March Meal Plan: 31 Meals in 18 Minutes

Is it weird to time your meal planning? It is, right? Oops. Too late now, I guess. My March Meal Plan is ready to go, just in the nick of time. I planned 31 meals for march in just a few minutes — I even did it live on Instagram. There’s a video below if you’ve got an extra 18 minutes to spare!

My Meal Planning Method

I’ve been using my monthly meal planning method for over a year now and, honestly, I don’t know that I’ll ever stop. Here’s what I do:

Gather Materials – paper, planner, pen, cookbooks (optional).
List the dates of the month (1-31 for the March Meal Plan)
Identify all the Tuesdays and Fridays and fill in “tacos” and “pizza.” (8-10 meals planned in seconds)
Plug in “goals” (aka, salads to eat more veggies, vegetarian to eat less meat, etc.) (3-4 more meals done)
Fill in the rest of the days, referring to the calendar as you go to ensure that busy days have quick meals and less-busy days have slower meals. I usually plan to dine out twice a month. Planning it in prevents impulse dining out.

And that’s it! I have a list of favorite meals I refer to if I get stuck. I also ask for my family’s input — just a quick, “What do you guys want to see on the menu this month?” gives them some say, but isn’t allowing them total control.

Every weekend, I check the menu and the food we have on hand and create my grocery list based on that. I display the weekly menu in the kitchen for all to see—and use a few other strategies for sticking to my meal plan, as well.

March’s Schedule

Life is picking up a bit around here now that spring is approaching. Between three kids involved in scouts, lacrosse, tennis, and piano, our Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty full (I’m not complaining, I missed it SO much). That’s reflected here with quicker meals on those days.

Also in this meal plan is Corned Beef and Cabbage in honor of St. Patrick’s Day — we all love this meal but it’s definitely only made once a year. Finally, we have a birthday on March 28th, so when you see “E’s choice” it means she’ll get to pick what’s for dinner that evening — and I’ll plan that a few days in advance.