When Your "Plan" Doesn't Go As Planned

When Your "Plan" Doesn't Go As Planned

FYI: Meal Planning Doesn't Always Work Out the Way You Planned


Not everything falls EXACTLY into place EVERY week...and that's okay. Things will come up and throw your plan off course. But the nice thing about meal planning is that there is room for flexibility.

You will unexpectedly be invited out for supper sometime - push that nights meal to another night.

You will absent-mindedly forget an item or two for one of your meals (I've done it a million times) - just put that meal on next week's plan.

You will plan to have something one night, realize you forgot to defrost the meat, and have to make another meal from your plan that can be made for tonight.

Or in my case, you will be on a tight budget, meal plan for the week and get all your groceries, and then run out of meals before you can go buy more groceries (oops). Budgeting is a new thing for me and my husband. We have just recently sat down and allotted certain amounts of money for certain things, are keeping track of our spending using a spreadsheet, and putting certain paychecks towards certain bills. It SO new to me in fact, I didn't realize that planning meals from Tuesday to Monday meant that I would be short two days of meals...because I'm not getting paid until Thursday. It's a new thing for me this budgeting, but I am learning fast - and I definitely won't make this mistake again.

But like I said, meal planning is flexible. I have enough meals to get us through tonight, and then I had to get creative and crafty and create two more meals based on what we have in our freezer and cupboards. Luckily, about a month ago I made a batch of Won Ton Soup and since the recipe makes double the won tons you actually need, I just froze half of them. So I have won tons in the freezer, a carton of chicken stock in my cupboard and a couple carrots and green onions to add some veggies for the soup. Meal #1 taken care of. I also ALWAYS have tons of packages of fish in my freezer since my Dad is an avid fisherman, and tons of potatoes - so I am making classic fried fish with homemade potato wedges, and frozen veggies. See? With a little creativity, crisis averted.

So this just goes to show, that just because you have a "Meal Plan" and a schedule, it does NOT by any means, mean that it is not flexible. Meal planning is not just for the anal, incredibly organized person - because I am definitely NOT one of those :) Just a mom with a plan.