A New Plan

Seriously. Another month has gone by and I'm not doing very well with keeping this blog going. But I'm going to try to do a better a job. It's my new month resolution. Don't laugh. I can have a June resolution if I want. It's my blog.

And I'm all about trying new things. Whatever. I have, however, begun doing meal planning, which seems to be working out fairly well for us. I tried to do meal planning while I was doing the 9-5 thing and it never worked. Not sure why other than I guess I wasn't terribly committed to it and there were too many opportunities for dining or carry out on our commute home. In retrospect, a key issue is that I wasn't very organized about my grocery shopping (so I'd plan on something for dinner only to find that I was out of a key ingredient and Schwan's would have to rescue me again). Not so much the case for me now. Don't kid yourself, though. Now I just schedule a Schwan's meal occasionally!

With a new baby and a busy Princess Pigtails the days seem to go by so quickly and I love the fact that I don't have to waste time determining the evening meal. As much I enjoyed the daily IM with my husband that went something like this:
Me: Hey. How are you?
DH: Good. You?
Me: Any thoughts on dinner?
DH: I like food. Dinner is generally the evening meal. Some people refer to it as supper...
Me: Yeah. I mean what sounds good?
DH: Not sure. Had ___________ for lunch. (Fill in the blank with whatever I was thinking sounded remotely tasty for dinner...)

So now I try to sit down and plan the evening meals for the next 3-4 weeks. I usually will just come up with a list of main courses that sound good and then schedule them so I can balance them across the weeks. I flip through my cookbooks, old Taste of Home magazines that I saved from when I was a subscriber or I stop by here or here to grab a few new recipes. It's been fun to try some new recipes and break out some good old standbys. I'm also finding it helpful to be able and look back at what we've recently as to avoid having say tacos three out of four Wednesdays in a month! Once I've scheduled the three or four weeks that I am planning, I look through my cupboards for what ingredients I need to add to my list.

Before I go shopping, I print my list from The Grocery Game and go through my coupons. It works pretty well. I definitely still need to work on the system, but preparing dinner has become less stressful. And I'm all about finding ways to reduce stress in my life.

So how about you? It's been awhile. Any June resolutions? What are you doing that's new or reducing the stress in your life?