Meal Planning, Clean Eating and Saving My Sanity

When I’m busy (and lately, that’s been often), the what’s for dinner syndrome is the biggest thorn in my side. I keep a fairly clean household, in terms of the food I buy and store in my house. I don’t buy junk foods or sodas (or even juice) and keep the processed goods to a minimum. But, that isn’t my problem. My problem is actually cooking all the good-for-us foods that I buy.

I am SO bored with the stuff I make all the time, so I wait till the last minute or I don’t get to it at all, and before I know it, Daddy D is picking up dinner from some random place. I am riddled with guilt for feeding my family crap, not to mention how much I miss the simple art of cooking a yummy meal. And our budget has gotten out of control, which amplifies the guilt.

As I do when I’ve hit my breaking point, I set out to find a solution online. A friend and fellow Las Vegas blogger, Emily from Our Knight Life, had written about a meal planning service that creates menus and coordinating shopping lists. emeals has a wide variety of menus, with different goals in mind – gluten free, large family, frugal menus (you pick the store you shop at, and they scour the deals for you!), portion control, gourmet menus, and on and on.

I contacted emeals immediately and haven’t looked back. That was about a month ago and, hand to heart, we eat out ONLY on the weekends. I picked the clean eating menu, as it is most in line with how I cook anyway, and I am really satisfied! I am back in kitchen, which makes me really happy, and working with ingredients and flavors that aren’t run of the mill. If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you might have seen the yummy Potato Leek soup I made last night. I’ve never cooked with leeks before – they were just not in my repertoire – but the simple recipe that emeals provided is one I will make again and again. It was seriously so easy! And good! And so much cheaper than eating out.

That’s another thing – even without considering sales or coupons, we are saving money. All that crap food was really adding up!

This is not a sponsored or compensated post. I wasn’t even asked to write about emeals. But, when they offered this free Easter Menu and shopping list for my readers, I knew I had to get the information out there. Just click on the download button and it will take you to a PDF of the emeals Easter Menu and coordinating shopping list. I download the list onto my phone, and pull it up when I’m in the store. Easy peasy. I hope you enjoy!