My name is Kindra. I am an art teacher, a mother, a wife, an artist, aspiring at-home-chef and meal planner. I am constantly scouring the internet, cooking shows, cookbooks and friend's collections for delicious, mouth watering recipes. I write down found recipes and old favorites into a meal plan for the week - that way when dinner rolls around at 5pm I'm not scrounging to defrost some old chicken and throwing something together...or worse; resorting to take out.
My first year of marriage, my husband and I shopped for groceries the way we had always seen our families do it - we went to the store, threw stuff in our cart and came home. When we got home we'd put the groceries away and start to wonder "What's for dinner?" It amazed me that we could spend $150 on groceries and still have "nothing to eat". Just so we didn't have to think too hard, we'd make what we knew how to make - spaghetti, perogies, and stir-fry. Week after week. Or we'd go out for fast food. I loved to cook, but with no direction and no plan, I'd look through recipes, find something that sounded good, but I was always missing ingredients.
One day it dawned on me, that if I shopped for the ingredients in the recipe then I could actually make something new. This slowly evolved into a loose plan of meals for the week, and even with this small change, I was saving us hundreds of dollars on food each month! The more I got into it, the more I LOVED meal planning. My husband loved trying new things week after week, and of course loved that I was saving our family money. I got even more organized and made a personal grocery list. When I went back to work after maternity leave I started to realize I needed to be even more organized to get supper on the table.
Now I've got my meal planning routine down pat - my family eats wholesome, healthy meals together every night, we save TONS of money, and we never get bored with the dinner time routine.
I don't know what I'd do without my meal plans.
This blog can be helpful to you to, by:
1. Learning to meal plan and make your own meal plans
2. Using the meal plans I have posted, since I have already done all the work finding recipes, making a grocery list and testing out recipes
3. Using my meal plans, and subbing out recipes that you don't think your family will like, and putting in your own favorites
4. Finding tips to meal plan more efficiently
5. Finding delicious recipes
I hope you find this blog useful for you and your family.
I do ask that you not steal any of my photos or text. If you would like to use one of my recipes or photos on your own blog please write "Recipe by Meal Planning 101" or "Photo taken by Meal Planning 101" and then provide a working clickable link back to my original post. I work hard on my posts and appreciate the link love.
Thanks for checking things out and I hope you find some useful tips and recipes for your own meal plans.
P.S. To learn more about me, you can check out Journey's of an Artist Mom