5 Easy Meal Planning Tips and Ideas for Busy Moms #mealplanning #mealplanningtips #busymoms #mealplanningideas #howtomealplan
Do you need some easy meal planning and prep ideas?
Perhaps you've decided to try out meal planning, or maybe you've reached the end of line with just how much you're spending on food each month.
If you are fed up with the 5pm 'what's for dinner??' panic, meal planning is definitely for you!
Here are some tips and ideas that will make meal planning so much easier for you, and not just abother thing to stress about on your to do list!
5 Easy Meal Planning Tips and Ideas
You'll likely find that meal planning can be an effective method for ensuring that everyone in your home receives a healthy meal with little effort.
For those who are busy or just plain exhausted after a day's work, it's no exaggrration to say that meal planning can completely change your life.
Before you can start planning your meals, however, you need to have a few recipe ideas.
Meal Planning Recipe Tips for Busy Moms
To help ensure you get started the right way, here a few general recipe tips to keep in mind:
1. Store Recipes Somewhere Easily Accessible
Let's be honest, we're all tired so if there's the tiniest hint of extra effort we'll give up.
Work is difficult and exhausting. Add parenting responsibilities on top of that and it's no wonder you're looking for minimal work.
To ensure that your meal planning commitment is a success, store your collection of recipes in an easily accessible place.
More than that, they need to stay organized.
No one wants to spend a few extra minutes flipping through a book trying to find the right recipe, so grab some mini sticky notes and mark up your family's favourite recipes.
The trick is to eliminate all possible sources of resistance so you don't give up and order take out!
2. Remember Everyone's Favourites
One of the worst things that you can do is cook a large meal for everyone, including leftovers, only to find that no one likes it.
That's time, money, and effort wasted.
Before you start looking for recipes or creating a meal plan, you should speak to your family about what they like to eat and what they don't like to eat.
Be sure to include yourself in this interview, too.
Note down everyone's favourite meals, cuisines and recipes they would like to try, and a few store cupboard standbys you know they will all eat (looking at you pasta and a jar of sauce!).
Once you have a 'taste collection', you can then start to look for recipes and create a meal plan according to those ideas.
3. Try Using Theme Nights
Another meal planning idea that works well is to stick with a theme for each day of the week.
For example, Tuesdays can be taco night or Saturdays can be soup, bread and cheese night.
This can make creating a meal plan really easy as you can look for variations on the theme for each week and easily come up with a 4 to 6 week meal plan in one go.
It also allows your week to be broken up just enough to ensure that you don't get bored with the same meal.
4. Use Your Resources
If you have cookbooks on hand, then great, but if you don't then simply visit an online cooking site or search for recipes.
For example, The Spruce Eats and allrecipes.com have thousands of recipes between them, or in the UK try BBC Food and Sainsbury's for interesting and seasonal recipes.
When you start tto plan your meals using your family's preferences as a guide alongside your recipe collection, think about meals that you can double and freeze to save time in the future, or make a little extra for lunchtime leftovers the next day.
Double up where you can. For example, making two loaves of banana bread for breakfasts or lunchboxes isn't really any more time-consuming than making one.
Make sure to add a few portions of vegetables and fruit to meals to give everyone a well-rounded diet.
5. Remember It's Not Set in Stone
I usually have a plan for the week and have grocery shopped for all of it, then we can pick a lunch that day or a dinner that night dependent on what else is going on, rather than specifying a meal to a particular day.
But if your week is more pre-planned and less likely to include impromptu days out or evening activities a day by day plan may suit you better.
Experiment to see what works best for your family.
Meal planning isn’t difficult. However, it does require a system and you need to be organized, especially if your week is really busy.
But get creative and have fun. Meal planning really can alleviate much of the stress busy families experience around mealtimes.
More Meal Plan Ideas for Busy Moms:
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