Dinner Planning Made Easy

I want to show you how easy it is to meal plan. You don’t have to pay for a service or sit there for hours gathering recipes.

Why should you meal plan?

• Saves money
• Saves time
• Feed your family healthy meals with less effort

How I start my meal plan process 

1. Look at the week-I sit down and write the days of week, I make a little star next to the days I need a crock-pot or quick meal because of work or other activities.

2. Brain Storm-I start listing the meals I want for each day. I think about the kinds of foods we regularly like to eat, or my husband’s favorite dinner or the new recipe I have wanted to try.

3. The Grocery List-After I have each night matched up with a dinner I sit down and make a list of what I need to buy. I keep it simple by picking recipes with easy to find ingredients and by keeping my pantry and spices stocked. We also don’t do a lot of  crazy side dishes. I keep it simple by serving veggies- we usually have broccoli, or cauliflower, or beans and rice.

4. Pricing** This last step is optional if you have an unlimited grocery budget. We try to keep it at $100 -$130 per week, so I like to price out my list and see if I need to cut anything out to keep it within my budget. I go down my list and guesstimate based on what I paid before for each item or I look at my old receipts-yup, I save them!

Breakfast in our home is always eggs or oatmeal. This helps me get out of the kitchen quickly in the morning. Weekends or breakfast for dinner nights are when we do pancakes or waffles or some other fancy breakfast stuff.

Lunch is usually left overs. This week we had salmon leftovers on Monday and Tuesday and also had Salsa chicken over salad topped with Feta cheese, delicious! My tip is if you have a big family and don’t anticipate a lot of leftovers then plan an easy lunch. Over the summer we had sandwiches with deli meat and cheese. Some other ideas would be a simple soup or salad or even try making extra of each dinner so you can have leftovers. I have a “What’s for Dinner” page that lists each day of the week on my fridge. I had it laminated so I could write each week’s meals in with a dry erase marker. This helps me remember what I am supposed to make each day and what I need to thaw out.

So the main idea is —You can meal plan!! You can save yourself time and money! I grocery shop on Saturdays. Back at home I prep what I need for the week. For example, to save myself time on Wednesday for the Chicken stir fry, I prep the veggies on Saturday, I take slice one onion, one bell pepper and shred 3 carrots and place in a container. So that’s one step I don’t have to do on Tuesday.

I hope this gave you an idea of how to meal plan. I like to stick to simple but tasty recipes. If you want you can add in quick sides like boxed mash potatoes. We try to steer clear of too much processed foods but we are not perfect. The great thing about meal planning is that once you find a few weeks worth of meals that work for you, you can save that list and recipes and rotate them. This will make your life so much easier–all the work will already be done. Tune in next week for the next list of ideas!

Do you meal plan? Share a tip with us! 

Need help meal planning?

Try keeping track of what you plan on making for a week. Just one week and see if that makes a difference. Sign up and you'll get the meal plan printable for FREE right in your inbox!

Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

First Name

Email Address

We use this field to detect spam bots. If you fill this in, you will be marked as a spammer.

I'd like to receive the free email course. Subscribe Powered by Kit