Well… it’s possible that it could be baby week! Or she could wait until next week. So the plan for this week is to be as prepared as possible and not put too much on our calendar. For meals, it’s our goal to continue to keep it simple and make meals that will do well as frozen leftovers for meals once the baby arrives.

We are less than 3 weeks away from meeting our precious baby girl, so we’re starting to think about meals that we can make and freeze for easy lunches or meals after the baby is here. Other than using up some salad greens that we still have and making one of our favorites (the Chicken BLT Salad), the other three meals this week are great for freezing to pull out at a later time! Plus, the Shepherd’s Pie is a great nod to St. Patrick’s Day that we will likely make for dinner on Thursday.

We have a few different things going on this week - we have some friends coming over for dinner one night this week and then an event at church another night, which means we will either do takeout or a super quick meal before heading to that event. So most of our meals this week are ones that can be quick and easy dinners for our family.

We did a pantry clean-out over this past weekend and threw away a lot of expired food! Major bonus - now we know what we actually have to work with in our cupboards. Then we spent our Sunday post-church with our small group for brunch and I took two different baked egg dishes - they were a big hit! The main dish was a new-to-me recipe with hashbrowns and it was SO delicious! The rest of the meals that we put on our meal plan were intentional to use up extra ingredients that we had on hand from the breakfast casseroles or that we found in our pantry over the weekend.

We don’t have anything special really going on this week (hooray), so I’m looking at meals that can use up some ingredients that I know I already have on hand or meals that we maybe haven’t made in a long time. Especially looking forward to the Philly Cheesesteaks that I have on the menu for the weekend!

It’s Valentine’s Day today! So I’m kicking off our meal plan for this week with some heart-shaped pizza - we love this meal for Valentine’s Day and is a fun tradition for our family. Tonight, we’ll be making some homemade pizza crust and shaping our own heart-shaped pizzas for our 2-year-old to have a little “dinner date” with his auntie this evening while my husband and I go to Bible Study. The rest of our meals this week will be simple menu items that won’t take too much time to make so that we can take it easy, especially since my husband will be getting his booster vaccine at the end of this week and we will want to keep it super simple this weekend!

This week’s Meal Plan is all about using up ingredients we already have or planning smartly to make plenty of meat for one meal that can also be used again later in the week as quick and easy party food for the Big Game on Sunday!