Meal Planning Tips/Ideas anyone?

I love meal planning! I usually plan a week at a time on Thursday, after the flyers come out- not sure how it is where you live, but all the sales start on Friday here, so once I know what the deals are for the week, I plan.

I also try to plan meals that use similar ingredients, for example if I am buying something that I don't normally have in the fridge all the time I will try and plan a couple of meals that have that ingredient- an example is green onions. They come in a huge bunch but for recipes you usually only need one or two. I hate wasting food, so I will make sure I am making a couple of meals that incorporate green onions.

I looked on Pinterest and found a print out of a weekly meal plan, which I printed and laminated, so once I decide what we are going to eat for the week, I write each night's meals on this laminated sheet and hang it on the fridge so my family knows in advance what we are going to eat for the week- they don't like surprises!

This week, ground beef was on special, as were chicken legs, so the meal plan for this week:

Sunday: Mustard roasted chicken legs, baked sweet potatoes, string beans
Monday: Sweet and sour meatballs, brown rice, carrots
Tuesday: Chicken casserole (made with leftover chicken from Sunday) and a side salad
Wednesday: Leftover sweet and sour meatballs, brown rice, broccoli
Thursday: Grilled pork chops (purchased on special and frozen two weeks ago), mustard roasted potatoes, side salad
Friday: Homemade pizza, side salad
Saturday: baked fish (on special this coming week), mashed sweet potatoes, string beans

Check out www.ziplist.com.

I like this app for a bunch of reasons:

1) I can browse recipes on the web, use the ZipList Recipe Clipper to "clip" the recipe and add the recipe to my menu planner and the ingredients to a grocery list.
2) The grocery list can be pulled up on my phone while I'm at the grocery store so I can just check of everything I'm getting.
3) The menu planner syncs with my Gmail account and throws my menus on my phone calendar.
4) The phone app has a barcode scanner (similar to the one on MFP) to easily add stuff to my grocery list quickly.
5) On the ZipList website, you can also search for your local grocery store, and it will suggest things that are on sale that week for your store.

ETA: One last thing I like about it.......I can pull up my menu on my phone in the kitchen, click the link and it takes me directly to my recipe. That way, I don't have print out the recipe or drag my laptop into the kitchen. I just use my phone.

I love the Sloppy Joe Casserole with Zuccinni... I haven't found anything on her site I dont like yet. I always result to that site, when looking for new meals. There are so many!