Basic Steps In Meal Planning

If you have finally reached the resolve to take charge of your family’s nutrition, you will find that these meal planning fundamentals will be of great help to you.

Determine the dishes you want to include in your meal plan.

Every family is unique and yours is no exception.  The best cookbooks could not serve your family’s particular preferences so that you really have to sit down and write out a list of foods which are certified family favorites.  What are your kids’ favorite breakfast foods?  If members of your family are either at the office or in school during lunchtime, you may plan on grab-and-go lunch packs.

Build your menu around dinners.

Veteran homemakers know that you need not really plan for every meal.  Most of the time, planning for dinners takes care of the other meals.  That is, dinner leftovers could become breakfast or lunch on the following day.

Start slow.

It will be very discouraging and overwhelming to start out with perfection in mind.  Start with dishes that you know to be easy and quick before tackling challenging ones.  This builds your confidence and hones your other skills in shopping, prepping and clean-up.

Master dishes one at a time.

One advantage of meal planning is that you can easily make and track the progress of your cooking.  For instance, after several weeks of cooking dishes that you already know, you can begin incorporating one new recipe every week thereafter.  This builds your repertoire of recipes and increases the variety of foods your family eats. 

Do your meal planning with your schedule and personality in mind.

When you decide on what to cook, you also have to consider the amount of time you can realistically devote to cooking and the energy you can put into it.  For example, when you get back from work in the evening, you may only have 20 minutes to prepare the dinner.  As such, limit your dinner dishes to 15-minute meals or slow-cooked dinners which can just be left alone.  Or you can choose those marinate-the-night-before dishes and just pop them into the oven before dinner.

Write down a grocery list.

Professional home organizers would always recommend having a printable grocery list that you can refer to for quick shopping.  This list should be as comprehensive as possible to cover all food groups such as carbohydrates, proteins and produce.  The list should also be organized, preferably according to your grocery’s floor layout or aisle arrangement.

Set a shopping schedule.

Setting a weekly or biweekly shopping schedule will save you a lot of time, effort, money and gas.  Learn the basics of couponing to increase your savings.  For even greater savings, learn some money- and time-saving shopping tips and tricks.

Cook perishables first.

It makes sense to cook produce during the first few days before going for the canned or frozen veggies later in the week.  Plan for salad greens on the first day, soups or stews made of frozen vegetables on the second or third day, then go for canned goods only when all fresh or frozen produce are already consumed.

Be flexible.

Don’t obsess about following your meal plan to the letter.  Be flexible enough to manage leftovers or cook something else when taste fatigue sets in.  Remember, your meal plan exists to simplify and not dominate your life.