5 tips to meal planning success
#mealplanmonday-the series!
We are so excited to be launching this blog series #mealplanmonday, where we will be discussing all things related to food prep! Grab a tea, something cozy and join us every Monday evening as we chat about all things meal planning, meal and food prep including gardening and preserving and so so much more!! Want to be part of the fun? We cant wait to hear from you, so make sure subscribe to our page and leave us your comments below!
Lets get started....
Our family has been relying on meal planning more and more lately, especially now that we have three littles to have to feed stuff they will actually eat, that is nutritious and healthy ish all at the same time. Our vegetable garden has been a huge helper, our babies are so much more keen to eat vegetables they picked from the garden rather then something I just present them on a plate! Anyways, that's for another conversation.
Lets do this! I am so very excited to share with you our first in the #mealplanmonday series, and the easiest and fastest way to start meal planning today! You do not need anything other then a pen and paper, or a notes app on your phone, and some creativity! So here we go, here are our 5 essential tips for meal planning success!
Tip - a snack sized plan.
if planning every single meal out for the week sounds like way to much work, just stick to the most challenging meal of your day like dinner time.
Five Steps to Successful Meal Planning
Step 1. Family Faves.
Start compiling a list of your biggest mealtime wins. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack WINS! What are your gotos, the meals that everyone will eat with zero hesitation and bring you the most ease to cook! Call this your WIN LIST and keep adding to it when a meal is a super big hit! This will be a huge help when it comes to the sitting down and planning the weeks meals aheals.
Step 2. Inventory, Inventory, Inventory!
Shop your house first! Open up the freezer, the fridge and all those cupboards in your home. With a pen and paper or notes app on your phone, start take inventory of anything you could possibly make a meal with. Write it all down, make a list of everything food wise you have right now. Don't worry about putting it together into a recipe at this point, just take inventory! Inventory, Inventory, Inventory! Helpful Tip! Put your items into categories like meat, veg, fruit, dairy, and so on...
Step 3. The one week rule.
I find it easiest to plan my meals one week at a time, its less daunting this way. Don't feel like you need to plan every single meal and snack either, if breakfast and lunch come easier to you and dinner is the main struggle, just focus on dinner planning. I plan breakfast and dinners religiously, and leave lunches to be more of a variable depending on the day. All you need here to start with is a pen and paper and the days of the week listed and you can get started researching recipes with the ingredients on your inventory list. We also have a molly+me meal planning booklet available in our shop! Link Below ... https://www.mollyandmeco.com/shop-notebooks-inserts
Step 4. Recipes
Jump onto your favorite recipe site. I love using www.allrecipes.com, they have so many amazing recipes and reviews to back them up. There is also an option to search recipes using different ingredients, and this is what makes planning with your inventory list a dream! Click the ingredients button in the search field, and start adding food items from your inventory list that you think are good combination ingredients. Play with that tool, see if you can create some meal ideas with what you have in your home already. Also refer to your faves list, maybe your current food stock is enough to make some things on your faves list. Start listing and saving the recipes you can make with the ingredients you already have and adding them into you weekly plan! Hopefully there are a few things, which will be so helpful for the next step!
Step 5. The budget friendly grocery list
So now you have shopped your house, created a list of completed meals based on the ingredients you have already, and then filled those into your weekly plan. Now its time to fill in the blanks, this again is a great time to bust out the faves list. Chances are you know those ingredients off by heart and wont have a problem filling in the missing pieces to those meals. Be minimalist here, challenge yourself by adding as little as possible to that grocery list. Maybe you saw something yummy you wanted to make online, but were missing one little thing for, add that to your grocery list to complete a recipe rather then start completely from scratch. This method was such a huge game changer for us, and is a huge budget saver. We hope you have success and find these tips and trick helpful in your meal planning adventures!
Thank you so so so much for reading, we hope you tune in next monday for another post in our #mealplanmonday series. And remember if you loved this post please make sure and subscribe to molly+me and get all those membership perks!
Have the best day lovlies,
xoxo
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