No, seriously. I will. I already made a meal plan for you actually, so you can’t refuse.
Here’s how I meal plan in our home:
We use the same meal plan each month. I keep a rotating list of 20 meals in an Excel doc, and I created two shopping lists (one for every two weeks) that contain all of the ingredients to make those meals. The chart lasts for about a month (room for leftovers, eating out, dinner parties, etc), it feeds about four people per meal, and then we start it over the next month. It’s so easy.
I tried to make sure most of the meals were pretty healthy (ahem, room for splurging); they all contain at least two fruits/veggies. I also made sure they were easy enough to cook with a whiny toddler at my feet, and that they didn’t require any bizarre trips to weird markets in shady neighborhoods.
I also added a section for our food budget, go-to toddler foods, breakfast and lunch staples to have on hand, pantry staples we use frequently, and a snack budget (whatever we don’t spend out of our bi-weekly budget on dinner ingredients we use to buy snacks).
A Free Meal Plan from Call Her Happy
Because I love you:
You can just have my meal plan. It’s an Excel document, and you can edit it to fit your own family: add more ingredients or less for your family size, change the budget to fit your income, delete recipes, add them in (just don’t forget to change the shopping list!).
It has saved us so much time, frustration and money, and I hope it does the same for you too.
How to get it:
If you subscribe to my RSS feed or my email list, check the bottom of each post. The link to the meal plan is down there. It is a Google Drive document, and you can either view it in Google Drive (it shows up as two pages), or you can download it and use it in Excel (it will be one page long here).
If you don’t want to subscribe to get it, you can always make your own. I ain’t even mad about it. But, if you do download it and want to share it with others, send them over here to get it, ok? That would be super kind of you.
Did you use it?
Leave a comment and let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Linking up with Thrive @ Home Thursday, WLW
I don’t know about you but bizarre trips to weird markets in shady neighborhoods lead to the best stories. We just normally don’t take Sullivan with us. St. Louis has this great Asian market that is huge but way shady and with some….interesting characters. But the food is amazing so we only go at noon on Saturdays.
Very very true. When we were in MI, there was this awesome Asian market. If you went alllll the way into the back, there was one table and a chair and some guy making the best sushi you’ve ever eaten in your life. Oh I miss it. You can’t find those gems at your local big ol’ mart!
Visiting from Living well Wednesday. I appreciate the encouragement to get organized and meal plan. It does take the stress out of life when I have a connected and rotating meal plan and shopping list. Thanks for prodding me. God bless.
I’m so glad to hear it! They take a bit of work, but they are so worth it when you’re done!
What a great resource! Thanks for sharing this with the Thrive @ Home community, Jenna.
Thanks for hosting!
I am unable to find your meal plan excel document! I subscribed to your e-mail and followed your blog, but can’t find it! Thanks
Hi Molly- Thanks for subscribing :)
If you subscribed via email, the next time you get an email from me, it will be at the bottom of the post. If you subscribed via RSS, the next time I post (I did this morning), it will be at the bottom of your feed. Does that make sense? If not, let me know, and I will make sure you get it :)
Thanks again!
I subscribed to your email list and don’t know how to get your meal plan. Really would love to see it and hopefully put it to good use. Thanks