A meal planning series about the basics, the secret tricks, and ideas to tweak meal planning to suit you and the way you live.
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Last month, I received two emails in the span of five minutes that were on the same topic: Meal Planning.
Both readers were writing asking for help in how to improve their meal planning. Both were very eager to learn. And both desperately needed and wanted help, meal planning ideas, and other instruction.
I turned to readers on Facebook and they concurred. Meal planning is something we all need. Ya gotta eat! And yet, it’s an area that we can all struggle in from time to time. And there are folks who really don’t know where to start.
Enter: Meal Planning 101
I dunno, the teacher in me just woke up. So, we’ll be holding a little seminar on meal planning here on Good Cheap Eats in the coming weeks. We’ll talk about the basics, the secret tricks, and ways to tweak meal planning to suit you and your current situation. Diets, habits, and tastes change over time and there’s always something new to learn.
Let me know in the comments section all your peeves, questions, and concerns about meal planning. I’m taking careful notes. And we’ll address them all in the coming weeks.
I’ll also be updating this post with the series posts as they happen. Consider this the mother ship for meal planning.
- Know Your Eating Habits
- Take Inventory
- Make Your Emergency Meals List
- Create a Formula for a Week’s Meal Plan
- Make a Two-Week Rotation
- Plan for a Whole Month
- Meal Planning for a Busy Week, Mardi Gras, and Valentine’s Day
- Meal Planning for Freezer Cooking
- 6 More Meals to Make When There’s “Nothing” to Eat
- Learn to Meal Plan Better
- How to Meal Plan on a Budget
- I’ve Got a Meal Plan, Now What?
- Meal Planning for Picky Eaters
- Add Variety to Your Meal Planning
- Planning Meals to Match the Grocery Sales
- Are You in the Mood for Your Meal Plan?
- Cooking for a Small Family
ThatRedheadGal
I desperately need help with menu planning! I just don’t know how to make my situation work…I eat a predominately whole foods vegan diet due to new egg and dairy allergies developing within the last year and I’m sensitive to additives. My husband is incredibly picky, he doesn’t like anything! He doesn’t eat fruit or veggies and it’s extremely hard to get him to try new foods, even variations of food he likes! He pretty much eats nothing but junky, fried, greasy food. Our 3 year old son eats much, much better, but he’s getting to where he doesn’t want to try anything and he is more frequently not eating what I cook.
So essentially, many days I end up putting together three different “meals.” I’m a full-time student and preschooler mama. I don’t have time to be spending hours in the kitchen like that! We are also on a pretty tight budget. I feel like I’m drowning here! Any help or tips would be awesome! Thanks for all you do!
Carlie V
I think it would be really great to get some ideas about ‘instant meals:’ when the day didn’t go quite according to plan, and what you were planning to make just didn’t happen. With a new baby at home, my (previously efficient) meal-planning process has been thrown out the window because I miss the time making the meals I had planned.
Dottie
I need all the help I can get! I know the basics of meal planning, or so I thought, but I can’t seem to get it all together. I need help in planning meals that are healthy but very inexpensive, and since we get paid bi weekly, I need to plan for at least two weeks at a time. Maybe a step by step process would help
HeatherDB
I love meal planning. It helps me when I get groceries. My biggest issues are fussy eaters and using what I have. we live on a dairy farm so I literally have a freezer FULL of meat – red meat that is. I also have some whole chickens that I hate cooking but will use. Actually, I hate picking them apart more… blech!
I also find that a lot of recipes in the magazines ect are WAY too fancy for our house. We are a meat and potatoes family. Simple and easy for me! I would like to know how to cook the basics a bit healthier and some yummy baking ideas.
Rikki K
I have wanted to meal plan for quite awhile and have even come up with menus (max was 2 weeks) and every single time it fails. My husband is in the military and follows a flight schedule which means we do not know what our next day looks like until 6PM the night before. So he may go in at 3 AM or noon or 8PM. Depending on when he goes in I try to throw together some form of family meal before he leaves. This always throws me off and it’s hard to get back on the meal plan band wagon! I find that my strategy has morphed into a buy staples and work off that. But that’s not really working because I start to venture in my grocery shopping (like the $8 goat cheese I was just curious about) and the bills have been a little too high. Would love to get some tips. In particular I’m curious how the month at a time works. Do you freeze for it? Do you shop all at once?
