meal planning

One of the summer rituals I will miss the most once school starts back up is the leisurely sipping of my morning coffee while I browse the internet and putter around my house. This morning I am trying to plan meals for next week. Grocery shopping and meal planning are tasks that I have never mastered and I am determined that this will be the year. The boychild is starting to open his mind to different foods (ever so slightly) so I am trying to take advantage.

One thing I have noticed is that we eat a lot of meat in this house. That isn't terribly surprising, having come from a family whose livelihood was beef, but I would like to not have quite so much in my diet. In order to do this, I'm going to be eating some form of vegetarian diet on the nights I don't have the boy. His meals center around meat, and then I throw in some veggies to get him to try. Thankfully, he loves Giada's Parmesan-Crusted Porkchops because those are quickly becoming a staple in this house. I'm thinking that next week I'll make some super easy sugar carrots.

My other strategy for food is to always have meatballs, gumbo, and Giada's Simple Tomato Sauce in manageable portions in the freezer for those days that I don't have it in me to prepare a meal from scratch. I am, of course, always looking for meal planning/grocery shopping tips ;)