Family Meal Planning

Family meal planning is something that has worked very well for our family for sometime now. To start with makes life easier when you have a toddler who needs all the attention after her parents are at work the whole day.

So a while ago I came up with a plan to cook our meals on the weekend to help us get through the week. By doing this we have reduced eating out and spending money on meals when there is really no need.

This is how I work out a weekly meal plan:

1. Saturday- Hubs and myself work out a meal plan of what we would like to have through the week and accordingly shop for groceries. We have a little template that I created on excel to help us.

2. Sunday Morning-

•  I start all the prep work by 9:30AM- this includes- cutting all the veggies, defrosting any meat, washing the rice, etc. 
• I usually make about 2 veggies dishes, 1 meat dish, a simple dal and one rice dish.
• Snacks- we pack all our snacks for the week on sunday too- We use small plastic container to make 10 portions of any one of these - carrots with home made hummus, fruit bowls, pita chips, etc. We noticed by carrying a small snack along with our lunch we stopped eating junk food from the vending machine to get stuff. 

I will post a picture of this week's meal plan on sunday. I try to mix Indian meals with simple salad's or wraps for the week.

This is just a copy of a meal plan we had a few weeks ago-There have been weeks when we have not been able to stick to such a strict plan but we get there on most weeks.

I plan to start posting my meal plans in advance in case anyone needs help for the week.

I hope this post is helpful

SJP

	BreakFast	Lunch	Snack	Dinner
Monday	Banana+oats	Sunday leftovers	Carrots+Hummus	Roti+dal
Tuesday	Orange+bread sandwich	Rice+veggies+dal	Pita chips+ranch	Roti+egg curry
Wednesday	Banana+oats	Channa+roti	Fruit or yogurt	Home made Pasta
Thursday	Granola Bars+muffin	Rice paluv	Boiled Egg	Roti+ Lentils
Friday	Fruit+ bread sandwich	Either left overs or we eat out	cookie or fruit	We like to have this meal out on most fridays
Saturday	Indian Breakfast-Poha or dosa	Chicken or meat dish	Muffins	Roti+non-veg curry
Sunday	Indian Breakfast-Poha or dosa	Usually Briyani	cookie or fruit	Bread Sandwich