Meal Planning - save time, stress, money and make use of your food before it goes bad
When you learn the art of meal planning, you may very well notice your money is better spent, you spend less, you throw away less food, have less stress over what to cook, and don’t have to make multiple trips to the store during the week to get ingredients for a meal you want to make.
So how is it done? In a variety of ways!
You can try “once a month cooking” where you spend a day or a weekend cooking a months worth of meals, then freezing them. This works well if you have a lot of freezer space and the time to actually cook so many meals. This cuts out the need to cook, and takes care of using all of your fresh produce within days of purchasing. You can also do smaller batches - cooking for a week or two weeks, or just spending a day cooking whatever you can fit in, throw food in the freezer and have it available for a night that you can’t cook (just heat the food up and eat).
Another option is actually planning every meal (some people plan every breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for a week, two weeks or an entire month. Then go shopping, store food as needed to make it last as long as it’s needed, and not have to worry about the question most of us wake up with “whats for dinner?”
My personal plan works like this (and feel free to share your own!). I keep a master list of the meals my family likes. On thsi master list is the name of the dish, the book/pg number I found it from, and the ingredients needed. I typically plan two weeks of meals in advance, in synch with my husbands paychecks. I am slowly working on re-writing all of these recipes into my personal cookbook so I don’t need to dig out cookbooks for recipes, I’d just turn to my own cookbook filled with the recipes my family knows and enjoys.
Generally, I pick 14 dinner ideas and about 7 lunch ideas. I do not plan meals for each day, but pick what sounds best for that day, or go by what ingredients need to be used first before they go bad. Usually, leftovers are eaten for lunch the next day so I don’t usually plan a lot of lunches. Breakfasts are pretty simple - oven pancakes made with whatever fruit I buy, oatmeal, a mix of fruit and toast, or whatever we have on hand to make a healthy breakfast. I don’t plan these, but I do typically buy the same fruits, when in season, so I know what will last and what is used best in breakfasts. I will also usually get some lunchmeat of some sort so we can eat a sandwich if needed, and I always pick up salad fixings. There are certain things I don’t plan into meal planning, but I know we’ll eat and they wont’ be a waste of money. Now, if I try a new recipe, obviously that DOES get planned so I make sure I have the ingredients on hand and I make note of what meal if might compliment best, if it’s a side dish or something. Certain staples, such as bread that I make at home, I find myself checking ingredients before I shop, and if I dont’ have two weeks worth of ingredients on hand I will buy more.
When I make my shopping list, I have all of the ingredients i”ll need for a particular meal on the master list. I combine all of these ingredients into a shopping list. On my list are usual items I have to buy over and over again - milk, butter, eggs. I keep a checklist of ingredients to check on - do I have enough sugar, flours and other pantry items to last through my meal planning and snacks?
Then, it’s time to go shopping. I gather the kids and myself (and if I’m lucky, my husband too) and we hit 3-5 stores depending upon store deals, if I use coupons (rarely, considering most of my purchases are for produce or meats), and what I normally find at the best price. I also like hitting the farmers markets most for locally grown produce, for whatever isn’t growing in my garden.
Then when I get home, I store everything as needed. If I’ve bought grapes or strawberries, I wash them and store them in a container. I like to cut up a certain amount of veggies to have as snacks. I’ll usually go raid my garden now too, figuring I might as well while i’m packaging food.
This year and next I expect to do a lot of experimenting with new foods, as my husband will be hunting rabbit, duck, goose and deer. I’m also hoping to buy a side of organic beef to have on hand. I’d love to stock my deep freezer with meat to last an entire year and just cut that expense right off our grocery bill. We still have some venison steaks and ground venison and a few ducks in my freezer that I am going to get some recipes for. But I’m hoping my husband will get lucky enough this year to fill our deep freezer with a decent amount of meat.