For a few years now, I have been looking into different meal planning methods, products, tips and tricks. I have actually been planning our family meals for many years, so the concept is not new to me. I used to start with the grocery list as a guide to what to plan. I would check ads and coupons, what we had in the freezer and cupboards already, and come up with a plan based on what we had and could get for less. This helped me save money, but I didn’t always follow the plan because I didn’t always feel like eating some of the things we had. As the kids became busier with after school activities, I had to start figuring those things into the plan. Who needed to be where when. How much time I had to cook. And who will or will not eat certain things. This added a level of complexity to the plan. I found myself thinking more about crockpot meals and less on making the perfect pasta dish.
As more and more people are online and on social media, we are able to see so much more about how others do their planning. There are so many ways to plan and many tools to use to do it. You can plan meals around saving money at the grocery store, for convenience, for pre-prepped foods, or for having left-overs for lunches or the next night’s meal. The one thing I want you to make sure you include are foods from each food group—especially veggies. If you are trying to make a switch to healthier foods, this is the one thing you can do that can have big benefits.
The current way I am planning meals is not very complicated or fancy. I do wish that I had some cute notepads or meal planners with specific sections on them, but for now I feel that a blank sheet of paper works well enough. That said, if you are new to planning meals and having something fun that has everything laid out on it would help you stay on track with your planning, by all means go get it!
A couple of years ago I tried a method of planning a month in advance. The theory behind this method is that you don’t have to think about it each week and can shop ahead when you see things on sale. It also means fewer trips to the store since you are purchasing most of what you need at the beginning of the month and only going in for sale items and perishables weekly. While I appreciate this method, it was a little too far out for me. Normally, I will plan the crap out of everything and like to be months ahead of the game, but for some reason, planning a month of meals felt like I was jumping the gun. I also found myself switching things up frequently in the last two weeks depending on what our schedule was.
One thing I really liked about the monthly method was writing down a list of meals your family likes and then sprinkling those meals in throughout the month. For us, spaghetti, tacos, grilled pork chops, meatball subs, and a pasta primavera are a few stand-by’s. If I make something new that the family really likes, I add it to the list of favorites which gives me one more thing to work with.
Another suggestion of that method was to not plan more than one new meal a week. First, if you aren’t sure if your family will like it, you are risking a couple of nights of people not eating or wasting food. Second, new recipes usually take a little more time to prepare and most of us don’t have extra time on weeknights to mess around with figuring out a new recipe. I try to save those for weekends or nights when I am sure I have extra time.
Overall, my method of meal planning is this:
- What do I have? What’s on sale?
- What is our schedule? Which days need to be crock-pot? Which days do I need to have something portable to take to a child at an activity? When and where do we have meetings or events to work around?
- Vary my protein sources throughout the week. For us it is usually chicken, beef, and pork with the occasional fish/seafood.
- Make sure we have a veggie every night and fruit every day. More is better.
- Breakfast, lunches, and snacks—have a variety of lunchmeats/peanut butter, hard boiled eggs, cheeses, whole grain bread/crackers, canned soups, fruits and veggies, as well as trail mix or nuts. We then choose from these or leftovers each day.
I don’t know what I would do without a plan for the week. Would I just be winging it every night? Would I have what I needed? Would we end up eating out more because I just couldn’t deal with thinking about it at the end of the day? I’m guessing all of those things. It just sounds like a lot of stress!
No matter what method you choose, make sure you are planning for nutrition and making the most of what you eat!
Peace and Planning,
Julia
