Have you ever been to Disney World? If you have you may have heard this staggering statistic: There are roughly 70,000 workers at Disney making everything beautiful and keeping everything running efficiently! Everything from Disney Princesses to bathroom cleaners, each person plays a very important part in making it a magical place to be. The bus driver on the trip back to our airport mentioned that just the fireworks at Magic Kingdom alone cost over $50,000 each night! Landscaping budget at Disney: over 1 million dollars per month… which is why there are no weeds anywhere, beautiful Palm Trees everywhere, and things like this:

and this:

Everything is creatively designed and beautifully managed with every little detail carefully thought out. It’s overwhelming really. At one point I was so taken in with how amazing everything was and I started crying. I thought I was the only one until I looked over to smile at the mom in a couple of seats over from me and saw her start to cry too! It made me feel a little more normal as we shared an emotional moment. Later I saw that a friend of mine who also happened to be at Disney at the same time as me share on Facebook that she had a similar experience. I don’t know that I have ever been to a place that was beautiful it moved me to tears. My husband planned this once in a lifetime experience and I am still impressed that he was able to do all he did to make this possible. Sarah wanted me to write a separate post on some of the things my husband was able to do to make this vacation possible with our modest budget. I am hoping to get around to that later, but for today I will be sharing this week’s meal plan! As you can imagine, I have not been doing any cooking for several days so I am changing things up and using your meal suggestions to create this week’s meal plan instead!

THIS WEEK’S “MOTHER TESTED, MOTHER APPROVED” MEAL PLAN

In place of doing a Weight Watcher’s meal plan (which I will definitely have to get back on track with when I get home) I will be changing things up and doing a “Mother Tested, Mother Approved” meal plan this week.

I will be taking six recipes that you, our readers, have already shared in response to a question we put out on Facebook back in May 2015. The question was,

“What is the easiest recipe that you absolutely love for dinner?” ?

Here are the recipes for this week’s meal plan, along with the friends who suggested them:

Georgia Nobles suggested Linguine with Tuna, Walnuts, Lemon, and Herbs

Kari Gearhart suggested Crockpot Beef and Noodles:

Shannon Bilunas suggested French Bread Bruschetta:

Jesica Savich suggested Turkey Loaf!

Julie Kissinger suggested Hawaiian ham & cheese sliders:

 

Cindy Gildein suggested Pioneer Woman Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork:

This week’s meal plan

Here is a word document of this week’s meal plan:

MPM-MTMA-meal-plan-September 13-18-Word-Document

Here is a PDF of this week’s meal plan:

MPM-MTMA-meal-plan-September 13-18-PDF

This week’s Grocery List

Here is a word document of this week’s grocery list

Sept. 13-18-MTMA-Grocery-List-Word-Document

Here is a PDF of this week’s grocery list:

Sept. 13-18-MTMA-Grocery-List-PDF

A couple of things worth noting, for those who are new to our system:

On the meal plan page you will see that the names of the meals are connected with a hyperlink to the recipe. Once you are on the recipe page you will be able to print that recipe, or just follow the recipe straight from your iPhone or computer.
On the grocery list you will see that there are numbers beside each food item. Those numbers are connected to the recipe number. For instance, the Linguine with Tuna, Walnuts, Lemon, and Herbs is recipe #1 so you will see that “linquine” on the grocery list has a #1 next to it. This way if you decide not to make a particular recipe you can cross off the ingredients for that recipe on your grocery list. For instance, if you decided you did not want to make the Linguine with tuna, walnuts, lemon, and herbs you can cross off anything with a one next to it. You can also skim your cupboards before you head to out to the store and cross off anything you already have on hand.

Blank version of our printable resources:

For a blank version of our printable meal plan and grocery list that you can fill in on your own you can go here.