Meal Planning- Values behind the plan

When I decided to make the meal plan to end all meal plans, it turned into a "project." I started out with a stack of pages ripped from magazines (this was before Pinterest) and a list of values and goals that I had for our meals.

I wanted our Meal Plan to:

• Save Time and Money: I needed meals that fit together like a puzzle, with overlapping ingredients.
• Keep us out of the dinner time rut, and introduce my children's pallets to a variety of flavors and textures.
• I also wanted to make sure that we planned to have some of those dinners we love, but take a bit of extra planning and work, in addition to meals that you can throw in the crock pot in ten minutes and then get on with your day.
• I wanted really healthful meals that packed in the vegetables. My kids tend to eat more vegetables when they are part of the main meal. If the veggies are on the side...they seem like an option or separate entity...rather than just being food that equals dinner.
• I wanted our dinners to be enough and then some. Where we could use the left over dinner as lunch the next day, or have enough where dinner today can become a freezer meal on a crazy day.
• Most of all, I wanted this Meal Plan to turn into Our Family Recipe Book. I am hoping that these meals will someday evoke memories and warm feelings about times we spent around the table as a family. I wanted meals that my kids could grow up with and become their favorites.
• I also wanted to have a group of meals that I can practice over the years and become an excellent cook. More over, I want my kids to grow up helping to cook these meals. When my children turn eleven or twelve my goal is that they would start working their way through the cook book and master every one of the recipes. The goal is to have the kids be able to not only help with dinner, but cook it all by themselves.
• Having a book of recipes also helps my husband jump in and help with the cooking. If he has well written directions in front of him, he is willing to help me with dinner. Sometimes I really need his help!!
• A little while after I started the Meal Plan Project, we discovered our children had severe food allergies. Shortcuts and frozen meals were not even an option. I had to put together Gluten Free, Dairy Free and Egg Free dinners. I had to either adapt recipes that I already had or find new ones on the internet. Out of kindness, it was also preferable to my husband to be able to add some dairy to his meals separately...because he wasn't ready to give it up!

That was a tall order...and it took some time to organize my thoughts and to start laying out the meals week by week. The end product was well worth it!!