The Picky Eater Meal Plan (Week 5)

I hope you’ve all been enjoying my meal plans so far! As we head into this week, you might be noticing a pattern with how I cook and plan my meals: to ensure we get variety but also to make sure I don’t go crazy trying to cook every single day.

As a full time working mom, it’s almost impossible to do that! So leftovers are definitely my friend.

My strategy is to focus on making 4-5 meals each week, using leftovers 1-2 times, and eating out once a week with the husband and Layla. We still try to make healthy choices when we do eat out, so it’s a nice balance for all of us.

If you’re looking for quick and easy meals you can make in under 30 minutes, check out my Last Minute Dinner Ideas!

For this week, here is our dinner plan: 

• Monday: Moroccan Chickpea Tagine with Quinoa Couscous
• Tuesday: Whole Wheat Pita Pizzas –> In addition to the toppings in this recipe, I’m adding sautéed garlicky kale (1 box of baby kale sauteed with 4 cloves minced garlic and 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil)
• Wednesday: Leftover Tagine!
• Thursday: Indian Spiced Vegetarian Sloppy Joes (or “Pav Bhaji”) –> This makes a ton of food, so I usually freeze half the filling and eat it on a week when I don’t feel like cooking 🙂
• Friday: Eat out
• Saturday: Potato Tofu Verde Enchiladas
• Sunday: Leftovers (either Pav Bhaji or Enchiladas)

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Over the years I’ve gotten lots of questions from all of you about what I eat on a weekly basis, how I meal plan, etc. And so I thought the easiest thing to do would be to just share what we are actually eating on a weekly basis and how we balance things out!

Some of my general rules for weekly meal planning:

• Breakfasts for us are always some version of oatmeal – I just mix things up by changing toppings every so often. If you’re looking for a bit more variety, try one of these vegetarian breakfast recipes.
• Lunches are usually either leftovers, or one of these easy recipes here.
• For dinner: I alternate between super fast meals that are still healthy, and meals that might take a bit more time (no more than 45 min – 1 hour to make). I like variety but it’s hard to figure out variety 3 times a day every day, so I keep our breakfasts and lunches simple, and change things up each night for dinner! We also eat out once a week, and do leftovers once a week at least!
• Some Helpful Resources: Simple meal planning template, Weekly grocery list items.

For those of you who are new to meal planning, you can do it! Just follow this plan, make a shopping list, go shopping and make it happen! Happy cooking everyone!