Yep, you KNOW something’s up when I’m meal planning! Why now you wonder?
- 2011 is here and I know that in order to go grain-free successfully for a week or two (longer?), I need to have a good plan, along with some good low-carb foods in the house.
- As I told you recently, I start my new job on Monday, and know I need to get my poop in a group so I’m not rushing home and trying to figure out what’s for dinner at the last minute.
- I’ve wanted to get better about this for a while, but since I’ve always been home every day, planning dinner first thing in the morning was working good enough for us. I always knew things could run more smoothly with a plan ahead of time, though, but I thought that sitting down to plan out our meals would be too time-consuming…
Guess what? It only took me about 20 minutes last night and I had next week’s meals figured out, a few breakfast, lunch & snack ideas included, and all low-carb to boot!
Here’s how I did it…
- I went through my list of low carb ideas and plugged the meals that sounded good into each day, planning crock pot meals or fast-food meal ideas for the two days I work (also nice for nights Kal has class or the other kids have activities). For breakfast, lunch and snack ideas I just wrote a few down to use whenever I feel like them.
- If you’re not doing low-carb, you could just go through my recipe archive for loads of Real Food ideas.
- Or make your own family favorite meals list to pull from. Read there about why I love having this list handy.
- You’ll also want to check out this list of fast food meal ideas for crazy nights to help you avoid the temptation to hit a drive-thru.
- Read how others do their meal planning, lots of great tips here!
- Why I love keeping my freezer and pantry stocked, and the kitchen gadgets that save time and allow me to make food ahead!
THE VERDICT - I don’t know yet if I’ll post the meal plan every week, but here’s this week’s low-carb meal plan:
- Monday: Low carb chicken chili – this one can go into the crock pot in the morning (takes 5 minutes!) and I’ll get home to a yummy smelling house and dinner all DONE.
- Tuesday: Steak and veggie stir-fry – I’ll cut some round steak up into strips (not the most tender choice for this type of meal, but that’s all I have in the freezer and I won’t be at the farm to get more this week), and fry it in my favorite new pan with some bacon grease or ghee and lots of veggies (carrots, broccoli, peppers, not sure what else, I’ll have to look at the store and see what I can find organic), and then make some sort of yummy sauce. (I’ll throw together a few different ingredients and post it if it’s any good.) If I wasn’t low-carbing I’d probably serve it with rice. Most likely I’ll end up making grilled cheese for the kids, I don’t know if they’ll go for this…
- Wednesday: Tacos – everyone loves these. I’ll make mine a taco salad. You could make the traditional tacos using beef or do chicken tacos.
- Thursday: Burgers (I’ll have mine w/o the bun, which I do most of the time anyway, even if I’m not low-carbing it) and I’ll probably cut up some fruit for Kent & the kids, and then also make a Caprese salad. (This is no where near as good in the wintertime when the veggies aren’t fresh, but it’s a good low-carb salad that feels like a treat.)
- Friday: Cheesy chicken. Not sure what to have with this yet… I get so sick of coming up with new side dishes, don’t you? Maybe I’ll make some garlic green beans or fried cabbage…
- Breakfasts: Omelets or just fried eggs, sausage balls, or bacon
- Lunch and snacks to fill in with when needed: Kale chips (can’t wait to make these again!), meat & veggie roll-ups (I’ll post this soon), celery & pb, an onion crispy fried in ghee (yum, I love this low-carb snack, I know it’s weird!)
Now I just need to look over my list again and make some notes:
- When to pull the meats out of the freezer.
- When to make the foods that will take a little time to pull together.
- What to get at the store.
Feel free to share your favorite meal planning tips, or even your meal plan for the week, especially if you’ll be watching your carbs as part of the Weight Loss and Wellness Adventure! (More ideas for low-carb meals will be coming up this week!)
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m so glad you are doing this. I’ve been looking at low-carb, but so many of the recipes are filled with processed junk and chemical substitutes.
