My New Meal Planning Tool

I finally tackled this project over my Christmas vacation that I've been trying to work on for the past several months. My MENU BOARD!!

I got the idea from Pinterest and developed it to suit our needs.  I am really good about planning our meals on a weekly basis.  Every Saturday or Sunday, I run through my blog, Pinterest and the web and come up with the meal plan for the week.  Since our plant-based way of life requires us to do a significant amount of cooking, it is very helpful to have a tool like this to plan our meals.  I color coordinated our meal cards and laminated them so they would hold up.  Green cards are veggie-based dishes, Brown cards are bean/legume/lentil dishes, Off-White cards are tofu/soy dishes (which we try to limit to once every 2 weeks), etc.  We know we want beans once a week, tofu/soy no more than once every 2 weeks, and the rest veggie based meals so having them color coded really helps.  We even included an EAT OUT card for Saturdays, which is the only meal we eat out all week. 

Tips/Hints for easy meal planning:

1. Try new recipes on the weekends when you have more time.  Some vegetarian/vegan recipes can have many steps and be very time consuming, so it's best to experiment on the weekends.
2. Choose a couple meals each week that will make enough for leftovers.  We usually double up on the beans and rice and get two nights worth - plus it always tastes better the second night.  It's so nice to come home that second night and not have to cook. 
3. The week above is not a good example, but we usually try to make dinner Sunday for Sunday & Monday, Tuesday for Tuesday & Wednesday, and Thursday for Thursday & Friday.  This way, if we eat out once a week, we only have to prepare dinner 3 nights.
4. It's always good to have a couple really easy, quick meals ready in case you get home late from work or you're sick, or just don't feel like cooking.  Examples of these types of recipes include:  Arugula Flatbreads, Yassa, Maffe, Vegan Ravioli or Gnocchi from the Freezer Section, or Grilled Tofu & a vegetable, etc.
5. I like to make big batches of soup or Engine 2 Lasagna on a Sunday afternoon and eat it a couple days and then freeze the rest.  This makes for another quick meal.  It's much healthier to grab something out of the freezer that you made from scratch than pick up Chinese or Pizza on a busy night. 
6. Make a grocery list!  There are some really good Apps - I use Grocery Pal for the iPhone. This makes grocery shopping a breeze as it organizes your list by sections of the store, no matter where you shop.  
7. Go grocery shopping on the weekend - I always go on Sundays because the produce is the freshest and the store isn't as busy.  At my Whole Foods, they put out the freshest produce on Sunday AM, so that way my huge tub of Organic Girl salad lasts all week and doesn't get slimy before I'm done eating it.  I do end up going back once or twice mid-week to pick up veggies for recipes later in the week, but that goes with the territory when you're eating so many veggies.

Hope these tips are helpful in your meal planning.  Please post any helpful tips you have below - I'd love to hear them!