Meal Plans Provide Food For Thought

Feeding yourself takes a lot of time! Consider that 365 days a year times 3 meals a day equals 1,095 meals for you alone, and see what I mean! If your responsibilities also include feeding your family … that’s a whole lot of time and effort! You can see why organizing this job makes sense.

Advance meal planning is one way to organize your meal preparation chores. You can plan for dinners that are sandwiched between a late day at work and an early Scout meeting, prepare meals that are more nutritious and less expensive, and make mealtime more pleasant and less hassled for your family.

If meal planning is new to you, lettuce begin with planning for one week. Label this Menu Plan 1. Set up a grid with the day of the week down the left side of the page and breakfast, lunch and dinner across the top. Plan meals for the coming week noting special requirements for each day. If you know that particular nights have very busy schedules, for example, then keep those dinners simple. Fill in the blanks to complete a healthy eating plan.

Once the meals are planned, make a shopping list. Begin by dividing a second paper into categories. For example: dairy, canned goods, baking and desserts, frozen foods, meat and produce. Arrange these categories according to the order you encounter them in your store and fill in all ingredients required for your meal. This will become the master list for this menu plan, so label it List 1.

Have 12 copies of the meal plan and shopping list made. Attach each list to a meal plan and file in your personal files. Keep these plans to reuse later.

Before you reach the end of your planned menus, repeat the process and identify Menu Plan and List 2. Do this until you have meal plans and shopping lists planned for two months.

When you return from a shopping trip, post the next list that will be used so that additional items needed can be put directly on it.

Once you have this two-month system established, re-use plans and lists. Don’t be afraid to make changes: If you realize yogurt makes a satisfactory and more nutritious substitute for sour cream in a recipe, or your family doesn’t care for your new ravioli dish, note it on your master plan. Don’t close your meals to changing tastes! If you sense your family is tiring of your rotating menus - “Aw, chow main again?” - it’s time for some new recipes!

An alternative to this method of meal planning is to identify your favorite meals. List and shop for all ingredients, then keep a master list of the components you have on hand and select each day’s meal from them. This method doesn’t allow you to plan for specific events, so be sure your meals are varied. Include some meals that require very little preparation time and some that are appropriate for guests.

The initial planning sessions to set up these plans and lists may be about an hour, but you can see that this another case of an initial investment paying big time dividends!

Another method of organizing meal preparations involves purchasing foods in large quantities. You put meals together for each day by “shopping ” from your pantry.

This method:

Allows you to stock up on the best sale items.

Makes it easy to accommodate last minute changes of plan.

Can be a big help when the family member with major mealtime responsibility is unavailable.

On the negative side, this method requires not only a lot of food storage space, but it must be organized. If you have food stashed out of sight all over the house, you may forget it when planning what to have for dinner. You have to know if the tomato juice is under the bed or in the utility closet.

You also must know your family’s eating and food preparation habits very well. Don’t buy a huge amount of a food that you don’t eat regularly or that requires new kitchen habits. Buying a large quantity of yeast with the expectation that you will begin to bake your family’s bread could be a waste of money. Develop the new habit or taste, then purchase for it.

Whichever method you use, streamlining this basic activity can save time and money - both of which can be used for other activities that are important to you.

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