Where I Give You My Super Secret Meal Planning Strategy...Because I Was Told To

For quite some time Life with Baby Donut has been asking me to give the details about my meal planning strategy. In particular, she was interested in knowing more about my recipe binders.

The binders started actually as one binder, and it was used to simply hold recipes I tore out of magazines. For some time, I had boxes of food magazines with flags attached. Shockingly they weren't used. Also shockingly, I had zero room for them.

So I just tore them all out and stuffed them in the binder.

Shockingly, them just sitting in the binder also didn't lead to much success in meal planning. So I finally got it together and organized the binder by food type (poultry, beef, pasta, etc).

Once I had the organization, I felt liberated! I started reading more and more magazines and filing more and more recipes and all of a sudden the one binder was overflowing. It was challenging to do meal planning for different things: when I wanted to have a healthy meal versus when we were entertaining or just wanted to indulge a little.

And thus my idea was born: I would arrange one "healthy" binder and one "entertaining" binder. I defined healthy as 400 calories or under.

My process goes like this:

Find a binder. I really like a bigger 3-ring binder, and I think it's important for it to have pockets for some items that won't do well with three-hole punches.

Make your own categories. I chose to organize mine by type of meat because more often than not, I look in our freezer to see what we have extra. You may wish to sort by entree, time, slow cooker recipes, whatever floats your boat.

Make tabs for that category. All I used to make the tabs were manila folders that I tore in half.  
As I go through magazines, I yank out recipes and put them in a folder I keep in the binder until I can organize them.

My Folder 'O Recipes

My "Tabs"

I punch holes in them with my handy dandy three-hole puncher and VIOLA!

Did I mention I need a new binder? I kind of overstuffed this one. So many healthy recipes, YAY!

Then when I am ready to meal plan, I go through the recipes and just put them here on my handy dandy recipe holder (which, incidentally, comes from the husband and I kind of want to replace it).

I have to say, our three-week meal plan was pretty ideal. We purchased all of the non-perishable items and then just shopped for the fresh stuff the week of. Game-changer, people! We've wasted significantly less food and while we certainly went out to eat a few times in there, for the most part knowing we had a meal more or less waiting for us at home made a difference.

One new thing I did with the meal plan was also pick a veggie side. The Sister Wife and I were discussing that we would be more willing to eat veggies more often if they just tasted like something. So I can declare success with spinach and pine nuts; Parmesan broccoli; and green beans and bacon. Amazingly, each item was pretty healthy b/c the toppings weren't overdone, but it gave them a lot of flavor.

Peppers with Parmesan and Thyme

So that's it! How do you plan your meals and/or organize your recipes?

Planning Your Present

Recently posts from Motherese and Tenaciously Yours have gotten me thinking about time management and paper calendars.

Right now, I have three calendars. We have a family one, a wall calendar with important appointments and social events. Then I have a calendar on my phone that I sync with my work Outlook. And most recently, I moved to a paper planner-style calendar.

I've always adored daily planners. Really, I've just adored the act of planning, of imposing my organization on life. The idea that a post-it can mean the difference between my mortgage being paid and getting a rather unfriendly second notice.

I need to see my life in living color.

So I went through Amazon and got overwhelmed. Like Motherese, I am a tactile person. I need to see and feel something as intimate as a planner. So I decided instead to hit Office Max.

I immediately got overwhelmed. What did I want in a planner? What was I trying to accomplish? I knew I didn't need a full daily calendar because I wasn't going to plan life hourly. I still use Outlook for all of my work projects, a necessity. Most of my weekly hours are taken up with those meetings, and so there's no need for me to map that out.

But I wanted enough room to write my other appointments and notes, so a monthly calendar wouldn't do.

I narrowed it down to weekly planners, wire-bound because I like to lay it on my desk or coffee table when I'm working. And it's easier for me to write when it's perfectly flat.

Nobody was more shocked than what I came home with. It's sort of a running joke around these parts.

I picked The Day-Timer Mom Planner.

Yup, the Mom Planner.

I tried to avoid it. I did. I didn't want those calendars with color coded stickers identifying who is doing what. Honestly, Wee 'Burb's days are mostly as stable as mine. She's in daycare a good chunk of it. She's hardly filling a calendar full of Girl Scout meetings or anything at 21 months.

But this planner is simple. It's got enough room to write. It divides days into morning, noon, and night for better organization.

But my favorite part? The part that tickled my organizational fancy so deeply that I was able to look past the Mom moniker?

A MEAL PLANNER!

Okay, you can't see it that well, but on the top of the right page has space for meal planning.

I've gotten away from meal planning over the summer. It's just so damn hot, more often than not we do frozen meals on the stovetop or grill whatever we have laying around.

But imposing this level of organization was more than exciting for me. It inspired me to get back on the meal-planning bandwagon.

Also? For some reason this planner started in July! So I actually was paying for a calendar that wasn't half useless. Double score!

The official Daytimer site has the planners listed as $22 but I believe I payed about $15. Either way, it was worth it for me.

So spill it. How do you organize your life? Right now I color-code my calendar. Work deadlines (including freelance) are in blue with green highlighting, appointments (doctor, hair, etc) are in red, and fun social stuff is in purple with a pink highlighter. And it's already covered in post-it reminders. The only thing that makes me happier than color-coding is lots of post-its.