Finally-A Month Of Meals!

John started a new job recently. At John's old job, he stayed late at work Mondays and Thursday nights, so I did hot dogs and macaroni & cheese for a quick dinner for the kids since he wasn't home. When I started planning meals, I only did Tuesday and Wednesday because we had our Tuesday group and on Wednesdays we went to church. So though time was tight, we had family dinners two nights per week. I soon added Saturday and Sunday to my plan because, well, we need to eat dinner on those days, too!

So I just recently finished my MONTH! WOW, all these meals are real meals that I would eat!

Now that John is working a new job (very close to home!) he is home every night for family dinner! This has been a life dream of mine...family dinners! I'm pinching myself! Not only is John HOME at dinnertime but I have dinner ready! Mind-boggling the transformation I've gone through! Thanks to Lifestyle of Learning!

A practical note: I've been using blank paper and a 3-ring binder for my planning. It is SO much easier to keep things simple...from my planning sheet to my grocery shopping list to printing out recipes from the web...FORGET 4"x6" recipe cards! I have found if I keep everything the SAME SIZE, my life is just BETTER!

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!

Dinner Discipline-The New LAW

OK, so I realize that most people deal with "dinner discipline" when their kids are little...by 2 or 3 years old the child understands the LAW. The LAW is "Mommy's job is to MAKE the food and your job is to EAT the food...if you don't like the food, then you are out of luck-and hungry".

As parents, John and I have had to face the music that we have intense behavioral issues with our kids around food because we never laid down the LAW early. I don't want to go into it all here, but suffice to say we have WHINING.

This is of course is demoralizing to the cook not to mention extremely draining and counter-productive. When I started on this "self-education" with regards to planning and preparing meals, I didn't know what WAR we had in store for us. So we have had to GET TOUGH and stick to our guns. Turning this around is going to be challenging...in fact this one change in our family has taken all the GUTS I've got.

So here's our new LAW. "Mommy's job is to make the food and your job is to eat it. You are required to taste test and if you determine you don't LIKE the food, then you are allowed to make (yourself) one peanut butter & jelly sandwich".

END OF STORY.

So...over and over again we have "I don't like this", etc and we have held firm with the LAW. The kitchen closes shortly after dinner is served so making that sandwich needs to happen after a few bites or no sandwich at all.

Do you think this is too harsh? Do you think it is mean to not allow your kids to rummage through the cupboards for an alternative to the meal you spent money on and lovingly cooked? We came to realize it was IRRESPONSIBLE and UNLOVING of us as parents to allow them to continue in the bad habits we had always allowed. Hard, hard lessons for all. We continue to fight the good fight of "dinner discipline" which is really more character training-for BOTH parent and children!

Free Meal Planner-Sheet 1

I used to think that people who planned meals used a "magical system" with special tools to help them do what seemed impossible to me! So here's your big chance at my magical Free Meal Planner Sheet. Yep, it is just a simple grid. Click here for the PDF.
The important thing is not that you use MINE but that YOU FIND OUT WHAT YOURS SHOULD LOOK LIKE. That is a key to educating yourself about how YOU are going to solve the "meal planning problem".

STEP 1: Get out at least 10 sheets of blank or lined paper
STEP 2: Sketch out a week or a month "calendar" on your paper
STEP 3: pretend you have 5 meals (spaghetti, hamburgers, chicken casserole, fish steaks and taco salad) for example and now put them on the paper as if you were planning to eat these next week for dinners

NOTICE what format you prefer...do you like the paper to be in the landscape or portrait position? Do you like to see the week or month all at once? Be willing to accept for awhile that you may not really know what you like best.

Keep your attempts in a 3 ring notebook while you work it out.