Weekly Menu And Meal Planning

An IRL friend of mine, who is the amazing Momma to twins (seriously she has time to work, blog, menu plan, cook, clean and more with twin babies?!?) writes a weekly menu post. I love reading it because I am always looking for new ideas for our dinners.

After we had Camden I started using a weekly refrigerator magnet menu planner to plan a week worth of dinners and then shop to the menu.

Here's my beauty in all her glory on my very cluttered and messy fridge. The bottom left is my gallon sized ziplock bag of coupons. On the far left you can see just a peek at my weekly cleaning schedule too, but that's another post entirely.


I found my lil planner a couple years ago in the $1 section at Target, I wish I had gotten more. Part of the reason I started planning was to keep me organized, the other part is to help me stick to our $150/week grocery budget. Some weeks I'm way under and some weeks I'm right at the $150 because that amount includes EVERYTHING - not just food, but toiletries, diapers, cleaning supplies, everything!

In order to stick to that budget I shop the sales, use coupons, and visit more than one store to get the best prices on things. On the weeks when I know it will be tighter (which are the weeks where we need diapers, detergent, pull ups, wipes, paper products and more at the same time) I just get creative with the menu. I try to make recipes that use the same ingredients so specialty ingredients don't go to waste. I also use rotisserie chickens A LOT because I can get two meals worth out of the chicken for only $4 and I don't have to cook chicken which kinds of grosses me out.

I do my planning and shopping on Tuesdays, but I try to write recipes into my little menu as I find ones I want to make during the week. I get my recipes from all sorts of places including Food Network and Cooking Light magazine, some food blogs, friends and google searches.

So with all that said, here's the meals for our week!

Tuesday: Portobella parmesan from Food Network magazine - it was DELICIOUS
Wednesday: Weekly date night with twinnie and her kids
Thursday: Chicken in wine sauce with brown butter green beans
Friday: Turkey club sandwiches with fruit salad
Saturday: Cheeseburger chili mac an old Rachael Ray standby
Sunday: Chicken and mushroom alfredo with peas
Monday: Eggs over toast with hollandaise and bacon
Tuesday: Chicken taquitos with black beans and rice

If you write a weekly menu post leave me a comment so I can add you to my blogs I read for recipe inspiration! Or if you have an amazing recipe I just have to try leave me a comment!