Meal Planning

I was really into meal planning for our family until my husband up and left for a recent deployment. Then I was at home with a baby who was less than one year (he consists on anything I will feed him) and a 2-year old. So meals basically went like this:

Me: Um, so Bri, what do you want for dinner?
Bri: Um... how about... noodles!
Me: Okay, I will make _______________ (fill in the blank with a random noodle recipe)

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Me: Um, so Bri, what do you want for dinner?
Bri: Um... NUGGETS!
Me: Sounds good.

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And so forth and so on. Now that hubby is home I am back in action, and totally impressing him with my breadmaker skillz. This was last week's menu plan (I have linked my recipes as well):

Monday - we ate out with family to celebrate Stephen's homecoming
Tuesday - Maple BBQ chicken, asparagus, homemade garlic bread
Wednesday - Calzones (I used to use Pillsbury pizza crust for these but now I use homemade pizza dough), corn
Thursday - Venison cube steak, mashed potatoes, yeast rolls
Friday - steak, peas, homemade cheese bread
Saturday - Baked Ziti, squash, homemade crescent rolls

This is the menu plan for this week so far:

Monday (September 26) - Pot Roast, (not sure yet what bread I'll make)
Tuesday - pancakes, bacon, sausage
Wednesday - Calzones, peas
Thursday - Macaroni and cheese, corn, (not sure yet what bread I'll make)
Friday - Chicken tenders, mashed potatoes, rolls
Saturday - cookout for our son's 1 year birthday!!

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It took me a long time to get meal planning to a "working" point in our life. I love trying new recipes, but it's so nice to have about 30 classic recipes that I can always turn to in order to know I'm having a good meal for my family. Here are the things I try to do to make my meal planning more simple:

• Every Tuesday is "breakfast for dinner". This makes meal planning very easy because I just switch between our favorite breakfast meals that we normally don't have time to eat during the week.
• Every Wednesday is calzones. We're always late getting home from church, and it's so easy to be able to just know what we're having when we get home.
• Once a week I try to do a vegetarian meal.
• Every other night I try to have one meat, one vegetable, and one bread item.
• We have just a handful of veggies the whole family likes (peas, corn, carrots, asparagus, squash, green beans, potatoes, broccoli) so I just switch between those for meals.

Doing all of the above ensures that I really only have to do major planning for a couple of nights a week. No sweat!

So what's your deal? Do you meal plan? Are you much more creative and organized than me? And more importantly, what's for dinner this week!?