First post - Meal planning

OK, I sat down today and made a meal plan.  It's taken me well over an hour and I'm going to catch some grief from my husband because all the meals I planned are vegan and gluten free.  I can see how that's not appealing at all and I that won't always be the case, but I'm so tired of cooking dinner that I can't eat, then trying to find something I can eat, failing and just ending up eating more hummus.  Do you have any idea how much hummus I consume?  Too much.  Anyway, I made a mealplan.  Here's what I got for dinners:

Lettuce wraps
Stuffed sweet potatoes
Quinoa salad with black beans, avocado and cilantro
Lentil and sweet potato shepherds pie
Mexican quinoa

Breakfasts:
vanilla chai pudding (I've never tried chai, but there's so much hype about it, I'm going to give it a try)
Pan seared oatmeal
cinnamon quinoa

Snacks:
Granola bars (I'm going to try introducing nuts this week and see how it goes)
roasted artichoke lemon hummus
chipotle hummus

I still really like hummus and it makes a great filling snack so I'm just going to try a couple different varieties.  There will also be plenty of fruits and veggies. 

I've had some preemptive talks with the kids about how we are going to start eating better.  Foods that are healthier for us that will make us stronger and faster and have more power.  Soren really likes the idea of being faster and more powerful, so I'm playing on that.  They really seem onboard and so far have been very good about it.  I'm surprised and pleased with their reaction.  We'll see how they react when I slap some lentil and sweet potatoes shepherds pie in front of them at the dinner table. 

I'm going to work on incorporating more whole grains into our diet as well, I'm just not sure how to do that yet.  I'm going to switch us from white rice to red, black, wild and if all else fails and I just can't put out the cash for the others, brown rice is still better than white.  I just bough a giant bag of jasmine rice, so we'll incorporate these things slowly.  I also saw a thing on pinterest quite a while back, I pinned it somewhere.  This lady would fill up her sink with water and vinegar (i'm not sure the ratio or type of vinegar, though it seems white or even apple cider would do well) and puts all her produce in there and soaks it for who knows how long.  It removes a lot of the pesticides and what not and the produce also keeps longer.  I would like to start doing that.  I also want to start grocery shopping weekly instead of every paycheck.  That's going to be hard since I'm terrible and making the money stretch and I hate grocery shopping, but I think meal planning at first is going to be easier to do for a weeks worth of meals rather than half a months.  Plus fresh ingredients and what not and I almost always run out of all produce other than carrots and apples after the first week. 

Oh, this is going to be a challenge. 

The other thing I want to do, maybe next week sometime is the weeks worth of lunches for the freezer.  I'll see what I can find for recipes and you should too.  Report back and we'll make a plan. 

What say you?