Five Bean Soup

Five Bean Soup with chicken was delicious. Sadly I was the only one who liked it. You won't be seeing this dinner again!

How Do You Plan Meals?

So I've seen TONS of information about planning meals online. I've signed up for several subscriptions to meal menus and planning systems. Some for free, some paid.

BUT

none of these ever helped me change.

I've had to take responsibility for my own learning. This is a learning process of "self-education". One cannot master the Meal Planning Monster until one stops relying on everyone else to solve this very personal problem. I stopped searching OUT THERE. I sat down and FOCUSed on something...I started SOMEWHERE. Each person/family has their own set of variables which make meal planning and preparation a particular or individual challenge. For me, as I look back on this blog, there really has been process...and it all started with planning two meals per week for a few weeks and then I branched out.

Now we are pretty steadily flowing each week in our plan...and our lives have changed in the past few months where my husband is now home every night for dinner (and ironically he is on a meal replacement plan!)

So how do YOU start? Maybe you've found my teeny tiny blog and it has given you a glimmer of hope for yourself...oh the PEACE I now have every single day...just from the simple task of planning!

We are staying home more (part of my homeschool plan) and I start dinner each afternoon at 4pm. Life goes so well when I do this. When I find that we are too busy, the routine of my life crumbles...the routine is so precious...more precious to me than life draining "activities" that keep me out and about.

I had a couple tools that inspired me to start:
1-I was enrolled in what is now called the "Seven Seasons to LYFE (Liberate Your Family's Education) Program", this is what helped me identify that I actually didn't have any systems in place to feed my family
2-I found a cookbook that gave me ideas
3-I have a one page "grid" that helps me put meals into the day slots
4-I made this a priority in my life by making TIME to look at recipes and figure out a way to plan and shop and cook that worked for my life

More on each of these areas in later posts! Make sure to sign up for email/feed updates!

Chicken Alfredo Pasta Bake

This turned out awesome and everyone LOVED it! I made an alfredo sauce, boiled up the very BEST whole wheat pasta spirals, cooked up some chicken and tossed into a 9x13 and baked it. I used parmesan regianno (Real Food for Healthy Kids recommends this cheese in a lot of their recipes) and heavy cream in the sauce, I wanted to DRINK it!

Old El Paso Beef Burritos

I'm still cooking!

I lost interest in fully documenting each dish as it was cooking...I decided I simply want to use this blog to serve me NOT me serving it by trying to document everything which was turning into a burden. I needed to simply focus on PLANNING and PREPARING instead of blogging!

Wow, here it is the end of May and I've had the desire to take a simple photo of our meals as I set the table. The past few months have been me really working on this new habit of planning and preparing meals-something I've stuggled with my whole life. I'm GIDDY over the fact that I've actually been D O I N G it!