Weekly Meal Plan ~ Pinterest Meal Planning

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I mentioned yesterday on facebook that my weekly meal plan was done… and it felt good to be on track and organized with my meals again and had some people ask how I was doing things.

I thought I’d take a minute today to share my weekly meal plan, as well as the steps I take to create it.

Creating a Weekly Meal Plan

First I grab a piece of lined notebook paper. (yeah, I’m old school baby!)

On the right hand side I write out the meals we’re going to have for the week.

On the left hand side I write out all the ingredients those meals are going to need… this becomes my shopping list.

When the list is done, I fold the paper in half and head to the store.  Once we get home, I hang the folded piece of paper on the fridge so I can remember what it was I planned for the week.

Planning my weekly meal plan

I don’t make my plan specific for each day of the week. I like to have some flexibility, and be able to choose what I’m “in the mood for” each day. I do however, look at our week and what we’ve got going on in the evenings.

Our evenings are still pretty clear for the most part… although we do have soccer starting this week and practice is right at our dinner time. When I have nights like this I make sure I plan a crockpot meal. That way dinner will be ready when we get home, and I won’t have to rush around trying to cook something.

I start my weekly meal planning with a couple basic meals. I ask Hanna what she wants to eat this week. We also do a pretty regular homemade pizza on Friday night.

Once I’ve got the basics in, which for this week were Spaghetti, tacos, and pizza on Friday, I go to Pinterest to fill in the rest.

Meal Planning with Pinterest

I have set my pinterest account up to make meal planning very simple for me. I’ve got different boards for each type of protein, or type of meal we like to eat.

So there’s chicken, pork, beef, soup, crockpot, vegetarian boards… and a few more to boot.

I like to serve a variety of different proteins throughout the week, so having my boards set up like this makes it really easy for me.

I can look at the basics I’ve got on the menu, which for this week is tacos, spaghetti, and pizza. I can see I’m going to need to hit the chicken board… and with soccer this week I’m going to have to hit the crockpot board as well.

I am online a lot and have downloaded the “pin it” button so I can easily pin recipes from wherever I am online (except directly from FB… you have to click through to the site to be able to pin it).

I follow recipe Facebook pages, and recipe blogs that are things I think my family will like, so I get a  pretty good stream of new ideas coming through all the time… and of course fall back on our tested and true recipes.

Our Weekly Meal Plan

Here’s how our meal plan turned out for this week.

Spaghetti with meat sauce salad, bread

Tacos with all the trimmings

Pizza ~ mushrooms, black olives, pineapple, ham

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole
Salad

Mongolian Beef (add broccoli to recipe)
over rice

Shrimp with Mushrooms in a garlic wine sauce salad
(this pin is for chicken… I sub out shrimp)

Sausage and tomatoes over egg noodles salad

I’ve tried a ton of different ways, and different services to get my meal planning on track, and this by far, has been the method I’ve found it easiest to stick with.

Hope this helps you in your meal planning journey!