Menu Plan Monday

I've read for years now the benefits of making a weekly meal plan. When you plan out your meals for a whole week you can make a shopping list to go accordantly. This limits those last minute trips because you need some ingredient you forgot. It can help ensure that food is used in a timely manner and in turn limit the amount that gets thrown out because it spoiled. All and all planning ahead, like in most area of life, can save us time, money and help the environment while we're at it. Unfortunately I've never been good at make weekly meal plans. I have this great fear that come Thurs I won't want what I planned but won't have any other options. Irrational, I know. But I am who I am. :) Well yesterday I went through my pantry and made a list of the items. I've been wanting to do this for awhile. One, I tend to stick to the same few recipes. The positive is it's easy because I already know how to prepare them. And I for the most part I can try to have on hand nonperishable ingredients for those staple meals. The negative is that sometimes I forget to use other items I pick up for some meal I didn't end up cooking :(. Two, some good friends of ours are fostering a young boy who they recently found out is allergic to gluten and lactose. Not wanting to throw good food out, they gave us all their food items containing ingredients he can't have. So I have all this food that I don't normally cook with that I'm needing to incorporate into our meals. Actually I'm quite excited because I see it as an opportunity to try some new recipes. So after finding out what is in my pantry and my freezers I've decided that the best way to ensure I'm using food, and thus limit the amount that we throw out (which is more than I really want to), I need to start creating weekly menus. So here it goes, this weeks meal plan.

Breakfast- cold cereal or oatmeal

Lunches- leftovers, pb&j, hot dogs or mac & cheese

Monday- Black beans and sweet potato burritos- recipe from Simply in Season cookbook
Tuesday- Spaghetti with Tuna and Tomato Sauce found on Food Network.com
Wednesday- Church meal
Thursday- Mushroom Burger Enchiladas
Friday- personal pizzas
Saturday- eat out
Sunday- leftovers

I'm sure I'll try to do dessert for some of the meals. Just don't know what yet. Also I tend to fib alittle on recipes and don't follow exactly. But what's above will be the basic idea.

If you want more ideas for meal planning this week visit Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday