Thursday, August 21, 2014

How to Meal Plan

I thought it would be interesting for you all if I shared the method to my madness of meal planning. 
Please do not fear, it is stress-free, will hopefully save you time (poss. $$ since you will use all the groceries you bought) and you will feel like you are in control of your kitchen! 
There is no one proper way to do it, you need to customize it for your family. I think this is why many people give up on meal planning, they over-estimate how much their family eats, buy too many groceries, or get upset that their "scheduled meals" didn't correlate with what day of the week they were planned for.
Here are some tips to get you started:

What my typical meal planning "work space" looks like
  1. ASSESS your family eating habits. Sounds silly, but this will help determine your success. Keep a little notebook and jot a few things down: how many meals you eat a week, what your portion sizes are, how many leftovers you have (and what you do with them: for next day lunches or next day dinner). Ask your family what they like to eat. If you finding trends: hmm I make a lot of Mexican style dinners, or pastas...pick a day of the week and dedicate it to your family's favorites. For example: Mondays: Mexican; Tuesdays: Pasta; Wednesday: Grill, etc.......
  2. SIGN UP for weekly recipe emails from you favorite websites, get a Bloglovin' account, and have fun browsing blogs and websites for inspiration.
    • After my first Cooking Light Magazine and Nutrition Course in Nursing School: my life was never the same. I had a newly ignited passion for healthy and flavorful eating and cooking. I would rip out recipes out of the magazine that I liked and wanted to try and then made my own recipe binders. It was a hobby, I seriously have 7 recipe binders. And then Pinterest came along, which is the same concept expect in the digital world....why didn't I think of that!?     Here are some great links to get ideas from:
    • BLOGLOVIN' : can be accessed from your PC or as an APP : best way to keep track of all your favorite blogs in one place. If you like a recipe/post you can "LIKE" it and it will be saved onto your account. So when you are meal planning, you just have to click on your 'liked feeds' and you have recipes that you intended to try all right there and not need to scroll through 100's of feeds looking for it. Brilliant. The blogs that I follow:
    • Lastly I must mention Kraft Recipes; although I do not use this website any more. I used it frequently when I just got married, and wasn't too sure about my cooking skills. The recipes are really easy and basic, but they tend to have a lot of processed ingredients such as: Velveta, canned condensed soups, etc. They have gotten better over the years and have a 'Healthy Living' section. This can be a good starting place, if you are a novice cook.
  1. ZIPLIST this is a grocery list app I have on my phone. As soon as something pops into my head, I immediately write it down because I will forget!
    • You can categorize your grocery list by store aisles, so no more backtracking across the grocery store bc you forgot an item. I also have multiple lists going: Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, etc.
  1. KEEP A STOCKED PANTRY
  1. MAKE THE MEAL PLAN LIST
    • This may be intimating for some, but if you have great recipes up your sleeve it should be a breeze. This is also why I said in the very beginning to figure out what/how much/favorites/trends your family has. If you do your recipe & family research this should be a cinch!! (Personally I have fun on this step).
    • I usually plan for 4-5 meals for the working week and 1-2 meals for the weekend, depending what's going on in terms of weekend plans. I try 1-2 new recipes a week.
      • If you have never meal planned, only use your favorite & trusted recipes so that you can get the flow of things, and then start implementing new recipes
    • I don't write the days of the week when planning the meals, I just list the meals. This gives me flexibility and then I don't get frustrated when the "Monday Meal" doesn't happen till Wednesday! Life happens, things don't always go as planned. I know.
    • I have had the same (dollar store) notebook for almost 3 years now. I am on my last page and looking back through all the pages brings me happiness: I have highlighted the good recipes, there are cross-out ones with sad faces, there are check marks and happy faces.
    • Yes I know there are online options to meal plan, but there is some satisfaction to highlighting, and crossing out that I want to continue with paper and pen.
      • I have made an Excel Spreadsheet from the highlighted recipes. Recipes that my family loved and I will definitely be making again. Since I try so many new recipes out, this is a good way to add them to my "good list"
      • My next step is to add direct website links to each, so I just click on the name and it take me straight to the recipe. 

My husband says I have issues...noooo....what issues!? I consider it a hobby.





  1. PICK A DAY, make your grocery list and go grocery shopping (once).
    • I generally go on the weekend, so my husband can be with the kids while I shop away. Yes going to the grocery store without kids is FUN. 
    • I really really try to go just ONCE a week and have everything I need for my meals for the rest of the week, this makes me very happy :) :) :) And so it should make you.
Even if you have read all this, maybe even tried it out, and still are not convinced that meal planning is for you. I do hope you have learned something, or have taken one of these tips
 and implemented it into your weekly meal flow!

:) HAPPY MEAL PLANNING :)


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