9. You like to spend your free time staring blankly at the pantry trying to come up with dinner ideas. It’s like a hobby.
3. The grocery store is your “happy place” and you like making extra trips to pick up last-minute ingredients.
1. You like to use the excuse “We don’t have anything to eat” as a reason to go out to dinner.I am sure we all LOVE to make extra visits to the grocery store with our preschoolers in tow. And I know I have used reason #1 a time or two...or a hundred-something.
I'll admit that I am a recent convert to the concept of making a meal plan for our family. When I first heard about meal planning, I had all kinds of excuses as to why it would never work for me, such as "too much work" or "I am not good at schedules" or "I don't like to cook".
Well, I am still not a fan of cooking, but making a meal plan has been so good for our family and it makes dinnertime run smoother!
When I have a plan for dinner, I no longer open my cupboards and fridge at 5 p.m. with a feeling of desperation. We are saving money by dining out less. We are eating healthier by eating at home rather than hitting the nearby McDonalds. And, to my husband's delight, it has also encouraged me to branch out on my meal repertoire to try new recipes.
Here are a few meal planning tips that work for me:
- Don't feel like you need to plan an entire month's worth of meals. I currently am doing just one week at a time and I find this helps me from feeling overwhelmed.
- Be sure to check your calendar when planning your meals. Do you have a busy afternoon on Wednesday but your morning is free? Make Wednesday's dinner a crockpot meal so you can do most of the work in the morning.
- We usually eat our leftovers for lunch in the following days, but you could also schedule a "leftovers dinner" for a casual dinner during the week.
- Make a list of ingredients you need for the week. Check your pantry for items you may already have and shop for the rest. Having all the ingredients for your entire week of meals is a great incentive to actually want to cook.
- I like to brown extra ground beef or cook extra chicken breasts for dinner to use in another dish later in the week. This saves time and work for the later meal.
- I have two ready lists of recipes saved on my computer. One is meals we know we like or that are our go-to meals. The other is recipes we want to try, often ones I have bookmarked on the internet. When I make my meal plan, I simply open up these lists and plug in a few recipes from each.
- BE FLEXIBLE. Don't be afraid to move the meals around to a different day if something comes up.
If you need some inspiration to get started, seven thirty three has a cute meal planner available for free download.
Meal planning has made such a difference for our family. On the weeks where I actually put together a meal plan and let my husband know about it, he gets excited because he knows there are some good dinners in his future. And we both are happy about the money we are saving and that we are eating healthier.
Do you have any meal planning tips?
