Take a peek into our what real food meals our family of 5 ate for 2 weeks during the winter!
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Welcome to winter in West Michigan…
…where the Lake Michigan “lake effect” snow machine is in full force, snow gear has taken over the mud room…and the kids still need to eat! While I am more of a Lake Michigan beach girl in the summer, my kids absolutely *love* the snow in the winter, and they also stay pretty active too. Which means meals matter just as much now, as they do any other time of the year!
The SECOND meal plan edition!
Earlier this fall, I shared a fall inspired 2 week meal plan that you all absolutely loved. As promised, here is second edition, this time with a winter spin. It should give you an idea of how things change (and the things that maybe don’t change) with the seasons. You’ll get to see how I flow certain meals into others to save time.
What we ATE instead of what we plan to EAT!
I took a typical 2 weeks of meals that we ate this winter, and wrote it out for you. Planner-aheader’s (yes, that is totally a word), you’ll love to use the shopping list on the side and may even want to follow the plan meal for meal. Those of you that are just curious and need a few ideas or inspirations, hopefully you’ll pick up a few ideas to use in your own meal rotations!
My biggest piece of advice…
Don’t get overwhelmed. If you are new to cooking and real food, might I make a suggestion? Perhaps just starting with ONE meal of the day for a whole week? Just look at how I did breakfast. That’s it. Block out the lunches and dinners. Just start with how to flow breakfast from one day to the other in a real food way. Make yourself a nice little sustainable habit, and then you can move onto lunches, and then dinner.
A note on portions…
This meal plan is based on my crew. Right now, my girls are 16, 14, and 12 years old. And, in the winter, when this meal plan was made, they are do participate in sports. My youngest is in year-round gymnastics, and winter is competition season. My older 2 ended cross country in November, and track started in December. All 3 do require a lot of fuel! If your kids are younger, or need smaller portions, just adjust that! If your kids need more, add more!
How to adjust the plan for YOU!
- Swap the meal ideas for what YOU like! For instance, if I’m prepping a certain muffin or creamy broccoli soup for the week, but your crew doesn’t like those, swap for a different muffin and/or soup. There are a ton on my blog (use the search bar above) and also in my cookbooks (use the menu bar at the top of the blog to see those!). If they don’t like veggie soups, serve roasted veggies instead. If you aren’t beef people, swap for chicken, and so on.
- If you need more prep time on the weekend, or need to adjust it to a weekday due to work schedules, do that! The column to the right that shows all the prep stuff can be done all on one day, or spread out.
- If you don’t have crazy sports schedules after school and on the weekends like I show in this 2 week plan, by all means, don’t feel like you have to prep how I am prepping! For example, we have super early mornings every Saturday due to early gymnastics practice. If you don’t, then absolutely enjoy a slower morning and bake or cook then, instead of the night before like I do! On the flip side, my husband and I both work from home, and sometimes do a little food prep on Monday’s while we are working. If you work outside of the home, you may need to move your prep time to a different day or weekend.
So here is the 2 week plan!
CLICK HERE to get your free PDF with clickable recipe links! You can also click the image below.
