Meal Planning Mondays

Seeing that I have been learning how to organise through Laura's site I thought that I might take up another of her challenges and join the Meal Planning Monday culture. I'm not sure how I will go.

Got to love Ikea for the shelving and box items that keep things together

So today (being Monday already in Australia) I sat down and planned my 4th week of meals with my new system. I looked through my pantry at what I already had in the way of sauces, cans etc. and my fridge in the way of vegetables (bag of carrots, 2 half capsicums, bag of mushrooms, 1 lebanese cucumber, 7 potatoes, 2 sweet potatoes and a cauliflower.

Here's what I came up with:

I also got around to mounting some menus onto cardboard to try a new system that my friend Bria uses. I bought a simple letter rack to use to store these in my pantry next to the meal planning board.

Simply cut an A4 piece of cardboard into two to make 2 x A5 cards. Cut out and mount magazine or online recipes onto the card (mine are double sided). You can even colour code your cards. So far my chicken recipes are all on yellow cards. I think I will laminate these once I get a few more done.

Here's Monday's bolognaise in the pan...

Disguised with 8 vegetables plus more for my 3 children - ( I use a hand-held food processor to chop most of the vegetables finely enough to look like part of the sauce and mince.)

My V8 Bolognaise Sauce is made with....

500g beef mince (enough for another meal to freeze!)
1 med onion
1 large garlic clove
2 grated carrots
2 grated zuchinis
1/4 cauliflower chopped finely
4 large mushrooms chopped finely
1/2 red capsicum chopped finely
1 can diced tomato
1 can of red kidney beans chopped finely
1 bottle pasta sauce
dash of red wine
fresh basil, Italian parsley, oregano and chives chopped finely

Serve with parmesan cheese and spaghetti.