Meal Planning Made Easy

Good things happen when I meal plan

I have to share my newest organizational tool.  For my birthday this year, Jason gave me some spending cash.  I had been using Plan to Eat for their 30 day trial and knew exactly what I was doing with my cash.  It's a recipe sharing and menu planning website.  I have toured a couple other free meal planning sites out there and they were so poorly laid-out that I decided it was worth it to pay for the user-friendly software!

I usually keep Plan to Eat open when I am playing online since I will frequently find delicious recipes on blogs and on facebook.  All I have to do is copy the url of the recipe and paste it into Plan to Eat.  If the software can't recognize the recipe, you can simply copy the ingredients and then copy the directions and you can paste them as blocks instead of inputting them line by line.  I LOVE IT!!!

Protect the edible babies!!

Now that we are at a job where Jason comes home for lunch and doesn't work 4 nights a week, I actually have to start cooking on the regular.  I don't mind doing it, but if I'm not inspired to cook, I am super lazy and will just prepare a starch, a veggie and a protein with some salt.  Maybe some butter if I'm feelin' all crazy.  But, with inspiration, I can make some fantastic stuff!

Also, we are dead broke.  I am trying to make every meal include beans as filler and some variety of fresh produce.  I want to include a meat for each dinner, but only if I remembered to thaw it.  (You know the feeling.  You hit your hunger limit.  The only meat is in the freezer.  It's 5:30 and all you can afford is one burger but have 4 people to feed.  You find yourself staring at your super-meaty and deliciously chunky-thighed baby.  We've all done it...)  I hit up the Country Meat Market and picked up some awesome meats this week.  I actually remembered to thaw the sausage since I had searched and planned this last night: Lentils and Rice With Pork.

I never would have remembered to thaw my meat OR soak my lentils (I used green instead of brown which need soaking) if I hadn't planned it in advance.  And MAN was it good!!!

Here is our menu this week:

One of my favorite features is that you can search recipes from lots of other people and then sub in your own ingredients.  I use coconut oil instead of vegetable oil so I just type it in and hit "save"!

You can do a free 30-day trial to see if it is something that would make your life simpler.  For me, this was a no brainer.  I needed a better tracking system than Pinterest with sorting ability so I could actually plan to cook some of the delicious recipes I would find.  If you join, go to the Find Friends to Share Recipes board and find the group that shares your interests to add as friends.  I added all the members from the Nourishing Traditions (Sally Fallon) group.

And, if you search properly, you will stumble on gems like Banana Sunflower Cookies to use up shrinking bananas and Cocoa Beach Baked Oatmeal to use up some soon-to-expire coconut milk.  Not only did these foods not expire without getting used, but they were delicious!  Win and WIN!!

Banana Sunflower Cookies are extra awesome because the sunflower seeds go all Hulk Smash on the cookie and turn it green inside.  I tell the kids those are green sprinkles.

And let's just call it like it is.  The chocolate oatmeal is like the healthy version of Cocoa Krispies.  And it is soooo delicious!

Three cheers for meal planning!!!


Satisfying hunger so apple cores don't have to!!

*If you join Plan to Eat as a paying member through my link, I get a referral commission. So thank you!!