Weekly meal planning!

Dear Hive friends, it's been a long time I haven't written anything on Hive. I started writing this blog in summer time but havent had time to publish it. But life has been going too fast and I didn't have time to write in Hive. But now I am back with my thoughts and lifestyle, hope you will like my blog about my new lifestyle.

Have you ever thought about what makes us go ahead in life
Real life is all about making decisions and making changes in life as you go on. I believe that changing yourself and lifestyle according to your family and the circumstances of life is the real surviving kit. When you are a kid you live easy going life, you get older and choose your career your first step to the adulthood, to choose your life partner is a big step, you get kids and your life changes drastically, more responsibility and a lot of changes you make in life and your lifestyle to give this living wonder a healthy life. Usually I am not fond of making big changes in life, I like to live strikt to the rules. But as we grow older and life changes, it's always good to reflect on what you can make better.

Ever since my kids started eating proper meals, I have been making fresh food everyday. I am a full time working mom with a husband and 3 kids. So it takes a lot of time after work to make food. But it's my choice and I have always preferred to make fresh food everyday. We are fond of eating our traditional Pakistani food but sometimes we do also eat Swedish or other food that can be made easily.

Now that our kids are grown up, I am grateful that we taught our kids to eat everything that I make. And our lifestyle changes and so do our priorities, it's good to reflect on things you can do better. I started feeling that I want to spend more time with my family and do something else after work like exercise, knitting, sewing which is my hobby, or just want to come home from work and watch tv with my family.

A new lifestyle!

I discussed it with my family and they were in my support and understood my thoughts. As we are a family that do lots of outings and are very much in nature on weekends I wanted them to know that I have to spend Sundays making food for the rest of the week. One day was for grocery shopping and the other day was for cooking. I started to watch many Pakistani weekly meal planning videos and it helped me alot. The best part I like is that Pakistani food can be made in bulk and great to store in the fridge for at least four days.

Being more mature I also learned that every decision does not have to be good. It takes time and effort for a new beginning. You decide a timeline when you want to reflect on how the decision was. I gave my new plan one month and during this time I will reflect on all the negative and positive aspects and change things if needed. After one month we will together evaluate this new lifestyle.

It is not easy to start a new way of life. It always takes time to adjust and plan things before everything sets out correctly. Everytime I start something I do research about it, yes you heard it right I did research and saw lots of videos on how to do meal prep. But I was not only going to do meal prep but weekly meal plan and make this food and store it in the fridge to be eaten on the weekdays. I only decide on one week's meals and the groceries which are required for it.

First week I was going to start, I did the grocery and the cooking the same day which took us almost the whole Sunday. I stood in the kitchen with my daughter Ilma for almost 6 hours. My husband and I realized it was not a good idea. I was exhausted and thought this would never work. I don't want to stand in the kitchen all Sunday and then prepare for the next day.

Second week we decided to do the grocery on Saturday and cooking on sunday. That was also not a good idea, because it took too much time from our weekend. As a beginner it takes time to manage everything without consuming much time and effort.This week I knew how to manage everything better. I prepared stuff by doing the cutting, chopping etc first in the morning after breakfast. Then I was already done within 2 hours.

Third week we decided to do the grocery on friday on the way home from work.
That was much better, and for that I had already made a grocery list. Now I have a monthly schedule of dishes which I can choose from when I prepare my grocery list.
Now we could have fun on Saturdays and on Sunday we made our meals.
My kids are happy to know what they will have the whole week and we can also choose to eat from the made dishes everyday.

My daughter made thist monthly list of dishes.

Glass container are the best to heat upp and can be eaten directly from.

As many of us know, it takes much more time to think about what to eat rather than make it. So now that problem is gone. I didn't have to think at work what to cook as soon as I came home. I already have food and the only thing I had to make was roti or rice, which is not as much time consuming.

The conclusion!

Many people have been asking me, if it is worth it to give your whole Sunday to meal planning. In the beginning it was not at all fun, as I wrote upstairs I hated to stand in the kitchen for so long. But by the time I learned how to plan better and the management in which order you should do things makes you even better. For me and my family it's a very good thing and I am happy that we made this change in our lives. We are more relaxed, it's also budget friendly and minimizes food waste.

Hope you have had a happy reading, and do send some comments on how you plan and if you have any suggestions for me I would like to hear from you.