I’ve previously shared with you the benefits of menu planning, plus shared a sample menu plan and more recently, a full weekly dinner menu plan. Menu planning has definitely been beneficial in our household and allows me to stay on top of meals for dinner each day, even while working. I no longer have to wonder what is for dinner or scramble at the last-minute to put something together. It also avoids me asking the husband to bring home take-out meals for dinner because I’m not inspired by the choices in our fridge or pantry. All-around menu planning is useful.

This past weekend, I sat down for about half an hour, planned out two weeks of meals for dinner and wrote up a two-week grocery list. I created a 14-day dinner menu plan, mostly based on foods already in the freezer, fridge, and pantry. At the same time, I made our grocery list, filling in anything I was missing to make our two-week menu plan complete. It felt extremely good to have a full dinner menu plan for the next two weeks and a grocery list that would get us through those two weeks.

Later that same day, I went to the grocery store and did our shopping for two weeks. Plus, my husband seasoned and vacuum sealed the meats I had just purchased and most of the produce. In one afternoon, we had completed a menu plan, grocery shopping, and prepped foods for the next two weeks! How’s that for working smart and making our lives easier?

Want to see what we’ll be eating these next two weeks? I really hope that in sharing this sample two-week menu plan, you’ll get meal ideas for dinner in your own home. You may notice that I try to take shortcuts when I can, split meals into two by having leftover nights, and that nothing on my dinner menu plan is extraordinarily hard to cook – in fact, I use easy recipes as much as I can. The idea is not to be a fancy restaurant, but to save time, money, and provide my family meals for dinner.

14 Days of Dinner Ideas: Sample Two-Week Dinner Menu Plan

Week 1

1. Sunday: Home-made sub sandwiches with French bread and chips or popcorn on the side
2. Monday: Carne Guisada (Puerto Rican beef stew) served over white rice
3. Tuesday: Turkey sausage & vegetables served over pasta
4. Wednesday: Leftovers
5. Thursday: Hamburgers and home-made fried potatoes
6. Friday: Breakfast for dinner
7. Saturday: Picadillo served over white rice (Here’s a nice picadillo recipe, though I don’t add raisins to mine.)

Week 2

1. Sunday: Turkey Spaghetti
2. Monday: Chicken & Vegetable Soup
3. Tuesday: Leftovers
4. Wednesday: Boneless pork ribs, home-made mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables
5. Thursday: Turkey sausage with peppers, served over white rice
6. Friday: Chicken & Vegetable Noodles (I’m going to substitute the beef for chicken from the recipe.)
7. Saturday: Leftovers

What’s your family having for dinner this week?

I’ve started menu planning again and love how it’s working out. To be honest, I have no idea why I ever stopped! It’s been great to know what dinner is going to be each night, and has helped with grocery shopping, pre-planning, and even precooking since I can see what the whole week (in regards to dinner) looks like at a glance.

On Saturday, I sat down and wrote up a menu plan for the week, planning around foods we already had in the fridge and pantry. That way, I didn’t have to shop for many items; we just had to supplement a couple of ingredients (mainly fresh produce). On Sunday, my husband went to the grocery store with my list, which I also put together at the same time I created our week’s meal plan. So, essentially, in one sitting, I had a menu plan for the entire week, and a grocery shopping list!

Let me share with you what we’re eating for dinner this week. Hopefully, this motivates you to create your own menu plan for next week (or even the rest of this week). You will notice that I’m using some shortcuts and utilizing the slow cooker as much as I can. The combination of a menu plan, meal shortcuts, and a slow cooker, has truly made a difference in my kitchen and allowed me to serve my family home-cooked meals despite working full-time. (My office may be at home, but I still work full-time hours.)

Sample Dinner Menu Plan

• Sunday: Chicken Stir-Fry with Brown Rice
• Monday: Lasagna and Side Salad (I precooked the ground beef on Saturday when I made burgers. I simply divided the ground beef I had in half, cooked half to use for the lasagna, and used the other half to make the burgers that same night. So, on Monday, all I had to do was reheat the meat, assemble the lasagna, and bake it.)
• Tuesday: Turkey Sausage and Vegetable Soup (A variation of this Chicken and Vegetable Soup recipe, cooked in a slow cooker.)
• Wednesday: Leftovers
• Thursday: Boneless Pork Ribs and Sweet Potatoes (I cook both in a slow cooker together. I may add some steamed frozen vegetables too.)
• Friday: Steak Burritos
• Saturday: Turkey Chili (Slow Cooker again!)

It really does help me to menu plan and makes dinner run smoother during the week. I love knowing ahead of time what I’m making and taking that stress of ‘What’s for dinner?‘ away. Give it a try – sit down for 10 minutes this weekend and plan next week’s menu. Or better yet, sit down tonight and plan out the next couple of nights just to test it out!

More on Menu Planning

• Why Meal Planning Provides Peace of Mind
• Planning Your Family’s Dinner Menu

What about you? What’s for dinner this week?

Do you plan meals for your family? I know many women that create menu plans for their household – some plan out weekly menu plans, others go as far as to organize a monthly menu plan. They all speak of the benefits of planning meals in advance, which include easier grocery shopping, saving money, and eating healthier.

