4 Weeks of New Recipes, How to Meal Plan

I've been married 2.5 years and I have about 25 recipes that I make all the time. Every now and then I try something new but I'm ready for a lot of new!! I decided to make a new recipe every day for 4 weeks. That's 28 new recipes!! That's a lot to simply look up and hope I have the ingredients for.

Good thing I know how to meal plan. I don't do it very often. Not sure why because every time I do I love it!! When I was pregnant, student teaching, and working, I planned out 2 months at a time, shopped for 2 weeks at a time and dinner was never a worry for me.

An alternate to meal planning if being organized scares you is to make a list of everything you know how to make and then store most of the ingredients. I always have chicken, beef, pasta, spices, potatoes, onions, and cans of beans and tomatoes. Then at the store I pick up sour cream or cream cheese and I can make almost all of the aforementioned 25 recipes.

But for this challenge, I need a plan!

Hurry and name (or find) 28 new recipes. It's hard, isn't it? Could you name just 4 though? Probably. I'll let you in on my meal planning trick: Pick 7 categories, one for each day of the week and then pick 4 recipes that go under it. Ex: Mexican- enchiladas, tacos, burrito, pork salad, etc.

These are my categories:

Mondays: Soups

• Minestrone
• Saugage totelini soup

Tuesdays: Breakfasts

• Dinosaur Eggs
• breakfast casserole (potatoe, bacon eggs, cheese)

Wednesdays: Chicken

• Cilantro Lime Chicken
• Buffalo Chicken

Thursdays: Sandwiches

• Sweet Potato and Black Bean Wraps
• Waffle Iron Sandwiches

Fridays: Beef

• Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf

Saturdays: Pastas

• Creamy Pasta with Spinach and Tomatoes
• Lasagna Roll ups

Sundays: Casseroles

• Turkey Veggie Casserole
• Chicken cordon bleu casserole

(I usually do this on a calendar because I keep my planner out all day. Just do whatever works best for you.)

When you meal plan it's better to over plan. I usually have a day where I just don't feel like cooking or we need to clean out the fridge. When I was in school taking a sandwich to lunch every day I had a designated left overs day. As a mom at  home I usually eat left overs for lunch. But the way I set up my meal plan gives me the ability to cook every night or to resort to left overs on the days I can't bring myself to get cooking.

I only posted a few of my recipes on here because it was taking too much time. I shopped for 2 weeks at a time, it was great!! I ended up spending the same amount at the store as I did when I was going once a week, so I just cut my grocery bill in half!! My 2nd two weeks I used an real life cookbook for recipes instead of the internet. I'm excited to see how they go!!