Even though I'm a huge promoter of meal planning, I'm not fond of doing it. Oh, I have my process that I do every week but it takes me forever to think of what to eat each night. The main reason it takes me forever is because I like variety. It pains me to have the same dinners too often. That's why our Lenten meal plan is such a penance for me. I've recently made a list of meal ideas that we like that will make the process easier.
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This is not something new that I've done as I have many variations of this list in my files. Every couple of years, however, I usually find myself reorganizing things and coming up with a new list of dinners everyone will actually eat.
I meal plan on Thursday mornings for the week ahead. While I plan, I make up my grocery list and then head out to the stores. Yes, stores. I go to three stores every week and and I hate it. However, none of the stores has everything that I need; thus the three stores.
I go to Aldi first and get the bulk of our stuff because it's cheaper than Wal-Mart. Then I go to Fresh Thyme where I get our special-diet items and all of our meat. We're picky about our meat and we all like it from here and their sales are good. Then I head to Wal-Mart to pick up whatever I haven't found so far, which is a decent amount each week. Ugh.
This entire process takes me most of Thursday. From meal planning to shopping and driving to unloading and putting away, I "eat up" a good portion of my Thursday.
A List of Meal Ideas Makes it Easier
Anything I can do to cut down on some of my agony I will do. That is why I occasionally remember that having a master list of meal ideas that everyone likes is a good idea.
Besides that, it gives me an opportunity to make another chart of something in Excel (my favorite organizing tool)!
I thought about making a download of my meals for you if you're interested, but I fear it would not be helpful. You see, we make up weird names for a lot of the dinners we like (i.e. tuna soup, kubacki chicken, poverty spaghetti) that aren't very descriptive. In addition, I have meal ideas from various cookbooks (like this one or this one) that you might not have.
Since I can't just give you my list and have it mean anything, I'll give you the steps you'll take to make your own!
- Gather your favorite cookbooks and recipe
- Either hand write (what?!) or use your favorite spreadsheet program to begin a file for your list of meal ideas.
- Make headings for the main types of meat that your family eats. My headings are: beef, chicken, pork, turkey, and meatless. Make your headings make sense for the way you plan your dinners.
- Go through all of your recipes (don't forget those in your head that you know by heart!) and categorize all your meals by your headings. You can see how I did that in the main photo.
- If you have your recipes in a variety of cookbooks, I find it helps to list which cookbook they're in for ease of finding the recipes.
The Planning Process
Now that you have your list ready, get it out whenever you meal plan and use it to get new ideas.
While I was making this up, I realized how many things we like to eat that I rarely ever cook!!
I'm excited for some new variety in our dinners over the coming weeks! Do you meal plan? If so, do you have a master list like this? I'd love to hear how you handle your meal planning, so please comment below!