Meal Planning

School starts this week and it's time to get back on track with meals!

Saturday we set aside time to go through our cookbooks and pull some recipes. We looked for:

• recipes with overlapping ingredients
• freezer options
• 1 soup
• 1 salad type dish
• inspiration!

I also pulled up the ads for the local stores to see what meat was on sale. In the end, we went with chicken as we could get the best price on both chicken breasts and thighs at our natural market.

This 7"x9" composition book is where I've begun recording recipe titles,  the book it's from and the page number. We don't have a ton of recipes books so this is our main way to consolidate the ones we want to try. I plan to add comments once we've tried these meals. If it's a total flop, it will be crossed out. We like repetition and having standard meals we know how to make and can count on. Just hoping for some new dishes to rotate into our meal planning! These post-its are a must! I use them to flag the page in the book, write a quick note or list. I just keep them inside the cover so I always have them handy.

Arrow Post-its are from a list organizer I bought last year.

After pulling recipes we did a major overhaul on the kitchen. I don't plan to do this every time we meal plan, but it worked well because I knew what we had on hand!

Italian Antipasto Ingredients Prepped and Gathered

Sunday I made a list and went to 2 stores: our natural market for meat and produce and a general grocery store for the rest of the ingredients (mustard, vinegar, frozen fruit, etc.). When I got home, I put the ingredients onto the counter into group according to the recipe and we both got to it!

Seth picked a Split Pea and Carrot Soup from a book we're borrowing from a friend. We found a one we both love, the Italian Antipasto salad from our Make Ahead Paleo Cookbook, and I found a new one from the same book called Mango Cilantro Chicken.

Seth made the soup while I prepped the other two meals. I made the dressings first. This saves a ton of time during the week. The salad ingredients are now in the fridge ready to be tossed together, and the chicken is marinated and in the freezer ready for later this week. I'm in love with washi tape as a labeling system for the fridge. Things are labeled making it easy to put the recipe together.

After this, I had 4 chicken thighs left over I decided to search for a crockpot recipes. I came across one from Iowa Girl Eats, and it looks yummy! I love her simple but yummy style. I didn't have a peanut vinaigrette, but I found one from Martha Stewart and I had all the ingredients. I put the chicken into a glass container and dumped in all the other ingredients and now it's in the fridge for over night and can go in the crockpot any time.

Delicious Split Pea & Carrot Soup

Here's to a great week! Happy eating.