As you may know, I’m not normally a meal planner.
I like to cook by the seat of my pants and just make what speaks to me on that day. I’m the same way with my blog posts too. I rarely know what I’m blogging about until I sit down to write and I don’t often plan specific posts ahead of time. I usually just sit down and type! It feels more natural to me when I don’t force something.
…and that’s the same way I like to cook, but sometimes I need to plan meals to get out of a cooking slump. Now that I am on the road to recovery with this flu, I decided to plan out my meals this week and bid my cooking slump farewell!
Step 1: Plan The Meals:
The meals I chose:
- Enchiladas with Cilantro cream sauce & salad
- Creamy Sweet Potato Bake and biscuits
- Veggie Burgers with Moroccan spiced root vegetable fries
- Tahini Lemon Rice and beans
- WILD CARD (this can be leftovers, a meal out, or spontaneous recipe)
Don’t be fooled by this simple looking list- it actually took me over an hour to figure out what I wanted to make for the week. Also, I don’t like to specify what day I’m making each recipe! I will decide the night before most likely. :) I think the thing I love about planned dinner recipes is that you automatically have a lunch ready for you the next day!
Step 2: Make List and Grocery Shop:
After I picked out my meals for the week, I checked what ingredients I had in stock and then I went grocery shopping for the rest.
Step 3: Prep veggies and Grains
After meal planning and grocery shopping, I did prep work by slicing veggies (cucumbers, carrots, peppers) cooking grains and beans (chickpeas and brown rice), and made a fresh batch of Spring Fever Lemon Dill Hummus.
This whole process took up half the day, but I’m hoping that it will pay off with time savings throughout the week.
Keeping my May veggie goals in mind, breakfast today was a yummy Green Monster blended with 1 cup frozen kale, 1.25 cups soy milk, 1 large frozen banana, pinch or two of cinnamon, Vega Choc-o-lot protein powder, and Amazing Grass wheatgrass powder.
I topped it with almond butter, cacao nibs, and 1/2 an Endure Glo Bar. It was delish…but gave me goosebumps!
[Can you tell it is a gloomy and rainy day by the low lighting of this photo?]
Lunch today will probably be similar to yesterday’s lunch…
I had cucumbers and carrots with Spring Fever Lemon Dill Hummus, along with sprouted grain open-faced, toasted sandwiches topped with tomato paste, avocado, and pepper. I love this voluminous lunch as it takes a long time to eat.
Stay tuned for a great week of dinner recipes!
Glad you are on the mend. Happy planning!!!!
Meal planning is the best, because then you know what you’re going to buy at the superstore, AND you can look forward to that certain delicious meal (oh, and not having to spend hours preparing it the day off when you’re as ravenous as the cookie monster also helps too ;) )!
Speaking of meals though, I think it’d be wonderful if maybe a few days before Mother’s Day you could possibly make a post on a Mother’s Day brunch or meal (dinner + desert)?
I’m celebrating Mother’s Day one day early because my sister has a dance competition Sunday, so we won’t be able to make her the usual french toast in the morning. I really wanted to make a delightful vegan dinner with desert, but so far it’s been difficult finding something so elegant and traditional for the holiday!
I will keep this in mind :)
meal plan sounds delicious can’t wait for the recipes! Meal plan is great idea I hope you keep them up and post them helps all of us :) I follow a lot of your meals to keep me on track. I am slowly going vegetarian and hope to be vegan by end of the year! Thanks for all the great inspiration :)
the colors are all so great. I LOVE beets no matter the fact that they leave me red-handed. (nature’s lipstick… this is how you glow right?)
I love ‘nature’s lipstick’!
i want to copy that lunch. yummm. i try to plan a few dinners and try to shop once/week on sundays. breakfast and lunch are similar or I always have the ingredients on hand, so dinners are the only tricky one for me.
I love lunches that take a long time to eat. All the slow crunching makes the process satisfying and filling. Your open-faced sammy looks great. Lately I have been on such a carrot loving kick that I can’t put anything (hummus or pb) on them, because I just want to taste carrot.
I have got to make more veggie and/or bean burgers. They are sooo good.
I always say that I want to get into more meal planning but meals end up being more spontaneous than really thought out. :-)
Thankyou, I sometimes find menu planning a little overwhelming and like to just make what I feel like as well but your meal plan for this week looks so good that I might follow it too!
When I lived in the city I went to the grocery store everyday since it was a 3 minute walk away. Now, I tend to meal plan for 5 days in advance. Part of this is the convenience of having everything handy, but it also keeps me on track and away from the more unhealthy cravings.
I love kale! However, I am not a fan of it in smoothies. Do you find that it takes over the taste of your green monsters? Or do the other additions balance the taste out for you? It was zero here on the west coast yesterday morning. I hear you on the goosebumps! Sticking with the oatmeal for a few weeks more.
Normally I do find the taste is over powering, but I recently bought frozen kale and I dont taste the bitter taste anymore. Weird!
My mom and I plan all our dinners for the week on Saturday or Sunday so that we only have to go shopping once during the week. It actually works out really well and what ever we feel like having out of the chosen meals on a certain night…that’s what we have. Your menu looks delicious! I am really wanting some enchiladas right now! Do you have a recipe for those?!?
Yup on my recipe page called time crunch enchiladas
You had me at Creamy Sweet Potato Bake, I can’t wait to see the results from this!!
Your green monster looks unbelievable! I have recently gotten on the meal planning train and I’ve realized a few things: 1) It’s so much easier to eat more healthfully 2) I’m so much more organized! 3) I save a lot of time and money at the grocery store!
Damn everything on your meal schedule looks great! Very curious to see how the planning works out for you :)
Funny – I had a nearly identical breakfast this morning, but in a glass!
I’m a big fan of planning my meals. I every everything onto and Excel sheet… otherwise I have a fridge of ingredients and I’ve forgotten exactly what my grand plans were when I brought them. :)
I am going to have to try that avocado open face yummy looking sandwich. WOW. I love avacado and I feel like I have tried everything but this looks delicious. Thank you for sharing. I try and be a meal planner but it is so time consuming. It makes the morning’s less stressful but really takes a lot out of me. :) I do agree though, meal planning does inspire great cooking.
Voluminous lunches and foods? Yes I love them! They take awhile to eat, they are usually fiber filled and have lots of chew and texture. Always good.
The way you sliced your cucumbers, sounds silly, but I swear they taste better like that when I am using them as “sticks” to dip things in. I like them better than in rounds or cubes. Spears or sticks is where it’s at. haha
Meal planning and groc shopping accordingly…you are on top of it! You go girl! It saves time, money, and is healthier for sure in the long run when you can meal plan I find.
Yum I want to come over for dinner every night! Will you be posting the recipes? Because I’ve been dying for enchiladas and want a good recipe!
I love that there’s so much veggie in here–I’ve been eating lots of beets and veggies, and my stomach is so much more at ease than when I don’t. :) can’t wait for the post!
Looking forward to the dinner post. I think I am going to try that for lunch, love all the veges. Looking for a good cornbread recipe, any suggestions?
That lunch looks much better than the crappy lunch I had today at work. Is it okay that I”m jealous of it? ;-)