Meal planning can be intimidating. Sometimes it’s hard to work out what to eat for one dinner, let alone a week’s worth plus lunch and breakfast. But let’s break it down into smaller steps so we can set up our first meal plan.
Step 1 – Meal Plan Time Frame
Firstly, how long are you going to make your meal plan for? If you are just starting out with meal planning, I would recommend planning for a week at a time. As you feel more confident and feel you are getting a good grip on this meal planning business, you can make it longer if you want or need. Remember, practice makes perfect!
Step 2 – Categories/Framework
Looking at a blank planning sheet can be plain discouraging. Where are you going to start? I would suggest setting some categories. I generally set up my own meal plan by protein source – one chicken meal, one vegetarian meal, one fish meal and the remainder divided amongst beef, lamb and pork. Otherwise, you could do seven meal types, such tacos (Taco Tuesday anyone?), pasta, pie, salad, BBQ, rice, eggs, roast, curry etc. You can set each day of the week as a certain category, for example, every Monday you have pie, every Tuesday you have tacos, every Wednesday night is pasta night. Or you can simply decide on seven categories or protein sources for the week and put them in any order. I do this for my own meal planning.
A Few Extra Considerations
Something to remember while planning is economy of ingredients. Are you buying some celery because your bacon chowder recipe calls for it? That will leave a lot of leftover celery, so plan to use a good portion (if not all) in your other meals. For example, buy the half celery, use 3 sticks for the chowder and then split the rest between school snacks and a stir fry. Added bonus? It gives you some guidance on what other recipes to plan for your menu! Maybe mince is cheapest bought in a 2kg pack. You decide on meatballs for one meal, so you could allocate 1kg for meatballs that week, 500g for chili con carne and 500g for tacos. Your one protein just gave you 3 meals.
Are you planning to cook every night? Is there a night or nights that you will be really pressed for time? Maybe choose a slow cooker meal that you can prep the day before or make a double batch of something that you can quickly reheat. This segways into our next consideration:
Have a quick think about your upcoming weekly schedule. The kids have presentation night at school this week that doesn’t finish until 7.00pm? Not a good night for a roast then – something like tacos or a burrito bowl that you can do all or almost all the prep beforehand would be a less stressful choice. Instead, the roast might be better for the weekend when you have a quiet Saturday.
So, let’s say you go with the protein sources categories. You decide on:
Eggs
Fish
Chicken x 2
Mince
Lentils/beans; and
Other.
Step 3 – Adding Your Meals
Now, decide on a meal for each category. Your end result could be:
Eggs – Quiche Lorraine with garden salad
Fish – fish curry with green beans, broccoli and pumpkin
Chicken – fajitas
Chicken – satay chicken
Mince – shepherd’s pie
Lentils/ beans – falafels and tahini sauce on wraps
Other – lamb chops, wedges and garden salad
Now, we could allocate a day to each meal ie. I will make the fajitas on Monday night; or we can decide on the morning which meal we are making that night. If you want to allocate meals per day (which is what I do), you need to first decide which day you plan to shop so you can run your meal plan between shopping days. For example, I usually shop on Saturdays, so my meal plans run from Saturday night to Friday night (Saturday lunch is fend-for-your-self-in-the-fridge 😉
Step 4 – Shopping List
One last step, the shopping list! Run through each meal and work out what ingredients are required. Note the major ones on the meal plan if you need to:
Falafels – dry chickpeas, tahini, lemon, yogurt, lettuce, tomato, red onion, wraps, garlic
Check what ingredients you have and what ones you will need. While you are checking your pantry, freezer and fridge, check what staples you might be running low on. Did a lot of baking last week? Check if you need more sugar or flour. Do you need butter, eggs, vanilla, baking powder or cheese? Add them to your list. Do you have frozen veg, peanut butter, rice, onions, potatoes… or whatever other ingredients you usually try to keep on hand.
Last in the series, we will look at some FAQs!
