Healthier Meal Planning

Meal planning alone can be tedious, esp when trying to be healthy and make it fit your busy schedule. There are so many different "diets" out there anymore what is the right one? Well for me, I am trying to just cut the processed foods as much as possible and stick to the basics, proteins and produce.

So with that being said, we also have to try and watch what we spend, and when you start buying the "basics", it can be more costly. What?! All the sites say eating healthier is cheaper! WRONG! It depends on what your lifestyle was before, which is why I get so frustrated when people tell me it's cheaper to eat healthier because it's cheaper than fast food. I think, have you looked at what I spend money on? Because let me tell you, it's not fast food, or at least not as often as you think. Do I buy fast food, or deliver? Yes, but not multiple times a week like these sites show you. I just buy what is cheaper from the store and make it work for our family. So not buying processed foods and buying fresh foods, increases what we spend instead of saves us money.

There are ways to save, like comparing places like Costco to your regular grocery store, frozen to fresh, etc. So below is what I came up with to help us get started.

Breakfasts will consist of mainly scrambled eggs with frozen vegetable blend that sounded good and sausage or bacon.

Lunch will hopefully be left overs from dinner the night before. However just in case I purchased some ham lunch meat and swiss cheese to make sandwich wraps. I will wrap them up in a piece of butter lettuce.

After my shopping trip, I was able to work out the following meals. I don't really have recipes per say, but will list what I use and you can adjust for your family. :-)

Pork roasts ended up being on sale so I have 4 bags filled with sweet potato quarters, baby carrots, pork roast, and onions and minced garlic. I didn't add liquid to the bag, so when I dump into the crock pot I will add some chicken broth and seasoning to taste at that time.

We also purchased thin cut steaks to make grilled onion mushroom steaks, and there was enough to freeze for grilling to top salads or stir-frys.

We also bought some Italian sausage, which will last more than the two weeks I have planned, to make some spaghetti squash.

We purchased chicken breasts from Costco as well and used some to make bacon wrap chicken, and cut the rest into four freeze bags so they are ready for stir-frys.

We also bought some frozen beef patties so we can make some bacon cheese burger wraps with homemade baked sweet potato fries. 

I cannot claim that this is the healthiest way to go, but it is healthier than we have been eating and we are trying our best to stick to fresh or frozen produce with proteins. I am excited to be on this journey and share it with you all.

Happy eating!