When I finally buckle down and do it, meal planning saves me so much time! For a while I was creating a new menu each week but with the baby coming I decided to make a simple one week menu that we could just repeat for a while. This one has fairly simple meals that are family favorites and I don’t have to think too hard about making them.
I’ve planned breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an afternoon snack. Now to be quite honest, some weeks we stick to this better than others. Most mornings I just have the kids get up and make peanut butter toast for breakfast. If we have leftovers I often opt to use those up and skip cooking another meal. Of course I do things like forget to thaw the meat or avoid making dinner till the last minute, so we switch meals around if we need to. Overall though, this is what I have on hand each week.
I also created a master grocery list to go along with my menu. On the left hand side are things that we usually need (milk, butter, etc) as well as specific items needed for the meals I have planned. On the right hand side are things we usually have on hand but that I may want to double check and be sure we have. As for the Costco items, we make a big trip every three weeks or so. I shop once a week at our local grocery store for everything else.
Both of these documents are laminated. I hang the weekly menu on my refrigerator. The shopping list stays in my cookbook binder. When I am making my grocery list for the week I will refer to the laminated list and check the pantry and fridge to see what we already have and what we need. I usually don’t need to buy this whole list at once. Sometimes I’ve grabbed extra spaghetti sauce, etc on sale so we don’t need any. Other times I’ve skipped a certain meal the past week so we still have items needed for that.
Last week my husband offered to do the grocery shopping for me. I knew that we needed quite a few things so I just made a copy of the list and crossed off what we already had and added on a few random items like lightbulbs that we needed. Yay for a mostly ready made grocery list!
Now as far as the allergens, we are free of gluten, dairy, egg, sesame, cranberries, pecans, and walnuts. I do have eggs on my list becuase I make scrambled or hard boiled eggs for some of the kids. Others of us eat a lunchmeat sandwich or something else at that time. The kids eat Udi’s bread which contains egg; I eat Sami’s Millet and Flax bread (no egg, it does have a cc warning for gluten though). We use corn tortillas, Tinkyada pasta, smart balance butter, cashew milk…. Questions about anything? Feel free to ask!
Humbled by the Honor 
I’m a mama to 4 and I LOVE that you plan out all your meals (inc snacks) each day. I try to do the same, too! http://golightlymama.com/2017/06/14/weekly-meal-plan-june-week-2/
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What’s in the protein powder that you get at Costco? And do you just use it in smoothies?
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They have a chocolate and a peanut butter flavor. We use it in peanut butter/banana/almond milk smoothies. I also got Isaac a blender cup so lately we just put a scoop in his cup with some milk and shake it up.
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