Intro to My Menu Planning: Week of January 21

I love going grocery shopping, inventorying my regular freezer and chest freezer, and planning out what meals I'm going to make for the week.  I'll sit down on a Sunday with a pad of paper, our calendar, and our freezer/fresh inventory.  I write out the days of the week, what plans we've got each day that might have an affect on dinner or our evening, and try to figure out what we need to eat up first, what I should take out the freezer to thaw, etc.  Also, I'll note down meals that use ingredients we have and use that list to work from.  I aim for healthy, interesting meals.  I try hard to use up what we've already got in the house, pantry, freezer, etc. without needing to make special trips to the grocery store for specific ingredients. Then once I've got everything figured out, I transcribe the plans to the giant chalkboard in our kitchen. 

By planning ahead, I find that it prevents me from having any last-minute worries about what we're going to have for dinner.  And I can get the ingredients and equipment out ahead of time and prep everything so it's quicker. 

Recently I was a little neglectful in finishing my weekly menu plans and I found out how much it really helps to plan things out.  I wrote down some ideas for meals, but I never bothered to figure out the exact meals for each day.  I ended up being completely blasé about what we ate, and our meals suffered.  Usually when that happens, all I want to do is go out for meals even though I know that's unhealthy and costs more.

Menu this week

M - the boys are eating alone so they can do whatever they want, but it'll probably be pizza or melt sandwiches since those are Husband Jeff's favorites
T - broiled Parmesan fish, lima beans
W - banana pancakes from the freezer, veggie frittata
R - brisket in the slow cooker, heat-and-serve dinner rolls, butternut squash
F - pizza with friends
S - special Korean lunar new year meal
S -  typically something light and easy like soup and sandwiches