Back to School Meal Planning for a Seamless Fall

It’s officially the fall season around here….leaves are starting to turn that familiar shade of yellow and gold, and we’re getting those welcome cool breezes every morning and evening. We started homeschool last week, and with it a totally new rhythm for our family. Everett will be in a local preschool, requiring us to be out the door by 8 am Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday…and on Wednesdays we drive 45 minutes to a Classical Conversations community where Reaghan continues to learn with others. These early mornings mean little time for breakfast and packing lunches/snacks for CC community day. I wanted to make food REALLY easy on myself this season, so I turned to my Seasonal Meal Planner to come up with a game plan. I thought I’d share that game plan with you today!

I started off by using the “Notes” section of the Weekly Planning Pages to map out some of my ideas. This worked out to be somewhat of a food to-do list for me, and it worked really well. I knew I needed to get my Fall Meal Plan in order, and that I wanted to head to Aldi (the closest one is about 20 minutes away!) and stock up on 4-6 weeks worth of healthy snack foods and staples. I thought I’d utilize Thrive Market or Amazon for some things too, but I ended up not needing to. Instead, I only used Vitacost to stock up on our cold/flu season immune boosting essentials.

Side Note: Need help boosting your family’s immune system this fall and winter? I highly suggest this podcast.

Then I made a list of some items that would serve our family’s needs well and could be easily frozen and thawed. I focused on items that could pull double duty for quick breakfasts, snacks, or lunch so that I wouldn’t have to add a ton to my meal prep each week. My hope is to pull out of the freezer a little bit every week, making these items last potentially 2 months.

My Freezer Stash Includes:

• quiche cups (this time I added cooked chopped bacon and shredded zucchini)

• muffins - I doubled this recipe and this recipe

• overnight oats

• egg and cheese burritos

• pancakes (GF box mix with flax seed, protein powder, shredded zucchini and mini chocolate chips added)

• drinkable yogurts (whole milk Stoneyfield)

For our family to be stocked and ready for the fall, but not necessarily for the kids:

• bone broth

• 15 lbs of meat from a local farm (what we’'ll be basing our Fall Meal Plan off of)

• 2-3 packages of haddock (white fish, from Aldi)

• 4 salmon filets (from Aldi, we eat fish once a week for dinner)

• 2 shrimp cocktail platters (Aldi, for our Sunday snack dinners)

• 4 packages of prosciutto (Aldi, for our Sunday snack dinners)

• 4 packages of chicken apple sausage/hot dogs

I finished off my planning by brainstorming a list of snack and lunch items so I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel each week for the kids. I actually ended up cutting off this bottom part of my “Notes” page and tapping it right next to my Fall Meal Plan, so that each week when I plan our dinners, I can also add a few of those items to my grocery list. We use the lunch boxes on this list for the kids and I picked up a pack of silicone muffin cups from Target’s back to school section to add more options to their packed lunches. I hope this walk-through was helpful! What’s on your fall meal plan?

Need dinner inspiration for the Fall? Search my past Seasonal Meal Plans HERE.