The Quiet Concert: Thoughts for Thursday (27)

Welcome to Thoughts for Thursday! This feature is our outlet to talk with you about whatever we currently have on our minds. It might be bookish, it might not! Now for this week's thought:

Whats for Dinner?

This used to be a constant question in my house - even when I lived alone. Back then, I would cook the same meals over and over and just eat the leftovers for a couple of days. Now that I am living with my fiancé and my brother is staying with us for a while, I actually get to cook meals and not be drowned by the same leftovers time and time again. A bonus is that since they are guys, they are like human garbage disposals :)

The Pinterest Way

To fix this problem, I first thought, "hey I can meal plan by searching Pinterest and some cook books!" Well the first Sunday I tried that approach, it was quite a fail. It took forever, and I felt like I was going to buy half the grocery store and probably end up wasting food, since recipes often call for just a little of something and I would have to buy a whole bag/box. Don't get me wrong, I do love Pinterest for recipes and baking! It just did not work for weekly meal planning.

E-Meals

One day we stumbled across a Groupon for this meal planning service and thought "for ~$26 for a whole year why don't we give this a try?" We have been using eMeals for the past 8 months and have really been enjoying it. eMeals has a variety of meal plans such as Kid Friendly, Classic, Paleo, Clean Eating, Slow Cooker, Costco, and more. Once you select a meal plan, you get a weekly email of 7 recipes and a grocery list:

Here is an example of a meal, and if you go to their site you can see more examples of recipes and grocery lists! We do not like every single meal we get, but since we occasionally eat out or order pizza or just make something super basic like a salad and chicken, it evens out through the week. E-Meals also allows you to switch your meal plan - so if you are unhappy with kid-friendly you can switch to classic, etc. So we switch it up ever couple of months for more variety!

Do you meal plan? If so, do you use a service? What works for you? How do you decide what to eat every night?

+1 Vote up Vote down

mel1704 86p · 559 weeks ago

I practically live together with my boyfriend and we plan a whole week ahead, since I eat about 2 to 4 times home. After we made a schedule when I eat over here, we go to the 'offer' section on the supermarket website and we create a whole weekly eating schedule together around those offers. Most of the times it's cheaper vegetables and meat. Since we are both students we like to keep it a little cheaper if we can :)

We make a list from all the things we have to buy and put the schedule on the fridge. This way, we always know what we are going to eat (sometimes we switch it up though) and we don't buy things we don't need. Sometimes we use Google to find a recipe to change things up, but like you say, a lot of times they use these ingredients you normally don't use.
My recent post Review 273. Mary E. Pearson - The kiss of deception.

0 Vote up Vote down

Pam@YA Escape · 559 weeks ago

That e-meals looks good, I'll have to tell my husband about it. He's the cook in this family. Basically, he gets out the cookbooks on Sunday afternoon, decides on three to four meals, and then makes the grocery list. We've got a ton of cookbooks so that works pretty well for us.
My recent post Book Review: The Selection by Kiera Cass

Kay · 558 weeks ago

I have never heard of e-meals. I will have to head over there and check it out. I do meal plan every week and we try to stick to it. It's usually better on the budget. We don't have specific food for each day just a list of dinners for the week that we can then pick from. It's true that finding recipes on pinterest and cookbook is a pain. I still do it, but sometimes I swear I waste hours doing it this way! At least I got smart and started saving our favorite recipes in my own homemade cookbook. That's something. lol A very interesting post Ashley! Love the topic.
My recent post The Loves of My Life - My Bookcases Part 2

Pages

Thoughts for Thursday (27) - What's for Dinner?

Whats for Dinner?

The Pinterest Way

E-Meals

Do you meal plan? If so, do you use a service? What works for you? How do you decide what to eat every night?

Forgot password?

Comments (3)

Post a new comment