I. hate. meal. planning.

~I received meal planning services from eMeals to facilitate this review. All opinions are my own!

You’d think this far into my “wife” and “work-at-home-mom” career thing I’d be used to planning dinners and cooking. Nope. Not a fan. When I cook, I HAVE to have a recipe, I’m terrible at throwing things together… so for me, the hardest part about cooking is figuring out what in the world to make! I realized that if I sat down every weekend and figured out meals for the next week–and then went to the store for those items–I could make it work.

And THAT is exactly why I love eMeals. Love love love. It’s a life saver.

What IS eMeals? A meal and grocery planning service! You can pick your plan type, so if you eat organic or gluten-free or are vegetarian, for example, you can choose those menus (and no worries, you can change up your plan if you decide later that you want something different!) Then you’re emailed a weekly plan that includes dinner meals for 7 days AND an itemized grocery shopping list with everything needed for those 7 meals.

Why I love it: it plans my meals for me and tells me what to buy at the store. Do you know how much time that saves me?! AND it makes me actually cook dinner–so you know my husband likes it! Turns out I don’t mind cooking so much when I have a plan and a menu 😉

The email I get each week with my meal plan!

I’m a really picky eater so at first I was worried that I wouldn’t like the things on the menu, but it has been great. Plus, we don’t cook 7 meals a week (we have leftovers, we eat over at Great Grandma’s weekly, etc.) so that allows me to pick out favorite choices from the 7 meals to actually make that week.

When I download the weekly meal plan, it has 3 columns. The first names the meal and gives you estimated prep and cook times. The second column lists all the ingredients, and the 3rd column gives you instructions. Here are some examples of what we got this week on the Natural & Organic Plan: pasta with sausage and swiss chard (with french bread), chicken gyros with cucumber salsa (and potato chips), skillet baked ziti (with mixed green salad), and grilled lemon chicken (with corn and mustard-balsamic broccoli). And of course you can adapt recipes a bit for your own taste.

Have I convinced you to sign up?! It was another blogger/friend of mine, Me As a Mommy, that convinced me! She has been using eMeals for years and swears by it. Glad I listened 😉 AND if you sign up during the month of October you get an extra menu: 12 comfort food recipes! MY FAVORITE. Here’s one example:

DISCOUNT: If you sign up, use my code to get 15% off: DINNER15

We only have the dinner meal planning service, but they have lunch and breakfast options you can add on, too! Head over to eMeals and check them out, and you can find them on facebook and twitter.

~I received services from eMeals to facilitate this review. All opinions are my own!