Meal Planning – Done!

With school starting, regular routines are coming back. Meal planning is one that many households struggle with getting a handle on. With some preparation and formed habits, meal planning can go smoothly. So here are some tips for those of you using hard copies of recipes.

1. Weekly look over your recipes. I make it a family event since everyone in my house has a cooking night. There are some meals my kids prefer to cook and some meals they just want to eat.
2. Keep you recipes together – Try keeping them in a binder in sheet protectors so they stay clean when cooking. I have my family’s in a binders and color coded as to either where the recipe came from originally or what type  of recipe it is within traditional categories like beef, chicken, vegetables the color indicate if it was my grandmother’s  my mom’s, a recipe my family found or a vegan recipe, etc. I have take recipes out of cookbooks where we  only enjoyed a few of the recipes. If we like many of the recipes in a cookbook when keep the whole cookbook. All of them a stored in the kitchen.  
3. Keep special circumstances in mind – For example, the weather. You don’t want to be cooking a meal in the oven for an hour when it is 90℉ outside but you may want to plan to make your mom’s famous chicken soup on the coldest day of the week. In my house, what meal is cooked what night depends on who is cooking that night. If your kids are starting to cook, a simpler meal would be better until he/she is a more experienced cook. My family loves pierogies but I am the only one who cooks them homemade. We aren’t talking just potato and cheese here-we get the recipes from a cookbook called Pierogi Love by Casey Barbar. My family’s favorite so far are the Buffalo Chicken Pierogies with Blue Cheese Dip.
4. Theme night – Some people like theme nights- seafood night, pasta night.  Whatever you want.
5. Routine – make a list and shop on the same night or day. We do ours on Friday. After school the list is made for specific items needed for meals. Items we ran out of during the week are added during the week by all family members. The list is kept on the refrigerator. I shop that evening. It’s not the hippest place to be on a Friday night but it is fairly empty at the grocery store so it is efficient. Someone comes with me so we can divide and conquer;sometimes it is my husband but sometimes it is one of my kids. It is a great place to teach them about cost of food, the best way to pick out fresh produce or to read the nutrition label aloud on something they want that isn’t really good for them. Works every time!
6. Check the sales – this should occur when you are making a plan of what meals to cook.
7. Leftovers – Plan to have leftovers and when you will eat them. We purposely make them; cooking just a little more every night than we need. There are five of us and we each have a cooking night so two nights a week are leftovers. For us it is Friday and Saturday but plan for leftovers on night that work for your family. Leftovers can also be frozen for future meals by making double your recipe.
8. Cooking ahead of time – if you are the only one cooking in your family. You may want to prepare food ahead of time on the weekend day or on a day off from work whichever it is make it a routine.    
9. Do what works for your family – experiment with different tips or ideas and then keep what works for feels best for you. Once you figure that out don’t keep experimenting; start forming habits and routines.

If you are a techy and prefer to use an app…here are three great ones.  

1. Pepperplate – free on iOS. Android and Windows Sign up, import recipes from the web or manually enter from your favorite cookbook. You can build regular meal nights, special events or anything else. Pepperplate will create a shopping list and everything in the app can be shared if needed.
2. Ziplist – originally just a grocery shopping list but now a shopping tool, recipe organizer and meal planner. Also free on iOS, Android and the web. It generates a shopping list, can notify you of sales, coupons and other discounts at the stores you shop at and well as share menu plans with others.
3. Cook Smart – more than a meal planning app. It’s an entire meal planning service. It helps you plan meals but wants to help you learn to cook, explore new recipes, get comfortable in the kitchen, and eat more healthy, homemade food. The site has a blog and newsletter that  are free, but to make use of their meal planning tools, you’ll have to sign up for an account. You can get three sample plans for free, but the service will really cost you $6/month  if you buy the yearly option otherwise it is $8/month.  It has vegetarian, high protein, low-carb, paleo, or just a plain balanced diet, and you’ll get four new and interesting recipes every week along with ingredients, a downloadable and printable grocery list, and even step-by-step instructions and cooking videos to help you make everything.