Menu Monday #2

When menu planning, I like to consult a variety of sources: cookbooks, friends, the internet.  Pinterest is a great tool for finding new recipes, and one of my favorite websites is Once a Month Mom.  Her menu planning consists of freezable meals that she prepares a monthly menu on. Before I had Will, I did a few months of once a month cooking, but haven’t gotten back into it since.  It’s a little overwhelming prepping an entire month’s menu with a toddler and an infant.  Not to mention, we don’t have a deep freezer,so freezer space is limited with breastmilk taking up my entire top shelf!  So I pick and choose and whatever recipes are easily freezable, I will make double batches (or single, depending on serving size – since we are only cooking for 2.25 here). 

my shamefully disorganized freezer

Here is our menu for the week – I delved into my freezer stash as well as added to it this week:

*indicate meals I split/doubled for our freezer

Day 1 - Lentil Tacos

Day 2 - Lasagna (previously prepped/frozen dish)

Day 3 - Ginger & Cilantro Baked Tilapia with Creamy Rice and Veggie Casserole*

Day 4 - French Bread Pizza(homemade)

Day 5 - Balsamic Chicken (slow cooker)*

Day 6 – Dinner out

I don’t typically plan out what days we eat which meals.  With two kids, often times our evenings become unpredictable, so I try to remain flexible and picking and choosing from our weekly list.  Our dinner out may be on a Wednesday, or it may be Friday.  Also,I never plan a menu for Saturdays.  We are usually all over the place on Saturdays – it’s our big errand/play outside of the house day.  So many times we eat out, sometimes we pull from our freezer stash. Just depends on when/where we are!

Do you have any menu planning secrets?  I'd love to hear them!