Benefits of Meal Planning and plan for March 11 - 18

I've been very dutifully planning meals for a little over a month and I'm definitely seeing a number of benefits to going through this exercise.    The benefits include:

• time - by planning ahead, I'm also able to do some food prep ahead of time.   I'm also not in that "hmmm, what should we have for dinner" place at 5 p.m. on a school night.
• cost - this is one huge area that I am seeing an impact.    I've changed some of my shopping habits, and it's definitely clear in my pocketbook.    I'm really trying hard to only go to the grocery store once a week.    By planning our meals, I'm making the purchases I need at that time, and am avoiding extra trips to the grocery store.    This week, I spent $130 on groceries.   The last two weeks, my purchases came in at $80 and $65!   That's a huge difference, and helps with the price of gas continuing to rise!
• Also, by planning specific nights for leftovers, I'm finding that we are eating all of what we cook instead of finding something in the refrigerator a week later and thinking, "oh wow, what was that?"

A couple of other things that I have recently started doing:

• prepping all of the salad stuff and raw veggies ahead of time.    On Saturday or Sunday I am washing and cleaning all the veggies to use in salads and cooking for the week.    I read about doing this on a great blog I follow and the key is to make sure that the veggies are dry before putting them away.   I have a salad spinner, and once I wash the lettuce leaves (spinach and other veggies too), I put them in the spinner, spin them dry and then put them in a ziplock baggie layered with paper towels.  I have found that by doing this, my lettuce and leafy greens are lasting more than a week.   It's also much easier to do the same with other veggies and not have to wash and prep them.
• Making sure that lunches for the next day are made the night before.    This simple thing makes our mornings so much easier!   It's much much better to be able to go grab our lunches and not think about it in the morning.

So here is our plan for this week - including what we had for dinner last night.

Sunday March 11

Sausage and Pepper Medley
Mashed potatoes
Steamed Green beans

*this was a recipe I created to use the peppers and onions that I had in the refrigerator.

2 pounds Chicken Italian Sausage
2 Green peppers, sliced
1 Red pepper, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
2 roma tomatoes (I had two that were getting really soft and needed to be used)
1 Tbsp minced garlic
2 cubes of homemade pesto -  frozen in ice cube trays

Boil the sausage and then slice thinly.   Saute the peppers, onion and garlic in a large saucepan.   When fragrant but not soft, add the sausage and cook until the sausage begins to brown.    Add the tomatoes and pesto and cook until the pesto is evenly distributed and the sausage is browned to your taste.   We served this with homemade mashed potatoes and steamed green beans seasoned with thyme.  

My oldest thought that the green beans smelled like "summertime - like when you are digging in the dirt and it smells good."   He noted that they did not taste like dirt, though!


Monday
Pot roast in crock pot
Mashed potatoes - leftover from Sunday
Garden salad
Leftover green beans

Tuesday
Leftovers

Wednesday
Chicken with Tarragon and Leeks - recipe from Real Simple Magazine, April 2009
(I'm excited about this recipe because I love both tarragon and leeks)    If it's as good as I hope it is, I'll post the recipe.

Thursday
Leftovers

Friday:
Quesadillas  made with homemade re-fried beans

Saturday:  Will determine based on what is in the refrigerator.