Meal Planning Tips & Tricks
2:05 PM
In conjunction with March's Eat at Home Challenge, I'm here to offer some helpful suggestions to make meal planning work for you in a realistic, time-sensitive way. In the seven years I've held down a full time job and been cooking for other than just myself, adding two kids to the brood along the way, my approach to meal planning has grown and adapted to the point that I feel like I've come pretty close to mastering the art. But if any of the suggestions below don't work for you, please contact me and we can come up with a more individualized approach to meal planning.
1. Shop and Categorize Your Recipes
First things first, figure out what recipes you do have. What are your go to recipes? What makes them your go to recipes? I have a pretty regular rotation of about 10 different recipes that I know are quick, have minimal ingredients, that are whole food-based, and that I know my family will eat. I have them categorized, so that when I plan for the appropriate meal on the appropriate day, it's easy for me to plan a meal that will fit our needs.
For example, I have recipes that I know take under 20 minutes to prepare, as one of my categories. I also have a category for fish recipes, as I try to include one each week, for heart health benefits. My family loves breakfast for dinner, so I have a collection of meals that I can pull from, to include in my planning. I also have a great collection of slow cooker meals, for those nights when I know I'm going to be pulling into the driveway around the time that my family is ready to eat.
By categorizing your meals, your collection of recipes suddenly becomes less overwhelming. Each week, I plan at least one slow cooker meal, one breakfast for dinner meal, one fish meal, and two <20 minutes meals. Suddenly, as I'm planning my meal for Monday night, instead of having to choose from all of the recipes I have, I can choose from the five fish recipes I have.
2. K.I.S.S.
Keep it simple. Don't include elaborate meals in your regular rotation. Utilize recipes that only have a handful of ingredients. The benefits are that you will have much less prep time, it will cost less, and if you find yourself at the grocery store without a meal plan, you can remember all of the ingredients a meal requires, while you're making a list in the parking lot. Additionally, don't be afraid to cook without recipes. Three of my go to "recipes" have come from meals I've created with scrap veggies that needed to be used up. Don't be afraid to throw some carrots, celery, chicken, oregano and chicken broth into a stock pot to make a quick, comforting soup.
3. Plan Around Your Schedule
Perhaps my most important tip: plan for the time you have. Look at your schedule and come up with a realistic meal for what your time demands are. If your kids have sports in three different places, a dish that needs to be prepped and baked isn't going to be a realistic one. Instead, a cold meal that you can pack in mason jars, in advance, would be more likely to keep you away from the drive thru. On Thursdays, I get home around the time that I know that my family is going to be ready to have dinner on the table, so I know my best chance at getting a home cooked meal on the table is to utilize a slow cooker recipe.
4. Prepare as Much as You Can in Advance
Utilize a day that you have some extra time, like a Saturday, to cut your vegetables, to put your slow cooker ingredients into a freezer bag (so all you have to do is dump and go) or to prep some lunches in mason jars. The more work you do when you have time, the less you'll have to do when you're short on it.
5. Let Someone Else do the Work
If you just don't feel confident in meal planning, if you don't enjoy it, or if you just want to take all of the guess work out of it, there are lots of sites on the internet that have ready-made meal plans. Find some more details in this past post.
If you have any other suggestions that have worked for you, please share below. I would love to hear them!
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