Meal Planning aka Savior of my Sanity

Confession time folks: I am a wanderer. No, I do not have that dreamy wanderlust that drives young people all over the world... I'm talking about the grocery store. Seriously, if I don't go in with a list, I will come out with a watermelon, some peanut butter, and a pack of bacon, and nothing for dinner. This girl needs a plan!

So here's the deal:
-Every Sunday after out big brunchy brunch, my hubby and I sit down with a laptop and some cookbooks and decide what's for dinner for the upcoming week. I'm working on incorporating some more variety in that plan because for a few weeks, I think we ate the same 5 things.


-While he cleans up from breakfast, I look through all the recipes for the week (some of which are in my head) and write down all the ingredients that are needed, plus some staples (like eggs and almond milk) and some other things we can have for snacks or treats.


-We load up and hit the grocery store and are surprisingly pretty good about getting only what we need.

-Since we shop at our local commissary, I don't dive much into the world of couponing. However, a couple weeks ago, Nate and I watched a lady spend $30 on like $200 worth of merchandise, so I'm tempted to try it out.


-Some people have found great success in prepping things for meals on Sundays, but since we do our shopping on Sundays, I like some lazy time between shopping and cooking Sunday dinner. Plus, I don't own enough tupperware.


-Right now, I'm not meal planning because I'm living at home, but I do search quite a few food blogs all the time. So I got the fancy pants idea of keeping a running word document with all the new recipes I've found, broken up into categories. That way, when we do get into a food rut, I can just pull one of those out and have a fab new dish for dinner!

I love this system because I don't have to figure out what's for dinner each night. I never have to dig through the fridge at 6 when we're both starving and hope I land on a delicious idea. All I have to do is look at my little listy!

Happy meal planning friends!