My in-laws who live with us have been in India for the past month, so like last year, I made sure to create a weekly meal plan to eat the manrotjty of our meals at home! Meal planning may seem daunting to prepare for, and to be honest I did feel anxious about the daily grind of work and home life plus planning meals for everyday of the week. However, setting aside a little bit of time to make a list of meals and ingredients in advance really helped make these last few weeks much simpler in terms of feeding my family!

Meal planning has so many benefits. For one, it takes the stress out of deciding what to eat each day. Nobody wants to get home from a long day of work and stare into the abyss of their fridge only to then prep and cook something when everyone is starving and cranky. It also allows for leftovers so that you don’t have to make a new meal every single day. Meal planning is also much healthier and cheaper than ordering out! I’m happy to report we only went out to eat around 4 times total in the last month, and we planned 3 of those times. It did help that I took a week off, too! I was able to prepare meals each day and also host a dinner party for my youngest’a birthday with relatively low stress.

Below is a round-up of most of the meals we cooked over the last month! They were delicious and filling, and some of the recipes became new favorites.

I wrote a more in-depth post here about meal prepping if you’re just getting started or looking to streamline the process! I’ve also got my weekly meals from 2022 while my in-laws were in India here, here, here, and here.

I forgot to take photos of some of the recipes like the most amazing red lentil curry and a vegan moussaka, both from Rainbow Plant Life! The curry was super quick to make. The moussaka was time-consuming on a Sunday, but the finished dish was super tasty, filling, and lasted all week! It’s a good meal prep casserole if you don’t get tired of eating the same thing for multiple days in a row.

I found myself repeating some of these recipes over the past month because they were so yummy and easy to make. Hopefully this gives you some meal planning ideas too! Do you have favorite meals for cozy winter days?