Happy Meal Plan Monday! This week’s menu is well, different. Knowing that Meal Plan Monday was looming just around the corner, I spent a great deal of time this past weekend thinking about how I can reflect my personal journey into minimalism into my weekly meal plan posts.
So, here are the four categories I took into consideration when setting up this month’s minimalist meal plan:
Consistency: First, it’s time for a little confession. While I’ve posted weekly meal plans for the past year, and each and every plan required a myriad of conscientiousness, creativity, and care, not every plan has been as streamlined as they perhaps could have been. I want to plan, prepare, and present my family with consistent meals each day this month.
Cost: Generally, posted meal plans are based on seasonal sales cycles with attention paid to frugality rather than simple, minimalist efficiency. And yes, in recent months there have been weeks where I’d inadvertently abandoned my meal planning while I took a blogging break over this past holiday season, and due to personal crisis eating out and last-minute meals started to become second nature in my home. And you know you’re in trouble when frozen pizza become your new normal. So to say my meal planning skills have been all over the place would be the understatement of the year. While I want meal plans that focus on maintaining my monthly family food budget of $160.00 for a family of three, creating food that is healthy is just as important too. This weeks menu reflects this budget.
Power Consumption: Still another meal planning dilemma, unregulated meal prep energy consumption. I wanted to plan meals that do not require vast amounts of energy zapping stove-top and range preparation. A little food for thought: did you know that it costs an average of 18-24 cents an hour to run a gas range, 24-30 cents an hour for an electric range, 16-20 cents an hour for a microwave oven, a mere 3-5 cents an hour to run a toaster oven or convection top. With this in mind, I will be gearing this month’s meal planning to encompass dishes that utilize minimalist power consumption standards. Meals this month will utilize my toaster oven and convection stove top for all my baking and needs.
Streamlining: I was a little apprehensive about whether or not my family will be turned off of the idea of food simplicity. I quickly realized that my family love whatever I cook them, and with this in mind extreme food plan simplicity will give me an extra hour each day to devote to spending time with my family and not in my kitchen. In order to streamline my meal plans, to have a true minimalist food strategy I am going to assign each day of the week with a single meal. While I really love to cook, my foodie heart will be all the better for having invested an extra seven hours each week spending quality one-on-one time with my family.
So what does this leave me with? My new monthly minimalist meal plan will consist of default meals streamlined around items already on-hand that require less than a half hour to prepare, and cost under $5.00 per meal to create.
- To create your own minimalist meal plan, think about which dinners are your family’s favorites that don’t take too much effort to prepare.
- Consider which do you prefer to cook?
- Think comfort meals. Think simple and keep it basic.
- When creating your meal calendar this week assign one meal to each day of the week, taking into account school, work, and activity schedules. Leave your least busy days for meals that take the most amount of time to prepare.
- Leave one day open each week for creativity in the kitchen, for ethnic, slow-cooked, heavy on the ingredient, new to you from Pinterest meals for weekends or Tuesday and Thursdays when poser usage rates nationally tend to be 20-30% lower on average. Focus on energy, your own and your household power usage as well!
- Themes can be your best friend in minimalist cooking plans. Think Meatless Monday’s, Meatball Monday’s, Taco Tuesdays, Tofu Tuesday’s, Stirfry Wednesday’s, and Slow-Cooker Sunday’s!
- Adjusting two meals a week to meatless options can help lower your grocery budgets by a quarter each month. This month we will be trying to expand Meatless Monday’s to also be Meatless Thursday’s as well.
- This month breakfast, snacks, and lunches will be standardized. We will be having sandwiches for lunch, cereal and smoothies for breakfast. And yes you could do without snacks and increase lunch and breakfast portions, but I find smaller meals several times a day work better for my health, and so that’s how we will be rolling.
Monday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Three bean vegetarian chili, steamed corn, and corn bread.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Tuesday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Taco Tuesday.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Wednesday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Chicken, carrot, broccoli quinoa bake, with Crystal Light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Thursday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Bakes Zucchini, Greek yogurt, and quinoa gyros, with Crystal light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Friday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Meatball hoagies, side salad with Greek Yogurt dressing, and Crystal Light.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Saturday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snacks: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Chicken mole, served with steamed rice, corn, and Crystal Light.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
Sunday
Breakfast: Cereal with almond milk and strawberries.
Lunch: Turkey and cheese sliders, with Crystal light lemonade.
Snack: Grapes and String Cheese.
Dinner: Crockpot cheddar, chicken, and broccoli rice, with green beans and Crystal Light lemonade.
Dessert: Greek yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
This weeks meal plan cost: $26.45
I’m hoping that this streamlined plan will leave me feeling anything but restricted. With my family eating well and meal planning becoming more automated, I’m thinking of bringing back Family Game Nights! Incorporating minimalism into my weekly meal planning will help me be a few steps closer to realizing my minimalist dream. That said, if this streamlined plan doesn’t work for my family this month I can always change my plan again!
I’m ready to take back an extra hour from my day, each and every day this month. I’m ready to devote more time on creative endeavors, taking advantage of work opportunities, spending time with my family, and not slaving over a hot stove.
So, that’s what we will be having this week. I’d love to hear what’s on your menu as well!
Here’s to Monday meal plans,
