Category: Menu Plans

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 16, 2015

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 16, 2015

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

You know, sometimes meal planning can seem like its not worth the time when it comes time to actually sit down and do it. But man, does it makes things so much easier as the week goes on! A busy week like last week full of extra-curricular activities & solo parenting makes a meal plan not just handy, but necessary. Having a meal plan kept us out of the drive thru line, our wallet a little fuller, and momma much less stressed!!

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals

So I was sure to make time to chart out the week and have a meal plan ready again for the upcoming week. Here it is!

Breakfast

Waffles (made extras over the weekend!)
Eggs – Brooke requested Eggs n’ Toast in a mug EVERY day last week!
Bagels w/ Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese

Lunch

Leftovers
Sandwiches
Salads

Dinner

Slow Cooker Meatballs Over Buttered Noodles
Zucchini Sausage Ravioli
Stew & Biscuit Bake
Grilled Cheese Night
Pizza Night

This menu plan is linked to Org Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday link up.

Now for my weekly goals… What can I say, I’m a work in progress.

Mail a “Thinking of You” note to a friend – I bought the cards but haven’t mailed them
Bible study 5 of 7 mornings – I don’t remember how many mornings I did this but I did get caught up on my YouVersion bible reading plans by Friday
Lunches packed at night – I did this a couple nights and I’m not sure this works the way I’d hoped. I’ll try it for a couple weeks and re-evaluate
2 blog posts & 1 YouTube video posted – Technically yes, but since one of the blog posts was also the YouTube video I’m not going to count it. So one blog & one video
Schedule social media posts the night before – I started strong at the beginning of the week and trailed off at the end :o(
Walk at least 20 minutes 3 of 5 workdays and at least 1 weekend day – I only managed one walk…I am working on setting aside time on my calendar each day
One Fit2be session each day (at least 10 minutes) – I haven’t figured out the best place to put this on my schedule

I’m going to keep these same goals for next week.

Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 9, 2015

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 9, 2015

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

Welcome to my weekly meal plan & goals. The main purpose of these posts are for my own record keeping & accountability however I hope others can find them useful as well.

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals

Like always seems to happen to me, after a couple good weeks of meal plans I get complete planners block. I have just no idea what to cook for dinner the upcoming week. Saturday I carved out some time to go through my folder of recipes to make sure there weren’t any go-to recipes I’d forgotten to enter into my Plan to Eat recipe book. While I did come across some that needed to be imported, I still felt stumped.

My biggest hurdle was Monday night. Every other Monday is Girl Scouts night. We have to be at the meeting at 6pm. The girls and I typically get home around 5:30pm after work/school/daycare. The meeting lasts until at least 7pm. Not really enough time for dinner before hand and after the meeting is kinda late for us since we typically start bedtime routines as close to 7pm as possible.

And most weeks it really isn’t too much of an issue because at some point Keith will take Leah and they can have dinner while Brooke & I are at her meeting. Then she & I will eat a quick dinner when we get back home. Not an ideal situation but good enough.

Unfortunately, Keith’s first women’s basketball game conflicts and mama is tacking it solo. I had to come up with a solution that would allow us to get home, eat and be ready to head back out in 20 minutes. I tried to find a slow cooker dinner but nothing would work and I thought were gonna end up with PB&Js for dinner.

Then, during worship at church, the perfect idea popped into my head – salad in a jar!! All the ingredients could be prepped & assembled, didn’t need to be heated up and the girls are pretty much guaranteed to eat (please don’t say I jinxed it!) especially since I cooked up some taco meat to make them into Taco Salads!!

Once I got that figured out, the rest of the week seemed to easily fall into place.

Breakfast

Eggs in lots of different forms – scrambled, fried, in a hole, hard-boiled
Peanut butter toast
Bagels w/ Pumpkin Spice Cream Cheese (LOVE when Aldi has this!!!)

Lunch

Leftovers
Sandwiches
Salads

Dinner

Taco Salads in a Jar
One Pot Spaghetti
Mexican Pizza (post on this hopefully soon!)
Grilled Cheese (easy for swim class night)
Chili for cook-off at church

This menu plan is linked to Org Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday link up.

Next we have the progress (or lack of) on my goals.

I may have been a little ambitious in my first week and I definitely should have considered that Keith had a super busy week at work and I would be flying solo at home most nights.

I’m not getting discouraged though – with some better preparation I think I’ll see great progress soon.

Mail a “Thinking of You” note to a friend
Bible study 5 of 7 mornings
Lunches packed at night
2 blog posts & 1 video posted
Schedule social media posts the night before
Walk at least 20 minutes 3 of 5 workdays and at least 1 weekend day
One Fit2be session each day (at least 10 minutes)

Going through this I couldn’t cross a single one of these off the list. Not a great start but most of them I did at least once more than I would have otherwise so I’m going to give myself grace and consider that progress.

I’m going to repeat those as my goals for this week and I can say I’ve already got a better start than last week.

Here’s to a great week!!!

via GIPHY

Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 2, 2015

Weekly Meal Plan & Goals – November 2, 2015

Posted on by Sarah Marshall

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen a series of pics last Sunday documenting me getting meals prepped for the upcoming week. It was a busy one…we had activities every night from Saturday – Tuesday and all but one involved dressing at least one kid in costume. Even with all that we had going on, due to my planning and prep work ahead of time, we didn’t need to eat out once. That is a huge win in my book!

Even better, I’ve managed to have enough of the prepped food leftover that I could carry over some of the prepped meals into this week’s meal plan. Grocery shopping this weekend was so easy because we pretty much just needed our weekly staples – eggs, bread & produce and that’s it!

meal plan & goals 2015.11.02

So here’s the plan for this week:

Breakfast

Brooke & typically have some form of eggs every morning; scrambled, fried or in a hole

Lunch

Leftover turkey tenderloin
Leftover salmon burgers
Leftover sweet n’ sour chicken
Creamy tomato tortellini soup
Sandwiches

Dinner

Turkey Tenderloin, mashed potatoes, California medley vegetables
Cheeseburger Pie, frozen corn
Chili & fixins, cornbread
Leftovers or Mexican Pizzas
Grilled Cheese night
Pizza Night

Next up are my goals for the week. Eventually I’d like to have them categorized or organized in some fashion. For today, I brain dumped a few things I’d like to get started with RIGHT NOW. So here goes:

  • Mail a “Thinking of You” note to a friend
  • Bible study 5 of 7 mornings
  • Lunches packed at night
  • 2 blog posts & 1 video posted
  • Schedule social media posts the night before
  • Walk at least 20 minutes 3 of 5 workdays and at least 1 weekend day
  • One Fit2be session each day (at least 10 minutes)

I’ll check in next week and report on how I do accomplishing these goals and share any new goals I’m going to set!!