I have tried in the past to create a weekly dinner menu and used my Google calendar to lay out each day’s meal. When I planned our family’s meals a week or two at a time, I found a few things to be true:

• Grocery shopping was easier and faster. I was able to quickly make a shopping list based on the meals we had planned and could better stick to grocery shopping every two weeks to coincide with pay days. Very rarely did we have to make grocery store runs in the middle of the week, which often times ended up going over budget.
• No more “What’s for dinner?” debates. Not only did I avoid the daily struggle of thinking about dinner, which can sometimes be a point of frustration for many women, but my husband was also informed well ahead of time. He could easily look at the printed calendar on our fridge and know what the menu was for that day.
• Dinner responsibilities became easier to share. My husband can cook just fine and actually cooks certain meats better than I do. But, he’s the first to admit that when it comes to thinking of side dishes to complete the meal, he needs help. Having the dinner menu planned in advance resulted in him initiating the cooking process sometimes because he didn’t have to think about what to make, he already knew.
• We ate better. Not all of our meals were super fresh or healthy, but they were all home-made. Regardless of whether or not we took shortcuts by using pre-packaged foods, we were still able to control what we put into our meals, how much of it, and in the end, this created better meals for us than if we were to order out.
• We saved money. It’s true that just by planning a dinner menu, we were able to control our spending and many times saved on the food budget. There was much less eating out, more buying in bulk, and less grocery store trips. It was easier to keep an eye on the money we spent on food.

As I write this out, I can’t think of why we ever stopped planning our meals. I definitely plan to work on getting back into it and will hopefully start this weekend by creating a dinner menu for next week. The benefits of meal planning are sure to help our household’s balance and peace of mind.

Do you meal plan? If so, share with us in the comments about how you plan your family’s meals. Do you create a weekly dinner menu, two weeks at a time, or a monthly meal plan? How often do you grocery shop? What other benefits not mentioned have you found from meal planning?

More Meal Planning Ideas

• Sample Weekly Dinner Menu (my own dinner ideas that work in our house)
• Menu Planning Basics
• Spring Monthly Menu Plan
• Sample Menu Plan from Frugal Upstate
• Monthly Menus from Once a Month Mom

Ever have one of those days when you just want to push the “delete all” button – in your inbox and life in general? I’m having one of those…weeks. I not only want to clear my inbox and start all over, but I wish I could do the same with my house and other aspects of my daily life.

I know many of you strive to manage it all and have some type of work-life balance, much like me. So, in an effort to help each other out, I’m going to lay it all out and share my current struggles. Perhaps in doing so, I can get rid of the mental clutter and move on to actually setting a plan of action to get things done. Or, at the very least, it will provide an outlet for venting.

Current challenges I’m struggling with:

• 160 unread emails: plus a bunch more marked unread and starred for action
• Messy house: every room in our house needs help
• An ever-growing to-do list: I have several projects I’m working on outside of managing this blog and my pregnancy blog. Each project has a to-do list that seems to add 2 items for every 1 I cross off.
• Cooking: Last night was the first time in a while – maybe a month – that we had an actual real meal. I’ve been traveling quite a bit, and dinner menu planning fell off the radar.
• Physical issues: Of course, due to the pregnancy, my energy and stamina are not what they should be. I’ve been able to keep up quite well, considering, as was pointed out by several friends who’ve seen me at recent events, but it’s still not what it could be.

So, what do I plan to do about it? I’m not exactly sure yet. I hope to stabilize one or two projects, so they can be more manageable. I may just hit delete on quite a few emails in order to get my inbox to a workable status. (Maybe. I’ll admit, it’s a little scary to think about doing that.) And, perhaps I can take advantage of upcoming weekends that are relatively free of commitments to dedicate time to the house and put a dinner menu back in effect.

Do you have current challenges you’re facing? Want to share with the rest of us in an effort to help each other with ideas for getting back on track?

As a working mother, I need shortcuts wherever I can get them.

Dinner is often a challenge for us busy moms, and this holds true for me as well.

I work 8 hours a day outside the home, which leaves a small window in the evening for me to pick up baby girl, spend some time with her (don’t forget time with the husband also!), and cook dinner. Some days I wish dinner was just sitting there waiting for me; I mean, I get hungry too!

So, I take shortcuts. I try my best to plan ahead, both by planning a monthly menu and by cooking ahead if I can.

This week has been a particularly good week for us when it comes to dinner. I’ve actually stuck with our planned menu and have not ordered out.

Sample One Week Dinner Menu

Now, I don’t pretend that this is the healthiest menu, but we are eating and the food is home-made. I’m not spending money on take-out and it’s manageable for our busy schedule. It works.

