Last night I ate a banana with almond butter and cinnamon
And a bowl of popcorn.
When I went to bed I wasn’t full, but I wasn’t starving at least.
Caitlin posted today about meal planning, and I thought I’d explain what I do.
I’m totally a meal planner. I like stuff planned in general (I make a gigantic to do list every single day, I have an ongoing grocery list on my fridge). I started meal planning for a few reasons: I was suddenly cooking for two people and wanted to make us both happy, I was starting to student teach and didn’t have time to go to the grocery store, I was sick of wasting food, and I kept running out of room in my pantry/fridge.
What I do, is usually Thursday or so I write down all the days of the next week, and then figure out what I have on hand (i.e., we made jambalya last week because we had a ton of tomatoes and peppers). I use what we have as the basis for my meals. I like to make things I cook work for multiple meals too, so if you watch I’m going to use the turkey from last night again on Wednesday.
I didn’t like it at first-I agonized about what to make, worried about variety, and felt like I wasn’t giving the fiance any say in what we had. But after a while I figured out what I was doing, and it’s pretty quick and painless (one important realization: as long as nothing on his plate will kill him dead, and there’s meat, the fiance is ok with most meals.
This is what my plan looks like.
I’m trying to actually plan a day to go the gym in there because the fiance keeps saying he wants to go to the gym in the evening, but then starts to put it off after dinner. So I made sure to put in a night where dinner’s quick and easy so that we’ve got plenty of time. I don’t plan a lot of the veggies, mostly because I get whatever is on sale and in season. So right now it’s corn, green beans, and broccoli pretty much all the time. I also try and make our end of the week (which was Thursday last week, but normally Friday), a low key, goes well with drinking sort of meal. The pizza is homemade, and yummy! I make a grocery list based on the plan and then match up what I need with what’s on sale. And, I like grocery shopping, so then I get to do the fun part!
I also try and plan in foods for my lunches. So the veggie burgers I’m making tonight use chickpeas and black beans, which I soaked and cooked yesterday (I like dry beans, and they’re cheaper) I made more than I needed, which meant they were on hand to make this weird breakfast
Brown rice, a head of broccoli, a pepper, the tomatoes from my garden, black beans, chickpeas, spices, sour cream. Weird breakfast, yes, but it was what I felt like, and it’s yummy! And I had everything on hand!
Do you meal plan?
I'm an Eating Machine! 