This Week's Meal Plan

I have been reading a lot about the benefits of meal planning.  It saves time and money and basically just makes life a little easier (at least that's what they say).  Over at the Mommy Stories, there are some great tips on getting started, but since I am gluten free, I have to alter my menu a bit because some items, like pasta, can be very expensive and not conducive to a budget friendly plan.

My goal here was to plan meals that the whole family likes, some with leftover potential for lunches and at least one new recipe.  My family is small, so I don't need to worry about huge portions and often split the meal and toss half in the freezer.  If you have a bigger family, you could opt to up your portions and do that as well.  I also wanted to use some of the ingredients I had on hand, so some of our choices were based on that.

Here's what our week looks like:

Monday: French Onion Soup and Garlic Bread (I use my own gluten free recipe for the soup and will make some bread machine bread to go with it)

Tuesday: Taco Tuesday (Atticus' favorite day)

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Italian Chicken, a new recipe I found from this Pin.  I love a good slow cooker meal, and this seems simple and delicious. I'll let you know how it turns out!

Thursday: Spinach Lasagne (this is my weekly girls night, so I planned a slightly bigger meal for sharing)

Friday: Pizza (using this recipe)

Saturday: Sandwiches using whatever we need to use up in the fridge

Sunday: Leftovers

After I planned out the dinners for the week, I made a list of what I needed to get, and then headed over to Coupons.com to see what I could find for coupons.  Grocery shopping with a very specific list in hand is a great way to avoid those unnecessary purchases and makes it easier to stick to a budget.