How To Meal Plan

 

At the end of 2018, I put out a request on my Instagram asking people what they wanted to see in 2019. The topic that I saw the most came up in questions such as “how do you meal plan?” or “how do you meal prep?” I also had quite a few people ask how I got dinner on the table every night with three kids ages four and under. If you were one of the people who asked this, you are in good company and are not alone! A lot of people stand in front of the refrigerator or pantry at 5pm every night wondering what to make for dinner. And I’m here to tell you: it can be a lot easier.

One of the reasons that I started this blog was because I believe that cooking delicious food doesn’t have to be difficult. Everyone is different in their approach: some people do a lot of weekend meal prep, some people have a well-planned menu and cook dinner every night, and some people keep a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry to ensure they are prepared to make dinner each night. If you work full-time and/or both you and your significant other work full-time, I recommend doing a bit of weekend meal prep to make your weeknights easier whether you have kids or not.

How To Meal Plan

1. Choose a planning method
2. Pick your meals
3. Grocery shop
4. Prep for the week 

Choose a Planning Method

Ok! Onto meal planning. I meal plan two weeks out and keep a note in my phone that I simply continue to update. It’s laughably low-tech, but you can certainly a digital version or even maintain a hard-copy version in a planner or similar product. No matter what version you use, what’s important is that you have a plan for your dinners. Think about what will make enough for leftovers, what days/nights are busier than others and require quicker meals, etc. The reason that I plan my meals two weeks out is because the meals that I make for dinner are also frequently meals that I’m testing for the blog and I like to have that planning out further than a week in advance.

Pick Your Meals

Because we live in the age of technology, picking meals can be overwhelming. Pinterest, Instagram, various food website newsletters, magazines, cookbooks and more all provide delicious dinner options. If I find a recipe that looks good as I’m scrolling social media, I immediately plug it into my meal plan. That’s the beauty of planning two weeks out; maybe your meals are already planned for this week, but you can put it in your meal plan for the following week and you are already working ahead. This is also when you want to consider what your week looks like. Do you have a late afternoon meeting at work every Monday? Do your kids have soccer practice on Wednesdays? On those nights, I highly recommend planning a slow cooker meal, an instant pot meal, or a meal that can be made in 30 minutes or less. If you want dinner to be ready when you walk in the door, the slow cooker is your best friend. Also, you can plan for that to be a leftovers night. Even a 30 minute meal can feel like too much to prepare if you’ve been on the go all day. In a future post I’m going to share my favorite cookbooks if you are looking to add to your collection to help with your recipe options.

Since I plug in meals as I find ones that intrigue me on social media, I should only have a few holes to fill as I’m making my final meal plan for the following week on Thursdays. This is when I’ll add in meals I want to test for the blog, flip open a cookbook I haven’t used in a while, or search for something specific on Pinterest. If I know I have chicken thighs in the freezer that I bought on sale a few weeks ago, I can search for chicken thigh recipes on Pinterest or in a cookbook. It makes it less overwhelming if I know I have an ingredient I want to use up, and it saves money from buying something new that may not be on sale.

Grocery Shop

I always grocery shop on Fridays or Saturdays. Some weeks I go on Saturday mornings by myself or with my older two kids, and some weeks I order my groceries online to pick them up on Friday mornings. You know how busy you are! For me, the extra $4.95 for my groceries to be brought out to my car is worth it to not have to drag all three kids through the grocery store. Some stores even offer this service for free, or you can look into Amazon Fresh. On weekends when we have no plans, I’ll bring the boys grocery shopping with me on Saturday morning while Juliette takes her morning nap and my husband gets some time to relax. The important point is this: only go to the store once a week. I understand that things come up and you may forget something that requires another trip, but it will save you time and money to plan your meals, stick to your list, and go to the store once a week. I will also say that we go to Costco in addition to our “regular” grocery store (which is a Fred Meyer). But our Costco trips happen once or twice when our oldest is in Sunday school at church since they are close to each other.

When you make your grocery list, make sure you look through all the recipes you’re planning to cook for dinner for the week. But you should also have a running grocery list that you add to whenever a pantry or refrigerator staple runs out. For us, this is where our breakfast and lunch items come in. I always have bread, peanut butter, jelly, lunchmeat, cheese, eggs, oatmeal, raw vegetables, hummus, salad items, cooked chicken, and a variety of fruit on hand.  I’ll have a future post detailing the top items that I always keep in my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. Adding items to your list as soon as they run out will help prevent unnecessary grocery trips during the week too! I also read through our local grocery’s stores weekly circular to see what’s on sale. Maybe I don’t have a plan for a certain sale item this week, but if it’s on sale I’ll grab it an plan to use it in a future week’s meal plan.

Prep for the Week

I worked full-time starting when my oldest was 4 months old and continued working until a few months before my second child was born. During this time, I spent Sunday afternoons making all of our dinners for the week. That way our meals were as simple as me turning on a slow cooker in the morning or popping something in the oven when I got home. It maximized the time I could spend with my son, and minimized the stress I had about cooking dinner. Is this method for everyone? No. But I highly recommend you try it out for a week or two to see if it minimizes your stress in the evenings during the week. Do you find yourself with a refrigerator full of food but still ordering takeout frequently because you’re too tired to cook during the week? Prepping a good portion of your meals on the weekends will help. Maybe you don’t make the meal start to finish, but you cook some rice, roast vegetables, cook and shred chicken, etc. to make the final steps of making dinner easier.

Now I stay home, but I am home with three kids. As anyone who has kids knows, cooking dinner at dinnertime can feel impossible. It’s a challenging time of day for young kids, and if you have older kids coming home from school or being driving to various extracurricular activities, that time of day is still busy. I have found that the key to success is making dinner during the afternoons while most or all of my kids are napping. I do a bit of meal prep at the start of the week but it’s minimal; generally I boil a big pot of grains (usually quinoa, brown rice, or farro), bake a batch of muffins or homemade granola, hard-boil a dozen eggs, and roast some vegetables. Most of these items are used for breakfasts or lunches, not dinners, but they do help make my life easier.

This should give you a great start in your meal planning adventures! Stay tuned for:

• My Favorite Cookbooks
• My Top Pantry Staples