Lindsay
We live 45 minutes from church (well, from almost anything but a grocery store), so bring meals to eat on the way home. We’re stuck in a rut, so ideas for more in-car meals would be great!
sarah
@Lindsay, I’d love some more ideas on in-car meals too! We live far enough from work/school that with evening activities we do not have enough time to get home and eat in between.
Carolyn
Wow! what a timely post! I have loved all the comments because there’s something of me in almost all of them. I was directed here from another blog – who knows which one?? – a month or so ago and have enjoyed each post. I’m really looking forward to the series on meal planning. I tried it several years ago and actually seemed to spend WAY more money, so I stopped. Then I just continued with my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of meals. I’ve recently gone wheat/gluten-free to support my daughter who has sensitivity issues. She plays in the hs band and with football season starting next week, I need ideas on what I can pack for her to eat during the break (at the game) instead of eating pizza or nachos with that icky cheese poured over them. I’m also desperately in need of side dish ideas. I’m like another commenter and tend to serve the same thing ad nauseum. The ONLY reason I’m looking forward to cold weather is that I love soups and thankfully so does my family.
I’m rambling…. looking forward to the series 🙂 thank you for putting all the effort into it!
Cheri A.
@Carolyn, My dd is also gluten-free, as well as few other things, so I have been packing lunches and snacks for years for her. Maybe we can help each other. What does your daughter like or want to take? I may have some ideas for you.
Carolyn
@Cheri A.,
Hi Cheri 🙂 Oh, what a question…what does my dd like or want to take? Her tastes are limited as were mine when I was a teenager! She said she’s willing to take turkey and cheese roll-ups since bread is out (we haven’t tried br rice bread yet), carrots, fruit…We found gf pretzels that are really good. Stumbled on Schar brand snack crackers the other day that are really good. Since you’ve been doing this for years I’m not sure I can be of any help to you, but I will take any suggestions or help you are willing to give! You can just email me at [email protected] – would love to hear from you.Thank you 🙂
Polly
Okay a good friend sent me over here….I am really really trying to get stuff set up to have stuff planned out. In the past I have just made sure to have the stuff together to make meals (several to choose from) not a set menu…BUT I really really need to get on track! I’m all for home cooked meals (when I get time)! I have 3 kids and I work a full time job, so when I come home at nights sometimes easy is better!! I’ve thought abt cooking up meals on the weekends to freeze up, so all we have to do is throw it in the oven! I am also sending my kids school lunches this year, So i have been trying to coming up with ideas for supper that can be packed the next day for lunches that are tasty withOUT being warmed up! Looking forward to you ideas!
Kori
This is a wonderful idea. We can have all the recipes in the world, cookbooks, websites, print-outs , but can you please shed light on how to organize this aspect?
Pamela J
I can’t wait to read your words of wisdom. Great idea!
Cheri A
Count me in as a mother who is managing multiple food allergies and busy kids. I have tried several different ways of doing my meal plans, but nothing sticks. I do manage to go through stages of making things ahead and freezing it, but I’m not a marathon day of cooking person. I also am learning how to shop produce with the seasons, something that I’ve never done really done before. This is because I am choosing to try to eat local as much as possible.
Mandy
I have been planning weekly lately, usually making my plan Friday, and shopping sometime on the weekend. We get a produce box on Tuesdays, but the contents are emailed to me on Thursday afternoons so I can plan meals around it. This month I also bought an assortment of meat from a local butcher at the beginning of the month. That has helped tremendously, as I can look at what meat we have in the freezer and what produce is coming and use those as my jumping off point.
For actually selecting the meals, Pinterest is a life-saver, as I am very visual and I will just go through my “to try” board and see what looks good and uses ingredients we already have. I also have a few themes that we repeat weekly. Monday is generally meatless, Thursday is something in the crockpot, Friday is pizza (usually homemade but we sometimes order out). We also tend to have breakfast at least twice a month, and Saturdays are often reserved for a more time-intensive meal (if we’ll be home).