1. Sunday: Turkey Chili – I cooked this in my new slow cooker and didn’t have to do much with it once it was started, which allowed for me to work on other things around the house.
2. Monday: Ground Beef & White Rice – I was off on Monday for the MLK holiday, so I was able to cook from scratch. The ground beef is cooked with tomato sauce/paste (think of picadillo) and I made extra meat for later in the week. The white rice I cooked in a rice cooker, but you could easily take your own shortcut by using Minute Rice. And if you wanted to be extra healthy, you could substitute with brown rice. (There’s shortcuts for brown rice too!)
3. Tuesday: Leftovers - I had a dental appointment after work on Tuesday, so I got home later than normal. Luckily, we had plenty of chili and some white rice leftover. Voila! Dinner served.
4. Wednesday: Tacos with Knorr Rice Sides pack – I used the extra ground beef I cooked on Monday to make tacos. All I had to do was chop up some lettuce and tomatoes, warm up the tortillas, and assemble. I made a pack of Knorr Rice Sides Chicken as a side dish.
5. Thursday: Chicken Fettucine Alfredo – Sounds fancy, huh? This dish is *full* of shortcuts. I buy a bag of chicken cutlets, which don’t really require defrosting. I use a box of Fettucine pasta and a can of Ragu Classic Alfredo sauce. (What, you thought I made my own?) Since, the chicken doesn’t need defrosting, I just put it in the pan as soon as I get home. I usually add a can of peas & carrots to the chicken when I add the alfredo sauce. Serve over the fettucine.
6. Friday: Hot dogs & Fries – Fridays are our slack days. So, we normally eat something very easy. This week, we’ll be making some hot dogs and baking some fries in the oven.
7. Saturday: Pork Chops with Yellow Rice – Since it’s Saturday, I should theoretically have more time to cook. You can cook pork chops however you’d like: in the oven, on the stove or on the grill. Yellow rice is one of my favorites. It’s easy to cook and you can add whatever you like to it, making for many delicious variations. I’ll be making rice with corn this week, but sometimes I use beans or other vegetables. Shortcuts for yellow rice can be found via Goya, if you’d like.

You can see that the recurring theme is to use shortcuts to create quick and easy meals for your family.

How do you manage your weekly dinner menu as a busy mom?

[top photo source]

Picadillo Image via Wikipedia

Calendar Image via SugarcubeDesign

As a working mother, I need shortcuts wherever I can get them.

Dinner is often a challenge for us busy moms, and this holds true for me as well.

I work 8 hours a day outside the home, which leaves a small window in the evening for me to pick up baby girl, spend some time with her (don’t forget time with the husband also!), and cook dinner. Some days I wish dinner was just sitting there waiting for me; I mean, I get hungry too!

So, I take shortcuts. I try my best to plan ahead, both by planning a monthly menu and by cooking ahead if I can.

This week has been a particularly good week for us when it comes to dinner. I’ve actually stuck with our planned menu and have not ordered out.

Sample One Week Menu

Now, I don’t pretend that this is the healthiest menu, but we are eating and the food is home-made. I’m not spending money on take-out and it’s manageable for our busy schedule. It works.

1. Sunday: Turkey Chili – I cooked this in my new slow cooker and didn’t have to do much with it once it was started, which allowed for me to work on other things around the house.
2. Monday: Ground Beef & White Rice – I was off on Monday for the MLK holiday, so I was able to cook from scratch. The ground beef is cooked with tomato sauce/paste (think of picadillo) and I made extra meat for later in the week. The white rice I cooked in a rice cooker, but you could easily take your own shortcut by using Minute Rice. And if you wanted to be extra healthy, you could substitute with brown rice. (There’s shortcuts for brown rice too!)
3. Tuesday: Leftovers - I had a dental appointment after work on Tuesday, so I got home later than normal. Luckily, we had plenty of chili and some white rice leftover. Voila! Dinner served.
4. Wednesday: Tacos with Knorr Rice Sides pack – I used the extra ground beef I cooked on Monday to make tacos. All I had to do was chop up some lettuce and tomatoes, warm up the tortillas, and assemble. I made a pack of Knorr Rice Sides Chicken as a side dish.
5. Thursday: Chicken Fettucine Alfredo – Sounds fancy, huh? This dish is *full* of shortcuts. I buy a bag of chicken cutlets, which don’t really require defrosting. I use a box of Fettucine pasta and a can of Ragu Classic Alfredo sauce. (What, you thought I made my own?) Since, the chicken doesn’t need defrosting, I just put it in the pan as soon as I get home. I usually add a can of peas & carrots to the chicken when I add the alfredo sauce. Serve over the fettucine.
6. Friday: Hot dogs & Fries – Fridays are our slack days. So, we normally eat something very easy. This week, we’ll be making some hot dogs and baking some fries in the oven.
7. Saturday: Pork Chops with Yellow Rice – Since it’s Saturday, I should theoretically have more time to cook. You can cook pork chops however you’d like: in the oven, on the stove or on the grill. Yellow rice is one of my favorites. It’s easy to cook and you can add whatever you like to it, making for many delicious variations. I’ll be making rice with corn this week, but sometimes I use beans or other vegetables. Shortcuts for yellow rice can be found via Goya, if you’d like.

You can see that the recurring theme is to use shortcuts to create quick and easy meals for your family. It’s what this Modern Mami has found to work.

How do you manage your weekly menu as a busy mom?

Picadillo Image via Wikipedia

Calendar Image via SugarcubeDesign