Did anyone notice that I didn’t get the meal plan done and posted this last weekend? Yes, I am without a newly created meal plan for this week. Life got in the way. We had a busy weekend with fall sports, birthday parties, church activities, and laundry that was threatening to take over.
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While a meal plan does make life, especially at dinnertime, easier; it won’t be he end of the world. We will survive.
Here’s five ways to survive those weeks when you don’t get the meal plan done:
1. Use an old meal plan. I reference old meal plans when making the new ones. We certainly don’t have 365 new meals. We do a lot repeats, so why not repeat the whole thing. You can find our old meal plans here.
2. Let the kids make dinner. This is probably not going to be a meal dinner, but the kids really enjoy this. It is important for kids to learn to cook and prepare meals. Unless they plan to live with your forever or hire a personal chef, they will need to cook for themselves someday.
3. Use your freezer meals. I don’t do a lot of freezer cooking, but when we have lasagna or mancotti, I make extra and freezer it. I also buy ground beef in bulk and brown it. I then make taco meat, meat sauce and sloppy joes from some of it and freeze. It is really easy to pull those out of the freezer and defrost at the last minute.
4. Clean out the pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. This goes along with #3; use what you have. This allows you to use up stuff that needs to be used and clean out for new. Plus it saves you money by using stuff that you already have.
5. Use someone else’s meal plan. Let someone else do the work this week. There are tons of meal plans out there both paid and free. You can find some on my Pinterest Meal Planning group board.
This was not my first time not getting the meal plan done and it likely won’t be the last. I would love to hear your suggestions for getting dinner on the table when I don’t get the meal planing done.
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