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Menu Planning

Wow, I've really bee slacking on updating here.  Along with the regular family stuff and household duties I am honestly finding that menu planning is taking up a great deal of my time.  I used to just plan dinner for the week.  Now I am planning breakfast, lunch, dinner & snacks for the entire week.  I am constantly searching for ideas online, flipping through cookbooks and magazines and putting together meals that I think that the whole family will enjoy with a new "test ingredient" thrown in here and there to make things interesting.  Something else I have to consider these days is that my hubby is now on a carb-counting diet to help control his diabetes.  I am onboard with his carb diet and it is great for the entire family yet it adds that much more stress to managing the menu just right.  It all takes up a lot of time!  But I know that his health... our family's health... is so worth the effort!!  So as I was prepping lunch for the kids today I thought "There has got to be a better way!".  I need a game plan.

The solution is quite simple.  I reflected back to my years of running an in-home childcare when I created rotating weekly menus for the kids.  I will adopt that method and create a 4-week menu for my family that can be rotated.  This way things won't get boring and I can always have the option to substitute a different side dish... perhaps something that's in season.  So this will be my new plan to work on these next few days.  Wish me luck!

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