Sometimes, you just need a helper!

I really love having a weekly menu. I think that much is obvious. Lately though, we’ve come to a point in our lives where delegating certain things is best for the sake of sanity.
So, I turned to Professor Google and searched for organic weekly menu plans. One of the results was http://emeals.com/ with a plan called Natural & Organic. Wait a minute… that name sounds familiar… they’re the folks who advertise on Dave Ramsey’s radio show (Rylee requests  we find his show when we’re on the road)! I looked at their site in the past, but wasn’t a fan of the menus heavy on prepared foods. Lo and behold, Emeals recently rolled out a Natural & Organic plan. It is available for Whole Foods or Other Stores. I chose the generic plan to use at Earth Fare and a few other local places for odds and ends. After using the coupon code on www.daveramsey.com , a 3 month subscription was $17.85.

Rylee and I went shopping today for the first time using this service. The Monster Book of Monsters binder, augmented with a new menu section, in hand to keep us organized. Each week’s printout contains 2 sheets: 1) the menu featuring recipe instructions 2) grocery list divided by categories. I put these back to back in an old sheet protector. This enables me to mark on them with a dry erase pen. It was so nice to have a brain on paper that took me all of a minute to print and a few moments to review and note substitutions. One such substitution was  in a recipe calling for beef. Since I had a coupon for 75cents off ground turkey, I made that switch! I also had a coupon for our preferred brand of salad. I plan to use that in place of the head of lettuce called for since we routinely eat mixed spring greens for dinner. Easy peasy!
Tonight we plan to have Black Bean Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries. Tomato, spring greens, and cheese will be available for topping. I might even make some fresh green onion mayonaise and sweet chili ketchup. I’m hungry already!