Live. Laugh. Love.

When I plan meals and compile my grocery list each week, I have a very specific method of getting organized. I start with the Meijer grocery ad to see what's on sale. (When writing things down from the ad, I have a weird obsession with writing the sale price beside the item on my list so I make sure to get that price.) Then I go through the general list of perishables and pantry items that I always keep stock of to see what needs replacing:

milk, eggs, butter, yogurt, chunk cheese, shredded cheese, Parmesan cheese, buttermilk, natural pb, tortillas, large variety of LOTS of fresh fruit and veggies, frozen veggies and fruit, chicken stock, canned beans (black, Great Northern and refried black at least), rolled oats, all purpose and whole wheat flour, white and brown sugar, agave, honey, syrup, variety of pastas, jarred marinara sauce, canned diced tomatoes, canned tomato paste, dried fruit (raisins, apricots, cherries), bread, pitas, English muffins, variety of nuts (walnuts, almonds, peanuts, pecans), other baking needs (soda, powder, salt, spices, quick-rise and active-dry yeast, vanilla extract, almond extract), bread crumbs, brown rice, herbs and a variety of oils and other "condiments" such as vinegars (balsamic, white wine, red wine), grainy mustard, etc.

I may be overlooking something(s), but that list is off the top of my head. A lot of that stuff keeps for awhile so it's not that I'm buying all of that often. But definitely the milk, fresh fruits and veggies are a weekly thing. With the above list of things on hand, I have a great start to a wide variety of meals and plenty of in-a-hurry lunch ideas.

Next, I make a quick mental run-through of toiletries/cleaning/laundry/paper/personal items we may need and add those as necessary. Actually, Craig and I keep a running list the minute we get home from one grocery shopping trip until the next with anything we run out of that's a necessity. So that is super helpful in keeping our shopping trips to usually just once a week, not including a trip to the farmer's market.

For meals, I have several ways of deciding what to plan. I'm always planning a week in advance so I look at the calendar to see if we have any commitments to plan around. I often ask Craig if there's anything he's in the mood for... which is usually unanswered or given the stock answer of "steak" or "taco salad". I look at what meat (if any) we have portioned in the freezer if ever I buy in bulk. If a certain type of meat is on sale, I might work around that. But often, I am browsing cookbooks, magazines and websites enough to have new ideas that sound good. When all else fails, I refer back to a list I keep in my planner of our family's favorite meals. I should use that word loosely because Craig and Will have very limited "favorites"... but I do have a piece of legal paper with the front and half of the back covered in meals that I/we enjoy. I think making a list like that is helpful to every family when you get stuck in a rut of "what should we have for dinner?" One other thing I'll do is keep Post-It notes in my planner if I randomly decide that something sounds good that we haven't had in awhile. That way, when I get to making the grocery list, I'm not stuck thinking "what was that I wanted to make the other day?"

Okay, back to writing the list... I also consider weekend breakfasts, packed lunches, any baking and any special foods/recipes I want to try. So now that I have all this in mind, I gather my recipes and add all needed items to the list. I also quickly jot each of the names of the recipes at the top, right corner of my grocery list so that I remember what it is I'm planning to actually prepare. This helps while shopping, but especially once I've got all this new food home and am trying to remember what I had planned to cook.

Craig and I have been taking turns doing the grocery shopping since he's been off work and that is such a surprising development, as he never did the shopping in the past. So when I make up the list for him, it has to be VERY specific with size, quantity, brand and location in the store. :)

Side note: despite my complaints of Craig's dinner time pickiness, he has gotten to be very good about preparing healthy breakfasts and lunches for the kids on the days they're home together. He makes sure to tell me each of the food groups he's covered in each meal, i.e. "they had x for grain, x for vegetable, x for protein", etc. It's pretty cute. He has become quite the stay-at-home dad these days. :)

So one of us typically always grocery shops on Thursday evenings. I always take my reusable grocery bags, which I find to be so much easier to handle than plastic. And surprisingly, I've gotten to where I never forget them. An average week of groceries (including toiletries, any laundry or dish soap, paper products, sometimes diapers, etc.) is about $110-120. A good week would be under $100. An outstanding week would be in the $75-80 range. Anything over $130 (which usually happens around holidays or when we coincidentally hit the bottom of the laundry soap, garbage bags AND shampoo all at the same time - haha) is pretty bad.

So all of that information brings me to this: another week's worth of meals! Sometimes it gets old and I want to just take a break. But most of the time I enjoy it.

Here's what's on our menu this week:

Will and I bought a large butternut squash at the farmers market a few weeks ago (those things keep for a long time!) so this week's meals are strongly influenced by the need to use that up. LOL

1) Saturday - Whole wheat oat pancakes and tropical lassis for breakfast. Sweet Autumn Chicken with roasted squash and apples for dinner. I LOVE this and the chicken is super versatile. Craig obviously didn't eat the squash and apples so I made him a honey mustard dipping sauce instead. But this chicken would be excellent on a salad or with Mexican flavors too.

It's almost a complete meal as is, but I threw in the last of the carrot pineapple muffins for a whole grain side.

2) Sunday - Family reunion for lunch. Soph and I had leftovers for dinner while Craig and Will went to Craig's parents house for ribs I think?

3) Monday - Golden winter soup! This picture is pre-blending with the squash, potatoes, leeks and stock:

Okay, so the squash, apples and carrot muffins are kind of the underlying tones this week. What can I say? It was a large squash, apples are on sale, and the flavors pair well together.

4) Tuesday - School lunch for Will: grape tomato & mozzarella kabobs, clementine, bell pepper slices, sunflower seeds and almonds. He gets SO excited about kabobs! I'm going to keep expanding on them because it seems he would eat just about anything on a stick! LOL

For dinner, we had a quick throw-together meal before heading to Bass Pro to see Santa. I think the kids had meatloaf from the freezer and I made another one of my favorite salads made with green leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, tiny dices of mozzarella, white beans and a dressing of basil pesto and olive oil. (Scroll down on that link to Simple White Bean Salad.)

5) Wednesday - chipotle tamale pie with tossed salad, homemade dressing and roasted cauliflower. Dang. Looking at this picture now... that looks like a LOT of food... and I have no problem eating all of it. ;)

Kids plates:

6) Thursday - Craig was the special helper at preschool on Thursday so I made another batch of carrot pineapple muffins for him to take for snack. Then he was able to bring Will home to eat lunch so I didn't have to pack him a lunch. I had a pretty stellar week of packed lunches myself though. Maybe I'll start adding my packed lunches to these posts. I've been eating very well lately. Dinner was leftovers + pumpkin pie popsicles. Always a favorite with the kiddos.

7) Friday - ham, veggies and applesauce + avocado smoothies for the kids. Again, another favorite. Sophie drank so much of it!

So... question of the week? Who does the grocery shopping in your home? How often do you shop?

Happy eating!

Will's preschool class had a guest visit from a local police officer. He's actually the father of one of Will's classmates and he brought each of the kids a plastic police officer hat and pretend badge. So our family had some fun role playing the other night... :)

Craig and Will were having "street races" with Will's matchbox trucks.

But some officer woman had to put a stop to this illegal behavior and ask for their license, registration and proof of insurance. Will's holding up his pretend license that I made him a long time ago. You can't see the notebook and pen I'm jotting "notes" in, but Will thought all this pretend play was super fun!