Hi everyone! I love fall! With it comes crisp cool air, falling leaves, and warm dinners! Here’s my Monthly Meal Plan for September 2011. I made a few changes to some of the meals and snacks, hope you enjoy!
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Tip: If the documents won’t open in your browser, just RIGHT click on the download link you want and select “SAVE LINK AS”, you will be prompted to save the file to your computer.
Hope you have a wonderful September, and meal planning is off your “to-do” list!
What kind of smoothies do you make?
Well, I’m kind of lazy when it comes to smoothies, so we just buy the ready to blend Jamba or Yoplait ones from Costco and add milk or juice! But its basically just a combo of frozen fruit, frozen yogurt and milk.
Using Erica’s ideas (I think I may be an erica-wannabe!), I’ve started doing smoothies once or twice a week for my own kids. I buy frozen fruit from Walmart or Costco, and add vanilla or strawberry yogurt (I buy the big tubs, MUCH cheaper), and add milk. Doing it this way is extremely economical! I make them individually for my kids because 1) My blender is small and 2) I can make a dairy free version for my allergic child. I just use soy milk and soy yogurt and she loves it! And bonus 3) my picky three year old can request no blackberries and it’s not a problem! Lol.
Excellent idea! Thanks for sharing!
We make smoothies as well, so I was looking to see the differnt kind that are out there. We basically do what Sarah does except I through in a handfull of spinach to sneak some veggies in !
We also rock the smoothies in this house..spinach doesn’t have a taste in smoothie so I sneak as well but I also add probiotics in each one. Also we love peanut butter banana smoothies and I add cocoa powder and sometimes to be a little more filling I’ll add in quick oats and they blend up like a champ. The girls LOVE the chocopeanana shakes..lol
Really interesting to read. Thank you for linking the recipies – that Mongolian Beef one is being added to our menu. Monkey will eat broccoli any way he can get it. You serve a great deal more variety than we do.
Monkey’s current favourite is hot sausage in fresh tomato sauce served on “twirly” pasta. I remove the casing and make the sausage into meatballs then cook them in the sauce for three minutes in the microwave oven – much tidier and then pour over the cooked pasta. The oils from the sausage repalce the need to add butter or olive oil to the pasta. We also often saute slow cooked onions and peppers and add them in too. Great way to get rid of left over veg.
I am new to your blog and I just love it! So many amazing resources!! Thank you!
Thank you!!! I am totally taking your wonderful meal calender and making a few adjustments to make it for my meal calendar!!! You are amazing! xoxo
Thank you so much for the inspiration to plan a month at a time. Using your menu as a guide is really helping me get started!
How do you plan a month at a time and still be able to shop the weekly sales? Please share your strategy 🙂
If you’ve already posted about this could you point me to the post? Thanks so much!
Hi Jennifer,
I’m not the best at doing the weekly sales, I used to do Grocery Game, but haven’t for awhile as I ended up with a bunch of stuff we didn’t like LOL!
Anyway, I plan for the month, but usually shop weekly. That way my produce doesn’t go bad and so forth. The other thing with a some of produce like peppers, onions, you can chop em up and put them in Ziploc baggies, then freeze! Then when it’s time to use, just pull out a baggie and voila! No chopping required!
I’ve pretty much been duplicating Erica’s meal plans, except I have both a morning snack and an afterschool snack. Okay, I’ve done this all of two weeks now. But this month, I plan on buying all that I can right away (a costco trip, walmart trip, and a whole foods trip), except buy 1-2 weeks out on the produce I’ve even listed my snacks by what fruit needs to be eaten first. 🙂 Then in a week or two I will go buy more bread, milk, and produce. I’m really hoping this will cut down on the grocery runs for “two things” that ends up costing me $40!!
And thanks for the reminder about freezing the veggies. I usually do this but when I made my list, I forgot that I could double up on the onions and green peppers and the like. 😉
I’ve been loving the meal plans, and have created my own based on yours. I include an afternoon and a morning snack on my meal plan. It has made it SO easy to shop based on what we’ll eat, versus buying snacks and using them in the first week of the month!! A little more effort beforehand, but not having to answer “What’s for dinner?” Priceless!
My only request or comment is for the recipes on your site: any chance you could make them more printer friendly? I have a wordpress plugin on my blog and it makes it pretty easy to enter in and print off recipes. When I go to print your recipes, they are like 20 pages long because it prints off the menus too! Yikes. Just a thought!! But seriously, thank you so much for your amazing printables–all of them! You are a talented, wonderful woman on a mission!!
Sarah,
Do you have the plug in you use? I’d be happy to use make them more printer friendly! I’m a newbie at WP so still working on it!
PS – Can you tell me what plugin you use to get the first post in full on your home page, and everything else just excerpts? I can’t find anything that seems to work for that!!
Hi Sarah,
My husband did it for me, he said he had to add a new function to my functions.php file. I’ll see what he did and email you with the info!
Love this! I too dislike answering, “What’s for dinner?”! This will make shopping a breeze! I will definitely be using this with a few minor changes. Thank you!!
Thank you so much for the inspiration! Doing the shopping is now so much easier and my family and I look forward to our meals so much more now!
I love this! I just started planning meals monthly too. I have 2 questions for you… 1. I feel like a slacker, none of your breakfast options are cereal, do u make all your breakfast foods that morning I.e- french toast, pancakes? And 2nd with your lunch and snack choices for the day. Do All of your kids like everything you have planned for the day? And do u supplement to that 1 child something different if they don’t like what you are serving?
Hi Danielle!
1. Sometimes we do have cereal instead of a hot breakfast, but I find that my kids are usually hungry in about 10 minutes after cereal, so I only do that if I’m desperate :o)
2. No, all my kids don’t always like everything. I try to put things on the menu that i know will be liked, but sometimes it doesn’t go over. Depending on the reason I’ll supplement for 1, but I don’t do that often just because they I’d be making 4 different things! I kind of have a rule in my house that you eat what you are served and be thankful for it!
Danielle,
(Apparently I love this thread!) I was also shocked at the lack of breakfast cereal on Erica’s menu! But I hate sending my kids to school on breakfast knowing that I’M hungry an hour after cereal, so I thought I’d give it a try. I do cereal on Monday mornings though to make my life easier. 🙂 I use frozen pancakes, frozen waffles, and I make a double batch of french toast and freeze the leftovers–great Saturday/Sunday project! Then it’s just a matter of popping everything in and out of the toaster as we get ready. As far as the smoothies go, it’s a little more effort, but goes about as fast as my kids picking out their cereal. If you have a big blender, just throw everything in, and you’re ready to go. You can even FREEZE those and be the world’s best mom for giving your kids popsicles in the morning!! Lol!
From one slacker mom to another!! -Sarah
P.S. – Erica, do you mind my hijacking this thread? Haha. Also, do you mind if I put my version of your menu up on my blog? It’s *very* similar to yours, so I’d give you credit it for the fabulous idea. I’ve switched around the menu to suit my needs, added some of our favorite meals, etc. And of course I linked some of your fabulous recipes onto the menu as well! Let me know. Thanks. 😉