Meal Planning~

Howdy, howdy!

So, today I was thinking about Meal Planning.
As you may already know, it's an excellent way to reduce stress, increase likelihood of making a healthier meal than one on the fly, reduce waste of produce that goes unused, and save money! Among other things...

Anyway!
In our household, we Meal Plan one week at a time, and every day has a "theme".
It goes a little something like this:

Monday - veggies on rice
Tuesday - soup
Wednesday - Mexican
Thursday - casserole
Friday - pizza
Saturday/Sunday - social outing, leftovers, brinner, random

It's a given that most every meal will have some kind of raw vegetables (usually in the form of a salad, though carrots cut into sticks is always popular too), and meat rarely makes an appearance.
Not that we're vegetarians, it's just a lot more economical for us to skip the meat. Beans, legumes, and nuts make a fine protein source!

"Mexican" means homemade tortilla and a smörgåsbord of fillings (pinto beans, tomatoes, onions, avocado, rice, etc).
"Pizza" means homemade pizza with whatever toppings we can muster from our fridge
"Brinner" is breakfast for dinner. Yum. Maybe homemade biscuits with cheese and egg, or French toast, or pancakes. We love it all.

So today was Tuesday, Soup Day, and we had "Golden Mushroom-Basil Soup" a la "Feeding the Whole Family" by Cynthia Lair.
Definitely one of my all-time favorite cookbooks in the past year or so, I will be devoting a blog entry to it in the near future.

Do you Meal Plan? If so, what are some meal staples in your home?

Thanks for reading again today, and until tomorrow -- Happy Meal Planning!!