One of my goals this year is to be more mindful of what we eat, to spend less on food, and to reduce our food waste. "How?" You ask? By planning ahead and sticking to it, focusing on using everything in our overstuffed freezers and pantry, and meal prepping on the weekends.

We've been dabbling in weekly meal planning for the last few months but haven't done a great job at sticking to the plans. May be it's because I was in a cooking rut. May be the plan wasn't flexible enough. Or I've been sick. Or life just happened and we were too spent to deal with cooking.

So, with our goals and past failures in mind, here's how we're going to stay accountable: by sharing what we eat on a weekly basis. I hope this inspires you to try meal planning and prepping, reducing waste in the kitchen, and may be saving a bit on your groceries!

A little bit about our grocery shopping habits:

We do most of our grocery shopping at Aldi and supplement our grocery list with trips to Trader Joe's, Harris Teeter, and Earth Fare. I tried couponing a few years ago and it turned out to be a total time suck. If anything, we ended up spending more because we had to purchase multiple quantities or we bought things we didn't really need. Also, most of the items we buy are fresh (outside aisles) or private label and there are hardly any coupons available for those items. We try to buy animal proteins that are natural or organic as much as we can so the plan is based mainly on available deals/discounts that week.

Our weekly menus are toddler friendly and dinners yield at least one leftover lunch.

Click here for a look at the second week of 2018 and let me know what you think!

Do you meal plan? What are you favorite go-to receipes?

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This Week's Eats: an Intro

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