What's for Dinner?

Google "meal planning" and you will get 34 million hits. 34 million! To me, this is the height of organization. I mean, your house can be uncluttered, order holiday stuff in July and make it on time to all your appointments. However, if you can do all that and know exactly what you are going to eat, have it be something healthy and have all the ingredients on hand... wow. Just wow.

I actually read one site describing their meal planning site, including keeping an updated spreadsheet listing everything in the pantry. That boggles my mind.

With everything we have to do as a family - working, gymnastics, classes and community events - meal planning falls to the wayside. (Forget about running a spreadsheet to track pantry items.) This also means that I'm having to leave work early to stop by the store or taking the kids with me to the store (horrifying!) or putting together a meal consisting of mac and cheese with canned peas. It's got a vegetable, right? Either way, it is not the wonderful, relaxing and healthy meal I envision making every afternoon.

Unclutterer has printable to help fully plan out your week's meals - including breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. That might be a bit more than I need. Our breakfasts consist of cereal during the week, but planning out lunches too might mean I actually remember to take one to school!

This week, I tried to plan out meals for the week. It was going to be especially busy with a huge community event, school conferences and cleaning up from Halloween all on the to do list. This was my plan...

• Monday - Chicken breasts with salad.Burritos from the freezer. Something was going...
• Tuesday - Mac-n-cheese with hotdogs We had the dinner that was planned for Wednesday, because I was going to be gone at work and this babysitter could reasonably handle cooking.
• Wednesday - spaghetti and meatballs Again, working at night and we had a community event fundraiser at a local pizza joint, so they ate pizza. Really, I see it as a win - dinner and charity.
• Thursday - Pork chops and green beans I had planned on being home to cook dinner, until I found out that I had a meeting @ church. Instead we had the mac-n-cheese with hotdogs.
• Friday - Goulash. It's possible that I could actually make this meal! Then again, we might have another community event to attend. 

 While I didn't end up cooking anything when I was supposed to, but I'm not sure I'd call it a total failure. I did not have to stop at the store to pick anything up any time this week and while not haute cuisine, every meal did have something from the protein and vegetable category, as well as whole grains. (except the pizza) In fact, I think I'd call it a win. The whole point of being organized is to carry less stress. Even though it was a super busy week and I barely saw my children, I wasn't stressed out wondering what I could scrounge up up for them to eat.