Weekly Menu Ideas

A Weekly Meal Dilemma

If your household is anything like mine, your weeks will be filled with nothing but chaos. As my mom explains it best, my husband and I live like robots. We run a tight schedule with school, full-time jobs, football, swimming, homework and even the occasional gym session. This leaves little to no time to focus on the essentials, like what my family should eat each night.

As you can read on my the home page, this is quite exhausting. To make it easier for myself, I started weekly meal planning.

Before leaving South Africa, we spent a significant amount of income on take-aways. This made a lot of sense, with load-shedding, traffic due to load-shedding and then the cooking in the dark. I love Nando's just as much as the next person, but a huge culture shock is the price of buying food abroad. It becomes almost unsettling if you convert the price of take-outs to Rands.

Meal planning as an idea

The problem for me is the usual democracy around what to eat. We have all been in the "What should I make?" moments, only to be rewarded with the response "Anything you feel for." Imagine the frustration with the complaints after you have made what you feel for. For this problem, I have created an excel spreadsheet with 30 default meals. This worked well for us for a few months, but it got a bit annoying in the sense that on some days, it's freezing and you just want some soup, but you planned a month ago that today is Taco Tuesday.

As a compromise, we have decided to schedule our menu one week in advance. When there is no plan, usually we default to take-outs. I realize now that this is exactly my problem.

Last week, I realized, that most households face a similar problem. We all live with our own challenges but some problems remain the same. This idea has come from my kids and nibblings, so each Saturday I will post a weekly menu as a base of ideas for you to try during the week, just in case inspiration does not strike for the week.

Benefits of meal planning

I like the idea of deciding on the menu once a week. This allows you to buy or order groceries at your own convenience. For me, I order my grocery delivery on a Sunday evening or Monday morning, and then top up on fresh bread for the week. This is an added bonus to saving which keeps me from adding things I know I will never eat but always add to my cart.

So in a nutshell the benefits for me personally can be narrowed down to:

• Saving by only buying the ingredients I need, and also limiting how much food we throw away.

• Limiting brain power needed during the week to decide what to eat by saving this for once a week only.

• The family is on the same page about what we eating so whoever is home first can start preparing the meal. This avoids time wasting, and the added stress of stopping for groceries because you are unprepared.

• If you need a break, you can always opt for a take-out but at least you have an idea.

  
  

The Weekly Meal Plan:

To lower your expectations upfront, each week will not be a radical menu with super fantastic ideas. It will be basic, and can be changed to suit the ingredients that you have in your household or what you enjoy. I will share some recipes throughout the week, but the ideas are to be used to suit you as a basis.

On Sundays, we usually prepare one meal. It usually lasts over the lunch and dinner, so I only plan for one meal. In the event that there is nothing leftover, we usually revert to sandwiches or eggs which are also great for lazy Sunday evenings.

The lunch ideas are the packed lunches for school, this is to avoid a 95% chance of having a jam sandwich.

Weekly Menu - 20 January

Monday

School Lunch: Mini Margherita Pizza

Dinner: Pea Orzo with Meatballs

Tips for this idea:

The meatballs can be cooked separately and added individually to the meal, this can be a great way to incorporate the meal into a vegan or vegetarian diet.

Orzo is not a commonly used pasta in South Africa, the idea is to have a creamy pasta with peas and then meatballs as a side dish. So feel free to substitute it for the pasta you prefer, but if you open to new ideas then give it a shot.

Tuesday:

School Lunch: Hot Dogs/Salad Rolls

Dinner: Marry Me Chicken with Rice

Tips for this idea:

Marry-me chicken is a favorite for me, it is made traditionally with sundried tomatoes and spinach. You can prepare the spianch and sun-dried tomatoes as a vegetarian dish and substitute the cream with coconut milk. In addition, you can replace the chicken with chickpeas for more protein.

Wednesday:

School Lunch: Croissants with Cheese, Salami or Jam

Dinner: Red Pepper Soup with bread rolls

Tips for this idea:

For this recipe, I used canned pastry and bake it for 8 minutes. In South Africa, a good alternative is to buy the pastry from a store or to get these already baked from your local grocer.

Thursday:

School Lunch: Chicken Strips/Vegan Nuggets and Sauce

Dinner: Grilled Fish with Vegetables

Tips for this idea:

Fish forms part of a healthy vegetarian diet, but in the case of a vegan diet it is good to substitute beans in your meal for protein. Feel free to go wild with the alternatives.

Friday:

School Lunch: Wraps

Dinner: Sausage Chutney and Roti

Tips for this idea:

Wraps and Roti's can be used in both meals, so no need to buy two sets if you do not want to.

Wraps can be made using any ingredients from the week that you have left over and if you do not have any feel free to add cheese, cucumber or even egg if your kids enjoy it.

Saturday:

Lunch: Chicken (Vegetable) Subs

Dinner: Greek Bowls

Tips for this idea:

Greek bowls are a great way to incorporate multiple vegetables in your diet. It is also easy to substitute legumes and beans instead of chicken or meat. If you prepare seasoned chicken for the subs, you can use the left over in the Greek bowl and therefore less work for you in the evening.

Sunday:

Lunch: Mutton (Sugar Bean) Bunny Chow

I hope this makes this week easier for you. If you feel like you this is something you need for the weeks ahead, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas for next week. ♥️