Meal Planning

Being a working mom of three, my meal planning usually takes place during the weekend, doing our weekly grocery shopping on Saturday or Sunday morning, (with the rest of city).  For years now I have been planning our menu week by week, aiming to only have to make one stop at the grocery store each week, (or week and a half if I'm lucky).  Many times I would ask Justin and Alena on inputs regarding what they wanted for meals that week.  Alena loves breakfast for dinner and would usually respond with "french toast or waffles."  I would flip through my recipe books looking for favorite recipes or being daring and trying something new, knowing my time to prepare dinner during the week was limited.  The meal planning became one of my least favorite weekend activities!

This past Winter my co-worker mentioned that they had signed up for a meal planning program where recipes were sent to them each week.  I thought it was crazy, paying $60+ for a meal planning program when you could just find new recipes on the Internet for free.

Then I came across a special for the same meal planning program, Fresh 20, which was hard to pass up.  My co-worker continued to rave about the program, saying the recipes were good, her cost of groceries were similar to previously if not a little less, they wasted less food/groceries, and meals took less than 40 minutes to make.  We decided to try it and I recruited my sister in law and brother also, splitting the price, thus making it even more affordable.

Fresh 20 is a meal planning service that focuses on fresh, healthy meals, using 20 fresh, seasonal ingredients per week.  The plan gives a detailed guide regarding grocery shopping, and meal preparations that are done during the weekend to make completing meals during the week even easier.  Each meal will serve a family of 4, although we find that we often have left overs.  There are options for a vegetarian, classic, gluten free or kosher meals.

I was most worried that we wouldn't like the meals but honestly we have liked nearly all of them. I do make some substitutions occasionally. For example, this week's meal plan included a meal with scallops. I don't care if they are deep fried and covered with chocolate sauce, I won't eat scallops. So we just skipped that meal and had a leftover night instead. Actually I have found that we usually don't need to make all 5 meals during the week and sometimes will save a meal option for the weekend or skip one all together.  I enjoy cooking and like that I am learning some new techniques, using ingredients I haven't used before, and trying different combinations of foods.  This week one side dish was an apple and celery slaw with a homemade dressing.  It was yummy!  Many times Justin and I find ourselves saying "that was a really healthy meal," and every meal is so light you don't get that sick to your stomach feeling that can sometimes happen.

Grocery shopping is actually enjoyable again.  I'm sure you've heard that you should only shop the perimeter of the grocery store because that is where the nutritious foods are.  I can definitely say I do that now (except when Justin needs crackers :)).  Most of my grocery cart is filled with produce, followed by meat and dairy products.

I look forward to my weekly email with next week's meal plan and the service will continue for an entire year. I plan on keeping the recipes we love and adding them to my personal recipe book so that when the year is up, I will have a conglomerate of new recipes to choose from.

I've also recently created a menu board that we can look at each week. Usually the first thing Alena asks me when she gets home from school is "what are we having for dinner?"  Hopefully someday she will be able to read the board and will have a different question for me when I see her after school.  It's helpful for me too because I sometimes rearrange the meals and forget what order I was going to make things.

I love that the meal planning for the week is taken care of for the next year and I'm looking forward to trying many new light, healthy, delicious recipes!