Meal Planning Misery

In college, I had a monthly budget. I used it to pay rent, pay utilities, buy food and anything else I chose to pay for that month. I thought I was pretty good at keeping within my budget, especially when it came to buying food. I cooked and bought food that was at lower cost and I managed to have enough for going out on weekends with friends.

So I've been driving myself nuts as I've been meal planning and writing up grocery lists each week trying to figure out how to keep the costs down…

It dawned upon me that when I was in college, I didn't worry too much about my health…so dinners of cereal? Definitely. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all the time? Yup, did that. Skip a meal in order to study? Yup, did that, too. Buy 10 packets of ramen for a $1? Isn't that a staple of young adulthood?

Enter kids. Enter the mom complex. It's the battle between the mom-that-I-think-I'm-supposed-to-be and the-mom-that-I-am-in-order-to-make-it-to-the-next-day.

I would love to be the all-organic mom who bakes cookies for the kids upon their return from school, or whose house is uncluttered and free of dust, but in reality anything I bake becomes charcoal and I'm staring at the piles of stuff on the floor hoping they'll "poof" themselves into their proper places.

So my meal planning misery is thus: I write down my plans every week into my online calendar, I make the lists for grocery shopping onto my online lists, but how often do I really follow it? How often have I just given up and called Matt and asked, "Could you pick something up on the way home?"

Today I planned to make ribs. I didn't have to run to the store to buy anything because the meat is in my freezer. The problem being...the meat is in my freezer. It's still in my freezer. It's hard as a rock.

This is my problem with meal planning…I can't plan for things like defrosting meat. Or side dishes. I just realized that we can't just eat ribs, can we? Does this mean I need to put a salad together? I don't have anything for a salad. Plus, the kids have to be somewhere at 6:30 pm, so I don't have time for this! What's the point of having a meal plan if I have to plan to defrost, make side dishes, have stuff for side dishes, and fit it all in before leaving for something else?

Okay. Meal planning rant over. Mac n' cheese it is. Thank God for mac n' cheese.