Our Meal Planning/Grocery Shopping Routine

Grocery shopping, and meal planning, are one of my most favorite things about being a stay at home mom. I love to try new recipes, and I love to grocery shop. Also, I love to organize. So, I thought I would share with you my wonderfully efficient way of meal planning and grocery shopping. Also, a little couponing. :)

I grocery shop on Thursday, which is pay day for us. On the day before, Wednesday, I look for coupons. I use the Ibotta Iphone app and coupons.com. Now, I do love coupons, but honestly I don't use that many because 1. we eat a Paleo diet, and 2. we live in a small town that only has a weekly paper. However, I do usually find at least one coupon a week for something that we need, thankfully. So, I gather my coupons, and my grocery list, and head out to Ingles to shop!

I keep my grocery list on my phone, on the Evernote app. I have a 4 week meal plan, which I update regularly, whether I am switching out recipes for better ones or updating recipes for summer, winter, etc. So, consequently, I have a grocery list for each week already planned out, according to the recipes that are assigned for that week. If I need extra items or additional things, I have a separate list, usually a very short one, in my notes that I can refer to. I love that I can just pull up the list already made up for that week, as soon as I get to the grocery store and do my shopping right away, instead of taking an hour plus per week to plan my meals and grocery list!

This week, since our oldest peanut has started pre-k, which is from 8-2:30 every weekday, I of course have to plan lunches for her as well. Since we eat a Paleo-style diet, it is not as simple as a PB&J with chips every day. Which of course, given the option, I would not choose for her anyway. I might choose it for myself, since I loooove PB&J, but I wouldn't make it for her.
Anyway....... her lunches are a bit complicated. We don't eat bread, chips, crackers, cookies, etc. All those wonderful portable things that so often find their way into lunchboxes, so I have to be crafty. This means I made up a Lunch Meal Plan for her way back in the summer, since I was up all night one night, worrying what I would possibly make for her lunch that would: a) be good, b) be portable, and c) not beg for other children to make fun of her 'weird lunch.' You know that kid in school who always had the odd, stinky food that everyone made fun of? Well, I thankfully wasn't that kid, but one of my friends was. She was a vegetarian, and she would always bring weird vegetarian food to school. Like tofurky. Or hummus-- before it was cool. Well, I didn't want my peanut to be that kid, not yet anyway. I mean, I need to get her off to a good start! She is only in pre-k for goodness sakes!
So, back to my original point....
The lunch meal plan. I thought I would come up with about 5 different choices for a lunch entree, then 5 veggie choices, then 5 fruit choices. At the beginning of each week, I ask peanut what she wants for lunch that week. She picks 2 from each list, and I buy those things, prepare them, pack them, and she gets a variety of good lunches for the week. This week it was apple chicken sausage, a gluten free waffle sandwich (I know, not Paleo, but she's a kid! She only had it one day this week anyway), mushrooms and frozen peas, and strawberries and blueberries. For next week, she picked cubed chicken and ham rollups with spinach and green pepper, tomatoes, and applesauce and frozen berries. Not so bad, eh? Peanut didn't think so either-- she apparently liked her lunches this week. That 's what she told me at least....

So, all in all, I guess I wanted to just jot down what things worked for us as far as meal planning and organization go, so if this helps anyone, or is just merely entertaining, than it has served its purpose. Well, actually its purpose was just for me to jot it down for memory's sake.....