Printable Meal Menu / Calendar

There was some interest after a recent post I made about meal planning, and how I hope it will help me save some time and some money. Thanks for all the kind comments regarding the "belt tightening" and wonderful suggestions!!

I have been on the calendar for a week now and am LOVING how little stress I have about meal time- and that all the ingredients are on my shelves! I went to work and put together an excel calendar to share with you (and also because I know I will likely lose the one in my notebook! Haha.) 

Here is the link to my printable meal menu calendar: Click here . There is also a template to print/make your own. I *think* all you need to do is copy it into excel or save a copy to your own computer. Hopefully that will work!

A few things about the meals:

• My husband insists on MEAT at every meal. We have a freezer full of (grass fed, local) beef and elk. I would love to eat more fish than we do...I was an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 2 years.
• We also eat a lot of frozen or canned foods because it's a) easy to store and we live in the sticks, and, b) it's usually cheaper. I'd LOVE to eat more fresh produce, but alas, it doesn't always keep until we get to the store again. We have a second refrigerator to keep some things in.
• When I cook meat, I ALWAYS double the volume I need for one meal when thawing and cooking. Then I store away the extra meat for the next meal, (or a meal later that week). This saves me every time! You can refreeze cooked burger, chicken etc... and then microwave it to thaw if needed.
• I have planned a lot of my meals to use this doubled meat strategy: back to back meals like roast beef Sunday and enchiladas Monday (using roast beef) are an example.
• When making something like enchiladas or lasagna, why not make 2 at one time and freeze one for another "emergency" meal? Half the clean-up, almost half the cooking.
• I use a lot of bread from a recipe I found. It isn't the best tasting bread I've ever had, but it is FAST to make and nutritious. I double the recipe to make enough for 4 loaves and freeze the dough to use for my homemade pizza shells.
• I like exciting food- but my kids don't ...so we compromise.

Anyway, I hope this helps even one other person out there! Please let me know if you have any good ideas to add in.

Running related: 7 miles this morning at a slow/easy recovery pace. I still need to do some daily core stuff, though.