Have you tried meal planning only to be overwhelmed by making the menu? Maybe you spent hours on Pinterest just to come up with a weeks worth of food. And then when Wednesday came around you didn’t even want the white chicken and spinach lasagna roll ups? Yeah, me too. I had a serious problem with meal planning for awhile. But I figured out why, and changed it.
Problem one – I didn’t want the food I planned for.
So this was easy enough to fix. Instead of saying Monday we have burgers and Tuesday tacos and so on and so forth, I just have a list of meals we will be eating that week. I check them off as we eat them. Sometimes we went out instead or we had a big lunch and didn’t cook dinner but just snacked as we were hungry. Or maybe we needed to eat up leftovers. Whatever the case it keeps things flexible enough for adjustment.
I also have notes next to some meals if it needs special prep work. Like making beans or broth or bread from scratch. So I know if I have two meals at the end of the week that both need special prepwork to plan accordingly and get everything done in time. So much easier to live with.
Problem two – I spent way too much time figuring out what meals to make.
This one had two solutions actually. For one, you need to keep a list of meals you know how to make and the family likes. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It’s not a cookbook. Though you could add the ingredients too if you tend to forget that one ingredient for a meal while making your list. Maybe even use index cards with the meal on one side and the ingredients on the other? I don’t have the energy for that but you may!
With this list at hand you should be able to pick a good percentage of your meals out without risking falling down a rabbit hole online. Then try a new recipe or two the other days of the week. Might I suggest instead of looking up new recipes you go back to your saved ones and pick one out you haven’t actually tried yet?
The second solution to this is really the part that I wanted to share with you. This is how my mom and so many before her got away with NOT having a written out meal plan and still cooked dinner at home every night. Drumroll please….. The 3 things meal.
Three things for dinner. A protein, a vegetable and a starch. Can I tell you how much simpler and flexible dinners are if you choose a protein and how to cook and flavor it plus a veggie and a starch? Compared to a ‘dish’ that required cooking the chicken, shredding it, combining it with other ingredients, filling the mix into something, covering it with more stuff that had to be prepared and then waiting another 30 mins while it cooks in the oven?? And you’ve still got to add some kind of veggie to it if you’re looking for a balanced meal!
So look, here’s the alternative. How about you plan 7 proteins or main dishes. 7 veggies side dishes and 7 starches (potato, rice, pasta, etc). Both the veggies and starches repeat for me. So we might have asparagus twice and salads twice. Plus 3 other veggies that week. I can mix and match as I like for the day.
Sometimes, if on the day, I feel like putting in a little extra work I’ll make cheddar broccoli. Or perhaps au gratin potatoes. But I know that steamed broccoli or baked potatoes are totally acceptable too. And that makes dinner so much easier to manage.
Another bonus is that you won’t have to worry about a missing ingredient last minute. If you decide to have breaded pan fried baked pork chops, a salad and baked rice pilaf (and you totally should) but realize you don’t have the bread crumbs, or frying oil and maybe even ran out of salad dressing you can always just alter things a little. So now maybe you’re having grilled herbed pork chops, green beans and baked rice pilaf (seriously try the pilaf). Pick up some salad dressing tomorrow. Or make your own! But the point is you don’t have to run to the store because your chicken enchiladas REALLY need the tortillas.
To get you started on how to flavor your proteins without getting bored I put together a SHORT list:
- Lemon Garlic
- Lemon Pepper
- Teryaki
- Herbed
- Curry
- Paprika
- Rosemary Garlic
- Ranch
- Honey Mustard
- Italian Herbed
- BBQ
- Lemon Caper
- Creamy Mushroom
- Mushroom and Onion
- Pesto
- Garlic Parmesean
- Cilantro Lime
- Tomato Basil
- Mushroom Swiss
- Butter Sage
- Herb Mustard
- Apple Sage
- Tzatziki
- Orange Ginger
I hope this helps take away some of the stress of meal planning. If you need some convincing to start meal planning try here. And if you’re ready to start but don’t know how try here. Feel free to drop a comment below. I love hearing from you!
