Trends

You may notice some trends in my meal planning.

I schedule our meals based on our day to day life, and our traditions. Although we keep it flexible, my general planning is as follows:

Mondays - crockpot, or 20 min or less meal (This is my errands day, and we are on the go most of the day)

Tuesdays - more labour intensive meals (We are generally home all day, or just out in the morning)

Wednesday - light meals (my husband plays hockey these evenings, and has requested lighter meals)

Thursday - crockpot or quick meal (potentially an errand day.. or we plan playdates on Thursday afternoons)

Friday - Whatever I want to squeeze in. Sometimes I'm lazy, but usually it's something we just wanted to eat and I couldn't fit it in on another night.

Saturday - BBQ night. My husband bbqs and I prepare a salad... gives me an excuse to try new salad recipes, but if it's a busy day, it's generally just a green tossed salad, or cut up veggies.

Sunday - family picnic/movie night. As a general rule, the TV is off from around 10 am (or earlier) til after the munchkin is in bed. So this is the night we let her pick a movie and we have a picnic on the living room floor. I foresee going to the park for some in the summer, but usually it's the living room. You'll notice our menu plan generally alternates between muffins and fruit salad (which was a sunday dinner in my house growing up) or pizza (which is easy to serve and eat on the floor). Our daughter is responsible for spreading out the blanket, setting out the dishes, etc (although she is the table setter every day at the table too). This usually means that we are joined for dinner by quite a few stuffed animals having tea and cookies while we eat. She loves her tea parties. Sometimes she sets up the picnic early in the afternoon and has tea parties all afternoon until dinner time.


I find having this general breakdown makes it easier for me to plan the whole month at once. Days still get swapped around.... whether it's because I was busy on a typical non-busy day, or often, because I forgot to take the meat out of the freezer the night before. It all works out in the end though.