Meal Plan Monday

Happy Monday friends! I hope all of my mamas had a a nice Mother’s Day:) Mine was wonderful. I spent the morning with family doing our local breast cancer walk, did a little shopping and then had lunch with Sean and the girls. I also got a nap in and finished the day with my favorite pizza. It was seriously the perfect day.

This week I did something a little different and I planned our meals based on what I had on hand in the freezer and pantry. My pantry and freezer have a tendency to get overloaded with “maybe I’ll need this” ingredients. Every few months I need to go through and use them up before they expire. It’s also a great way to save some money! So the first thing I did was going through my pantry and freezer and jot down what we had.

Then based on that list, I made my meal plan. I was still planning to go to the grocery store so I could get any additional ingredients for recipes but I wanted to use up as much of what I had as possible. My meal plan used all freezer items for the main protein and I used up quite a few pantry items for sides. Here’s what it looked like:

Sunday: Ella’s Birthday Party (Nothing to plan, score!)

Monday: Curry Butter Chicken with rice

Tuesday: Broccoli Cheese Quiche with salad (I wrote frittata but I meant quiche:)

Wednesday: Turkey Tacos with black beans

Thursday: Burgers/Hot dogs (grilled), chunk veggie salad, baked beans

Friday: Shrimp and Sausage Sheet Pan Meal

Saturday: Magoo’s Graduation Dinner (Had Mexican food for this too, lol!)

Our week was a little crazy and I only got 4 pictures of our dinner this week. We strayed two days; we didn’t have our sheet pan meal and we didn’t grill burgers. The other five meals went according to plan. Although I forgot to take pictures of two of them. I didn’t write leftovers on the plan for some reason but did have them just like we do most weeks. We had the butter chicken a second time so I didn’t take a picture of that.

Overall my plan to use up some pantry and freezer items went really well. I still have some items to use up that I’ll add to the meal plan next week. My new plan is to not buy so many “maybe I’ll need this” ingredients. I’ll just keep one to two full pantry/freezer meals on hand. That being said, check out my Quick & Easy Meal Guide for some super easy meals you can whip up with pantry and freezer staples.

I’d love to know what you guys are planning for this week or any new recipes you tried in the comments!