Monthly Meal Plan for October

As discussed in last month’s post, Creating a Monthly Meal Plan, the benefits of meal planning include saving time and money and helping you choose consistently nutritious meals. This month I wanted to give you an example to help plan out the upcoming month.

The following tips will help you take my example and create something that works for you!

• Definitely increase or decrease portion sizes based on your exercise level and calorie needs. Along the same lines, double or triple the recipes if you are cooking for a larger family.
• If you have plans that may include a meal, make sure to block them off of the calendar and don’t prepare meals for those days. Most all of these recipes can be frozen so you can even save those meals for next month.

Week 1 Plan

Prep Tips:

Sunday: Make 1 dozen egg muffins. Freeze 6 for later use. Make whole chicken crock-pot. Portion for lunch salads. Make 4 cups brown rice. Freeze half.

Link to Whole Chicken Crock Pot Recipe: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2011/02/25/recipe-the-best-whole-chicken-in-a-crock-pot/

Link to Egg Muffin Recipe: http://abc.go.com/shows/the-chew/recipes/egg-muffins-clinton-kelly

Tuesday: Make 4 cups of stir-fry and save the leftovers.
Make the Ground Turkey Pasta using 1 lb. of lean ground turkey and 1 jar of low sodium sauce and 4 cups pasta. Freeze the 3 extra servings in individual containers.

Wednesday: Make the Ground Turkey Pasta using 1 lb. of lean ground turkey and 1 jar of low sodium sauce and 4 cups pasta. Freeze the 3 extra servings in individual containers.

Saturday: Freeze 3 remaining turkey burgers individually.

Link to Turkey Burger Recipe: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/mozzarella_stuffed_turkey_burgers.html

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Hopefully you can see how I organized the month so that I only had to cook a few times and repurposed many of the ingredients into multiple meals. This plan has a bit of variety; you could simplify it further by being more consistent with breakfasts and lunches or making larger batches of the dinner options and repeating the leftovers more frequently.

Once you try this out, come back and leave a comment. I would love to see how it works for you. What successes or challenges did you have? What tips do you want to share? I look forward to hearing how great you do!