Margaret
I struggle with the changing seasons. It seems like just when I get a good rhythm going, the temperature or the available produce changes. We don’t have central a/c here in New England, so I really like to make cold stuff on the hot days. Also, I need to organize my favorite recipes so that when the season changes, for example, I can quickly locate that wonderful beet soup I made last spring… or the best way to cut up and use a whole turkey when it’s on sale.
Lisa
I have been menu planning for a while now by just picking out recipes from my folders and cookbooks and plugging them into the days of the week. At this point, I need help in trying to make more streamlined menus – Instead of 7 days of dinner recipes that are completely unrelated, I’m trying to make more things that overlap (i.e. using leftover chicken from Sunday to make chicken salad for lunch or chicken noodle soup for dinner another night).
Cheri A
@Lisa, I agree with you. And I need a better way to keep the overlapping meal recipes sort of together. 🙂
Susan
I have been planning meals for years, but my biggest challenge is planning meals for evenings during the school year when my boys have activities. I have a few quick and easy recipes/ideas, but we quickly get tired of them. Would love to hear what others are doing for quick ‘heat and eat’ meals. Love this idea!
Judy
What I try to do, is have everyone sit down and tell me what they would like to eat… that way everyone should be happy at least ONCE that week… the problems are, A) Everyone (including me) HATES doing this! (But we LOVE it when it is done!!!) And B) our goofy schedules right now. (M-TH the kids have once practice or another) Our goal is also to eat together as much as possible, but on days like this what can we do? Besides everyone fend for themselves… and eat a bunch of garbage. HELP!
THANKS!
Andrea
Okay, here’s my sticking point on trying to do a successful meal plan… I am not a confident cook enough to work without a recipe, so that means that I’ll get a small container of sour cream for one recipe, and then the rest goes to waste. Or, if I decide that I need to do lots of “sour cream” recipes to use it up, I end up having to buy other ingredients in sizes larger than I need (parsley? I only need a tablespoon, but they only come in big bunches). I feel like I can’t use up everything, and if I try, then the recipes all seem kind of the same that week (all sour cream based with parsley). I’ve tried those “a week of recipes” plans, but I end up with the same problem with wasted food. Help?
breanna
@Andrea, when you’re meal planning, look at the meals recipe… then think to yourself “Ok, I’m going to have xx.. left over.” Roll it into the meal the next night. Did you make a roast chicken and potatoes with salad for dinner ? Have chicken and lettuce wraps for lunch the next day. Plan the fact that you’re going to have things left over. As far as spices go, girl, stick to dried! So much more economical.
Rebecca
That’s great you’re doing a series on this. I think it will be really helpful. I do a weekly plan and it works out pretty well. I’d like to see how others do it and am definitely open to tips and new ideas! Thanks 🙂
Marleena A
Never done it and right now I have no idea what I even have in my freezers or fridge.
When I was a kid we had the same seven dinners every week, breakfast was whatever mom felt like making and lunch was whatever the school was serving, summers were sandwiches made with whatever meat was leftover from the night before.
Jennifer Osborn
Meal planning has saved my sanity. My husband and I work full-time. In addition to going into the office during the day, I have night meetings that I have to cover for my job as a newspaper reporter. We have a nine-year-old.
I was trying to plan dinners a week ahead and it just wasn’t working. So I bit the bullet last December and began planning our dinners 30 days out. Planning a month in advance seemed insurmountable to me for some reason but my seven day method wasn’t working for us.
The month ahead has made a huge difference in my peace of mind. It eliminated a lot of running around and the ever loving, what’s for dinner question. And the great thing is, because I’m cooking more than I was, we always seem to have leftovers around to eat or morph into “new meals.”
My next goal is to get breakfasts and lunches planned a month ahead also.
But, I will tune in to your series. I’m very new to meal planning and can use all the help I can get.
Kim in az
@Jennifer Osborn,
My current goal to tackle breakfasts and lunches is to make a 2 week plan that we can repeat twice in a month.it would cut the ingredients list in half,just doubling quantities plus you could make ahead and freeze some things when you make the first time to plan for the second half of the month (ie make enough breakfast burritos or ground beef burritos for two weeks later and freeze or make up biscuit and pancake mixes). Just a thought I wanted to share as it is something I really feel will work but need time tonopah and execute.