Thanks, Kelly! I’ve been trying to figure out if an online meal planner would be helpful. I plan a post on it soon… I hoped to have it in order before school started back up but oh well (sigh). I’ve gotten a few tips to look into and if any of your readers know of any that they like, that would be wonderful. I hesitated joining Justsaymmm when I read their privacy statement.
I’m printing out your low-carb menu ideas. Two days ago I decided: no more potato chips!! It hasn’t been quite as bad as I thought it would be
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I’m going to start meal planning too! I have found Living Cookbook to be an awesome tool . . . I just need to use it again. Now that I’m not traveling as much I have to actually cook LOL.
Kelly,
Love your blog:) My husband is in school right now so alot of times I’ll make up a simple bacon, egg and cheese quiche because that is so easy to just heat up in the mornings for a quick breakfast. I don’t eat grains so I try to keep thinking of side dishes too:) I made the brussels sprout gratin from Kimberly last nite and it was really good.
Sounds great! I am sure that the reason I fail at low carb so often is my lack of meal planning. When you fail to plan, you plan to fail!
Linda Sue has a lot of great low carb recipes (some obviously aren’t ideal for real food eating but it’s easy to skip over those): http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/recipes.html . I love her white castle hamburger pie (not using the seasoning packet) but I usually use more eggs. The taco bake is really good too. There are some recipes I used to make large batches of and freeze in serving size portions so I could just heat up in the toaster oven. I think I will have to start having big bake and freeze days again
I hope this works out well for you Kelly. I’m *still* trying to find good lunch options I can take to work which do not necessarily require heat and can hopefully be made up the night before. Cutting down on even homemade sourdough would be a nice thing.
I have been using a great, free, menu planning website. It’s called Mealfire. I enter the recipes that I want to cook rather than having to pick from some that are already loaded. It has an easy capture tool if you are using any of the major recipe sites, like allrecipes.com, food network, recipe zaar, etc., so I don’t have to type them in by hand and I can edit and change the recipe to suit real food if I need to. If I feel like it I can plan a month or more in advance and I can create shopping lists for the days I want to get groceries for so I don’t forget anything. I need to get on the low carb bandwagon, but I haven’t ever done it before so I don’t know what I need to not use. Obviously extra bread, most of my breakfast food is oatmeal, granola, pancakes, that sort of thing should be out. I guess I need to focus on new ways to eat eggs for breakfast and smoothies. The vegetables are the ones that throw me. Are most vegetables okay carb-wise or are there only some I should be focusing on? Just guessing I would probably cut out potatoes, white for sure, but what about sweet? Can I still do winter squash, or is that high in carbs too? Like I said, this is most of the reason I have never tried to go low-carb before.
I looooooooove meal planning and I actually didn’t do it this past week.
I’ve been too tired and sick (9 weeks pregnant) to want to eat anything, and I never know what I’ll be able to take. And I miss it! I need to get myself back in order too because the “What’s for dinner?” question bugs me Every. Single. Day. And worse, breakfast and lunch too because my husband’s been home over the holidays. I can’t get away with “cheese cubes, apple slices, and leftover turkey” when he’s around. Oops. Oh well…soon I will do better!!
I find it difficult to menu plan for the week on a busy schedule. But it would be a good habit to get into!
I wouldn’t even begin to know how to cook without carbs. How do you make a stir-fry without rice to go with it? What do you do for simple lunches to take to work if sandwiches are out? Does this also mean no potatoes? Soup with no noodles…..?
While I’m not specifically participating in this challenge, I do think it’s interesting. I’ve been meaning for a while to cut back on carbs so maybe I will tag along for this little part of the adventure and see how it goes.
Mary,
Monday I’m posting more menu plans along with what I really ate last week so that will give you more ideas. (With extra veggies and meat you don’t even miss the rice in a stir-fry!)
Kelly
We too have been trying to implement a plan to save money, time, and cut back on the unhealthy food. DH & I have been using the Walmart low carb for 2 plan from E-Mealz.com and are loving it so far! Lots of fresh veggies, and easy good meals. Hope that helps some out there that don’t have time to plan like me!:)