Monthly Meal Plan #1

Well, it's February 11th and I am just getting around to share how our first ever monthly meal planning is going.  As you may (or may not) remember, I mentioned how I wanted to try out monthly meal planning after I tried weekly planning for a bit and see how it goes.  Well, if you consider two weeks long enough to test something out, then you'll know why we are here!  Weekly planning was easy, almost TOO easy, so I'm testing myself and taking up the monthly meal plan process.  So far, so good!  It works out great for my husband and I.  We had a ton of the food needed on hand and we should be staying out of the grocery store for a while.  Here's my process:

While you do this, think of my mantra!!

source

First, I looked in our freezer and our deep freezer and made a list of all the meat we had on hand and all of the vegetables.  The list I ended up with was amazing, kind of embarrassing, but mostly amazing.  We had enough meat to get through the first three weeks of the month.  To think that we have been going grocery shopping the last couple weeks is a little crazy!  Oops!  I'm vowing to use up most of what we have on hand and by the end of this month I think we will have a lot more room in our freezer...that means I'll be making a BUNCH of frozen meals.  Can't wait for that...

My mom's husband got a few deer last hunting season so we had quite a bit of venison.  Venison is not something I really enjoyed eating at first, but when cooked right, I can't tell the difference.  My husband has found a few great ways to disguise the flavor for me and lets just say that bacon is now my BFF!  I know, eating venison because it's healthy is a great way to go, adding bacon may make it less healthy, but we use it more for flavor, not necessarily to eat WITH the venison.  Make sense?  I hope so.

Anyway, after I finished my list I started by finding a free, cute calendar that I could edit with our meal plan. Here is the one I used.

Here is a copy of my calendar:

Most nights are pretty easy meals.  Some require a recipe, which you can find if you follow me on Pinterest and check out my "let's eat" board.

If you would like a recipe for something and you can't find it, send me a message or comment below and I'll be happy to get it for you.  I am loving this monthly meal plan so far!