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January 2019 Meal Planning

I have never been very good at meal planning in the past. It just never worked for me to look at the calendar and realize I’m supposed to cook tuna noodle casserole for supper when I felt like steak, potatoes, and toss salad.

It definitely doesn’t work very well when the plan says pork chops, but the family wants pizza! (Okay, that doesn’t really matter since we always want pizza!)

I realized quickly that regular meal planning plans just simply won’t work at the Foote house.

Pizza Night

Instead of assigning a meal per day, I simply write out meals with the exception of Fridays, which have become our official Pizza Night. (Everyone needs a Pizza Night!)

Taco Tuesday

Also, my eleven-year-old daughter, Sarah has recently decided that she will be the cook once per week, and has declared Tuesdays to be Taco Tuesdays. We shake it up a little by switching what goes with the tacos each week. Sarah serves rice and corn many times. Sometimes there’s beans and rice. Sometimes there’s tossed salad or just potato chips.

Even these specific days aren’t set in stone. Sometimes Friday Pizza Night gets bumped to Saturday Pizza Night, and birthdays always overrule any specified dinner.

Birthdays and Holidays

There is always an exception for birthdays and holidays. We have special meals assigned on those days, so we can easily assign those meals to those specific dates.

January Meal Planning

Our January meal plan looks something like this:

January 1st is my daughter, Olivia’s 24th birthday. She plans on coming over for homemade subs.

We will be going to my eldest son, Judson’s house for dinner on the 14th to celebrate his 34th birthday.

January 20th is my grandson, Dominic’s 6th birthday. We will be having something special going on for him that day.

January 31st is my daughter, Judy’s 16th birthday! We will be having a birthday dinner celebration.

January 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th all fall on Fridays. Those four nights fall on Pizza Nights! Yay! (Throw in a toss salad, and it’s one of my favorite meals!)

Pizza nights and birthday celebrations take up eight days of January. I love not having to wonder what we will be doing for supper on those nights.

Stocked Pantry

I have everything in my pantry to make a saucy dish each week, including things like spaghetti, goulash, or chili, so that will cover four nights of meals.

Mac ‘n Cheese

My 18-year-old daughter, Sophia absolutely loves to make homemade mac ‘n cheese, so we will plan on two nights of that this month.

Wintertime Meals

Wintertime equals a lot of soup and stews at our house, so I will plan on four nights of homemade soup and sandwiches, or homemade stew and homemade biscuits. (Are you seeing a theme of homemade here? Most of our meals and snacks are homemade.)

We will have two nights of pork from the pigs we raised ourselves, and two nights of a chicken dish. We will also do four nights of breakfast for dinner, and that adds up to 31 nights of dinners.

I don’t rigidly stick to this plan, and I definitely cancel whole dinners and eat up left-overs when available, or use the left-overs from one meal to make an entirely new meal.

Having a Friday night Pizza Night and Tuesday night Taco Night is fairly new at our house, but I love the fact that I never have to think about what’s for dinner on those nights. It just simplifies things and make life a little easier. I like that, but you don’t have to have any assigned nights. I didn’t for years. Just have a list of meals that you have the ingredients for already, or can easily and frugally pick up, and you are ready for a new month. How do you make meal planning work in your home?

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