Working Mom Survival: Weekly Meal Planning

I've been intending to write this post for a long time now. One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is "how do you do it?"; meaning how do I commute 47 miles one way, in heavy traffic, have a full time job and still serve homemade meals to my family about 5 nights a week? The short answer: PLAN AHEAD.

Now, before I go any further, let's clear the air on a few things.

Disclaimers:

• My meal planning and prep work still requires a lot of hands-on time and time for thinking up a weekly meal schedule and menu ideas. Full grocery shopping has to be done by Sunday at the latest.
• I would happily buy ready-made food if it was fresh, used quality ingredients and if I had a very large disposable income. Since I don't have the latter, keep reading.
• I enjoy cooking. If you don't, this will be as useful to you as a bag of rocks.
• I rarely make up my own recipes but rather, cull them from a variety of sources. My favorites include: Sunset magazine, Food and Wine magazine, the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, my small collection of cookbooks, blogs and recipes from friends.
• I choose to sacrifice other things so I can make homemade meals. This includes but is not limited to, watching TV, reading more books, listening to music, talking on the phone to friends, exercising, ironing, learning a new language, having a hobby or sleeping.

 Alrighty, now that we've got that out of the way, let's get started. First step is to come up with a menu for the week that works for your household. For example, we are a family of 4, with kids ages 2 and 5, so I need to make meals that everyone will eat. I also take into consideration my and my husband's work schedules for the week since those are variable. This week, Randy had a couple of overnight shifts which means he can pitch in with cooking since he's home during the day. That means I still plan to cook 1 or 2 meals ahead of time that can just be warmed up later or meals that can be prepped a day or two in advance and then cooked quickly.

Here's the menu that I settled on for the week of 2/16-2/21:
Sunday: chicken cacciatore
Monday: baked salmon, roasted cauliflower, steamed broccoli
Tuesday: beef & veggie soup, salad, garlic bread
Wednesday: chicken adobo
Thursday: leftovers
Friday/Saturday: leftovers or eat out if we are out and about

I try to cook a variety of protein and veggies, and my palate is easily bored so I tend to cook different things all the time, rather than rotating through the same dishes. As I mentioned before, I cook things that everyone in the family can eat, and I try not to cook anything that will take me more than an hour from start to finish, with the exception of Sunday dinners; since it's the weekend I generally have more time and sometimes I'll use Sundays to cook dishes that I love but take too long to prep on a weeknight.

In fact, that's what I did this Sunday, I took a little more time and made chicken cacciatore. There is about 30 minutes of hands on time and then it cooks in the oven for 45 more minutes.

Chicken + noodles means the whole family is happy

While the cacciatore was in the oven doing it's thing, I got started on the beef & veggie soup that we would eat later in the week. First I cut up all the veggies. Now, if I steamed these and put them in front of my kids, they would turn their little noses up and refuse to choke them down. However, if I put them in soup, they will gobble them right up, even if they see them in plain view. Go figure!

I love all the colors

Beef and more veggies

I won't walk you through all the steps, but I went ahead and cooked the soup and threw it in the fridge once it cooled down. From start to finish, it probably took an hour at most. 

So two hours of cooking on Sunday means I have more time to relax, play with my kids, help Cruz with homework or any other number of things on a weeknight.

Monday rolled around and since Randy and I both worked, I made a super quick weeknight dinner of baked lemon pepper salmon, roasted cauliflower and steamed broccoli. The cauliflower and broccoli cook at the same time as the fish, and everything is done in 40 minutes. Meanwhile, I prep Cruz's lunch for the next day and sit with him while he does his Math and reading homework.

Don't be fooled by it's humble appearance, it's very flavorful!

Tuesday was another  typical work day for both Randy and I, so we got home and fired up the stove to warm up our soup. I threw together a store-bought salad mix and toasted some garlic bread, and we sat down to dinner in 15 minutes - can't beat that on a weeknight!

The whole family gobbled this up!

On Wednesday, Randy was home during the day since he had a graveyard shift, so lucky for me, he made his chicken adobo...IMHO, this is the world's best adobo! Perfect balance between soy sauce and vinegar, garlic and spices. I will never say no to this.

Crowd-pleaser

On Thursday we finished up the leftover cacciatore. I should also mention that there was leftover soup that Randy took to work twice, and there was still leftover adobo that we ate the following weekend. Homemade meals means we eat more nutritiously and save money, it's a total win-win.

So that's a typical week in terms of meal-planning in the Villanueva household. Things can get hairy when there are after-school activities (i.e. soccer or swimming lessons), work obligations, or if one of the kids isn't feeling well and doesn't want to leave mom's side. However, planning ahead gets us through the majority of our work weeks, keeps me sane and is essential to our survival as two working parents! If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading! I hope it is helpful, and I'd love to hear any tips you have too!