Meal planning and dinner preparation

I once read somewhere that home cooks have an average of 21 meals that make up our repertoire of common family meals. I thought this was very interesting and started writing what my 21 meals are. In fact, I came up with 23 foods that my family regularly enjoys. By creating this list, I now know what I need to stock in my pantry. You won’t have to worry about what’s for dinner tonight if all you need to do is check your list! Feel free to add more than 21 meals to your list. The more you list, the easier it will be to think about dinner tonight. This list is for your basic meals. It’s not the place to add the foods you want to try one day. Go ahead and do that if you want, but put your experimental recipes on a different list. Don’t worry if all you can think of is lots of different versions of mac and cheese!

Now that you have your 21 meals, this challenge will be instant (or maybe less painful)! One of the best strategies I know of when it comes to meal planning is to simply plan ahead. I use a list I call a menu planner to plan the value of meals for a pay period (for me, that’s every 1st and 15th of the month). The My Menu Planner page is a list showing the numbers 1-31 for each day of the month in the left column. Next, there is a column for breakfast, a column for lunch, and the largest column for dinner. Dinner is our family’s main meal, so I’m more specific to that column. Breakfast and lunch are more casual, so I’m just listing a few suggestions to refer to during the month. Feel free to refer back to your list of 21 meals often to help complete your menu planner.

My next step is to print out a shopping list and then I write all the ingredients I need from my menu planner on my shopping list. Now when I go to the store I get only what I need instead of what I MAY need at some point. That saves me money and keeps my fridge/freezer/pantry from having all sorts of weird and unnecessary items. Mealtime with your family will be so much more enjoyable when you only take a few steps to prepare. Challenge your family to help you create your menu planner list by asking them what meals they would like to enjoy in the upcoming planning period (one week, two weeks, maybe even 1 month). When you engage them, you are more likely to have a greater success during the dining experience.