5 Meal Planning Tips
Meal planning has been a thing for us for YEARS…. partially because cooking is not my favorite (though I might be coming around on this topic) and partially because I love nothing more than a good solid plan for everything. So here are 5 of my best meal planning tips to help you tackle meal planning for your home and family:
Meal plan for the timeline that works for you/your family. I PREFER to meal plan for a month at a time. USUALLY we have a pretty good idea of what our entire month will look like at the beginning of the month so I can meal plan for the entire month at once. Obviously things change and we end up switching some days around here and there but it is what works for me/us in this season! It also helps me do one larger Sams club trip a month to get things we need.
Use theme days. It helps my brain if I know we do some kind of tacos/burritos/enchiladas etc on Tuesdays, pasta on Wednesdays, soup on Sundays, pizza on Fridays etc. We vary what kind we have but it helps to narrow down picking meals!
Schedule in easy/quick meals. No one wants to cook a huge meal every single day of every single week. As you plan out the meals, look at your schedule to make sure you pick meals that work with your already busy days!
As you plan meals, make a quick note of things you could make head of time and have frozen ready for that day. Example: I stopped buying canned beans a couple of months ago. I make a big thing of beans in the pressure cooker and freeze them for future meals. It is easy to grab one out of the freezer for taco night.
Have a standard meal or two that is a quick substitute incase you forgot to thaw meat, the produce went bad etc. Maybe it’s having spaghetti stuff on hand, taco stuff on hand, a frozen soup, etc. Ideally this is something that doesn’t need fresh produce so it is something you can keep stocked in your pantry/freezer at all times.