tuesday - Leftover spaghetti due to women's ministry meeting directly after work.

Wednesday - Mediterranean - Falafel, hummus, chips, Greek Salad

Thursday - Loaded veggie salad - head to class directly after work... eat in car

Friday - Southwest Spaghetti Squash Bake

Saturday - Girls' Night Buffet

Saturday morning I went shopping at the Farmer's Market near our home and bought some yummy veggies for us to eat this week. They are SO much better than store bought! I purchased enough lettuce (between the market and store) for us to take to work every day this week. I also took time last night to cut up cucumber, bell peppers, and wash/bag the lettuce so that we can make salads quickly in the mornings before work. It really helps to only have to pop a can of beans and throw it on the salad with all the other stuff cut up!

Here are some of our yummy veggies! I also bought several heads of fresh corn that will be perfect to cut up on our salads at lunch time as well.

Well, since I've been trying to do a lot of food and recipe posts on here I thought I would join in with a bunch of other blogs on Menu Plan Mondays. I finally had a chance to sit down this weekend and schedule out our meals for this week. I will say that I've had to deviate tonight because I've been under the weather today so instead of cooking, we're doing left-overs from Saturday. Kyle is eating chili and I'm eating some plain rice, a chopped homegrown tomato, and half an avocado (keeping it simple for my upset tummy).

Here is my menu for the week. We eat salads for lunches many days, so I don't always include those for our evening meal. You'll also notice we eat a lot of beans. One, because I don't eat meat, two, because they are super cheap!

Monday - Taco Salad

Tuesday - Baked potato wedges, asparagus, and broiled squash

Wednesday - Homemade veggie pizza

Thursday - Greek salad, falafel, and hummus

Friday - Dinner in Lexington at Adoption Info Fundraiser and Banquet

Saturday - Chili and Cranberry-Pecan Corn Muffins

Sunday - Leftovers

Ok... so it probably looks like I've had no life over the last two days... but I've been in a big blog reading mood, so I'm excited to show ya'll a few posts that I've really enjoyed!

One blog that I am new to is I'm an Organizing Junkie. Well she posted a blog with links to different blogs offering meal planning charts. I looked at each one and then selected one that would work best for Kyle and I.

Check out her post:

Meal Planning

She also offers a link to a grocery list that is excellent along with various other files!

Grocery List