Staying Organized: Meal Planning!
My passion second to photography is cooking! I just love it. So much so I am the nerd who takes cookbooks out of the library, copies out the recipes and has a MASSIVE 3inch binder to house them all. I am slightly addicted.
But I am most excited about cooking HEALTHY meals. When I started eating healthy again to knock off a few of those extra baby lbs and to just be healthier overall, I was so discouraged. A lot of the healthy dinners tasted like nothing. Just blah. No flavour. I was determined to find something else.
So I have started making my own recipes, or modifying the ones I have found on Pinterest! Pinterest has made meal planning SO much easier! I have been planning out our dinners since we first got married and got tired of running to the store every night at 5 because I had just gotten home from teaching and was panicking about what to make for dinner, then realizing we didn’t have any of the ingredients for what we felt like. We would then be at the grocery store while hungry, and without a doubt a bag of chips, some oreos and ALWAYS some chocolate would find it’s way into the basket as well.
Not only was it unhealthy but MAN was it expensive! Those little trips every day or so added up fast!
So now to stay organized, to save time, and to help us eat healthier as a family, I sit down every Sunday night and plan our dinners for the next 7 nights. Then Monday we shop! :)
To help get you started on meal planning, here are my FAVOURITE 5 (okay 6!) Pinterest dinners we have on a regular basis! (I’ve also included the changes I have made to each one below the photo! Cause I always make changes. haha Drives Marco nuts when he tries to make dinner!)
1. Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup
This one we have almost weekly. To change the recipe, I add the green pepper still but also add in half an orange pepper too, as well as a few cups of spinach. I don’t put the tortilla’s on top, but I do top it with a dollop of fat free sour cream, and half a diced avocado :)
This one we discovered last summer and OHMYGOSH. So good. Even better on the BBQ. We can’t find GIANT zucchini like this, so we buy the smaller ones and cut them into long slices. We have made a variety of them! With ground turkey, or ham and pineapple! They are so delicious!
3. Lasagna Stuffed Spaghetti Squash
I hate spaghetti squash. So does my husband. We LOVE this. They were amazing during the Fall on a rainy day! To change it up, I used way less oil, and I lightened up on the cheese as well. I LOVE fresh basil, so we used quite a bit more of that, and garlic than the recipe called for. These were great heated up the next day too as leftovers for lunch!
I almost didn’t try this one because it sounded so weird. It throws me everytime I make it because it doesn’t look right, but it’s a HUGE hit. Even the kids love it! The changes I make are more spinach! I also have added different veggies in as well! Peppers work great! I also switched out the zucchini for eggplant once and that worked great too! (although Marco wasn’t a huge fan haha)
5. Shrimp with Avocado Mango Salsa
Our son would have shrimp everynight for dinner if he could. And during the summer we have tinfoil/hobo dinners atleast once or twice a week. Throwing them on the BBQ is just the best! The changes in this one, is I am not a huge fan of couscous, so we subbed in quinoa! (also to make it Gluten Free!) I also used less oil in this one too!
This one we just had last week but was a HUGE hit and already I’m planning on making it next week! We made them without the buns and just ate them as is with a side of smashed potatoes :) (okay maybe 7 recipes) The changes I made, were I used fresh tomatoes rather than sundried (I removed the seeds, and diced up finely one whole vine tomato). I also used fresh sauteed spinach rather than frozen. And I used Panko breadcrumbs rather than regular ones. SO YUMMY!
What are your favourite Pinterest WINS for dinner?! I am always on the look out for new ones! :)
** Follow me on Pinterest HERE!
