meal planning for 7
My family is coming into town this weekend. My brother is coming home (and staying at my mom’s house) and my dad, stepmom, grandma and aunt are all coming to Asheville either Saturday or Sunday. They’re staying with me and my husband.
My husband and I are big meal planners. As in, we plan out what we’re eating for the next week on either Friday or Saturday and do all of our grocery shopping on Saturday or Sunday. It makes life easier, and we tend to save money doing this.
That said, we were making our menu tonight and it proved difficult for us. We went from planning for two people to planning for 7 people.
Holy potential grocery bills, Batman.
I think we’ve got a good plan, and it shouldn’t cost us an arm and a leg (plus, we’ll go out to eat one evening with everyone.) I’ll do a little rundown here (and aunt Linda, if you object, feel free to comment!)
Sunday – Spaghetti with a salad
Monday – Chili (in the slow cooker)
Tuesday – Chicken baked in tomato juice
Wednesday – out to eat
Thursday – fajitas (and my aunt flies out this day)
Friday – homemade pizza
Saturday – whatever we have in the house.
The spaghetti will be easy, and we have sauce and the noodles. On Monday, I’m sending the family to Charlotte for the day, and I thought a slow cooker recipe would be easiest, and I have a recipe that feeds 8. Perfect. I have a great recipe for baked chicken (in tomato juice) that I’ll make on Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll eat somewhere cool in Asheville. (My husband has another commitment, so he won’t be joining us, unfortunately.) If we stick with the menu that long, I think we’re good to go.
Thanks to our Sams Club membership, we have cereal (I eat turkey bacon – and not much else – for breakfast) and eggs for the egg-eating types (which I’m not.) And lunch meat will be bought for lunches.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the husband and I have been working super hard on clean eating lately. We’re going to try and keep it up while our guests are in town. Cooking for ourselves is one of the ways we can control it.
For those of you with larger families (or if it’s just you), how do you do handle meals on a weekly basis? Do you meal plan? Grocery shop multiple times during the week? Eat out because you have unlimited income? (I’m kidding…though I do know people who eat out for over half of their meals during any given week.)
Wow, crazy busy week for you!
While it’s just Adam and I, our families are close. So when we cook for them we make A LOT, so that Adam and I have leftovers for the next few days.
On a regular basis I try to meal plan once a week, but grocery shopping trips are always so random that it makes it hard to save money!
Menus look good! Looking forward to seeing you guys. Such a treat to see you the weekend of 10/9 and this coming week, also. So far the airlines haven’t changed any of my schedules, they confirmed last nite & today I talked with them about electric cart being available for our transfers. I know Dulles is very large. I’m quite sure Grandma will do fine, but I tend to get a bit confused sometimes & will feel better with a lift!!! See you Sunday……