Real Whole Food Meal Planning – Help, please!

This may sound crazy, but do you have a list of your family favorite?  If so, send it to me and I’ll make you some meal plans.  I know that we are pretty structured in our meals so this doesn’t work for everyone.  Here is how I do it.  (I haven’t looked at the other site in depth but I did notice mention of Nourishing Traditions.  This is how we eat all the time with a few allergy modifications.)

1) I have a list of our favorites and a list of what we want to try.  Print out calendar months (however many you want to rotate through)

2) Here is our schedule:

    Monday:  Chicken

    Tuesday:  Beef

    Wednesday: Fish

    Thursday:  Soup, Salad, Sandwich (depends on the season and it’s typically a vegetarian night)

    Friday:  Homemade Pizza (gluten, soy and dairy free)

    Saturday:  Breakfast for dinner (omelets, pancakes, whatever you want)

    Sunday:  Our church has a potluck every Sunday so I have a variety of meals that I choose from but it’s always crock pot.

3.  Take your favorite meals and plug them into a calendar.  Each month I evaluate that rotation and decide if I want to insert new meals somewhere.  Typically I do because my family likes variety.

Now as the month progresses sometimes we have to change meals around due to time constraints or preference.  But, it’s not a big deal when you already have the things on hand for the meals.  I shop once a month except for another trip for produce that doesn’t stay good for a whole month.

I hope that helps.

I have also been struggling with this.  This post couldn’t have come at a better time:)  Dave Ramsey always talks about a sight that has meal plan subscriptions.  Maybe emeals.com?  Anyway, our issues are being vegetarian, and myself trying to keep dairy out too.  I looked over those meal examples and it seemed as though a lot of the recipes are using processed or pre-packaged items.  I don’t want to do that for the most part.

We make our own whole wheat or spelt flour breads, and I do a lot of from scratch cooking.  I just need to pull it all together into a monthly plan.  Maybe this discussion will motivate me to do just that.  I’d be interested to hear how you all do it.

Years ago, I had a meal plan that changed monthly.  I wrote down every recipe I could think of that our family normally ate.  I included a few extras from the cookbook that we’d like to try.  Then I wrote them down weekly trying to make sure we kept some variety; i.e. not too many pasta dishes in one week, or too many bean dishes etc….  Then when I went shopping I’d make my list from the recipe items and get the things I didn’t already have at home.  I do remember that it saved us money on our grocery bill too.  Getting motivated:)

I like to stick to “whole foods” too. I’ve gotten really bad about meal planning though. I know that emealz.com does have a vegetarian option but we do eat meat, so that doesn’t work well for us. Maybe we can keep this thread or start a new thread for meal planning and then when we do plan the meals for a week at a time (or more) we can post it to possibly give some of us others ideas or motivation. 🙂 I wanted to share with you all my all time favorite cookbook though… it is called “Whole Foods for the Whole Family” and has many family friendly meals in there. I get most of my ideas from it. I bought it at a le leache league meeting several years ago.

http://donnayoung.org/household/fullsize/kitchen-planner.htm

Just had to share.  Hop on over to Donna Youngs prinables resource.  She has a newer section on menu planning with printable forms.  Looks promising:)

Bridget

Here is my spring menu  and here is my summer menu with links to all the recipes.  I use each of them for 3 months.  Some of them may not be the most nutritious, but it’s a start for our family and a sanity-saver for me until I find more recipes I like.  

Things like hamburgers for example.  I buy grass-fed ground beef and make whole wheat hamburger buns.  That’s pretty “whole foods”, right???  Or spaghetti, again with grass-fed beef and Barilla Plus noodles and a wholesome sauce.  You can make ‘typical American’ foods more nutritious until you build a recipe file.

I have tried in the past to completely change how we eat and after a week or so of new dishes that bombed I start to dread cooking because I might waste ingredients and everyone will complain and sometimes I’ve had to make 2 dinners.  Now I take our favorites and make them as healthy as possible and try new recipes a few times a month.  When we find one we like I replace one of the less healthy meals we were eating.

I am working on the fall and winter menus and recipes and will post those later if you want.

Heather

I was originally going to do grocery lists but because things always come up (can’t get to the store, already have the ingredients) that I decided just to make one right before I left. Because I have the menu already planned and the recipes already printed I can make a list in less than 5 minutes. I use one from Donna Young where everything is listed and you just check the box that you need it. I also made one just like it based on how my store is set up.

Heather

I’m new to posting here, so I hope it’s ok for me to jump in mid-stream here…  I’m not sure how you have your shopping list laid out, but I saved one so that I can adjust it as needed with separation per types of foods.  IE – I havea a dairy, meats, canned goods, breads/grains, etc.  Also, I just print out one for each of the stores I use and slide them into a page protector.  This then hangs on the frig for ease of marking.  I slip it onto a clip board for use in the store; erasing the marks as I pick up the items.  It’s easy breezy.

Another idea for the recipes/ shopping lists… you can join allrecipes.com.  It can be used for free, but if you join, you can manipulate recipes (ie- change ingredients, etc.)  I believe you can add your own as well.  You can save the recipes to your own online recipe box.  Just choose the recipes that you want to use for the week (month, 3 months, etc) and the program will compile a shopping list which you can then print.  It’s very nice and quite handy.

A last idea is to purchase your own computer recipe/ meal plan software and do this yourself.  The upside is that it’s a one time payment for use.  The downside is that you don’t have reviews from others (as compared with allrecipes.com).  Here  is one that I thought looked interesting and here is a listing review/ comparison of several that are available.

Hope this helps,

~blue j