There are so many different ways to meal plan. I tend to get inspired by the more elaborate meal planning techniques. Especially the ones that require you to buy fancy containers! However, I find it’s best to keep it simple for me to be able to maintain any type of success. I made my own meal plan printable but I always start with paper and pencil. I generally only meal plan for dinners as breakfast and lunch are easier for me to do on the fly. I find meal planning saves me money and we do not end up throwing away bad food because it didn’t get used. I also think we eat much healthier.
Sources:
Much of my meal planning is done with Pinterest. I have so many boards for different categories such as chicken, salads, seasonal, etc. I also have the names of my quick go to meals listed in my Google Notes app for quick reference by season. Of course meal planning would not be complete if I didn’t use my trusty cookbooks. The main cookbooks I use are Cooking Light, Betty Crocker as well as Pioneer Woman and Joanna Gaines. On my meal plan printable I will put the source of my recipe & if applicable the page number for ease of finding the recipe again when it time to make the dish. I print off the Pinterest recipes and keep them with my meal plan printable.
Grocery List:
The next step is to go through what ingredients I will need for the week I am planning. As I have selected the meals I go to my local grocery store app and start adding ingredients to the shopping cart. This way I can double check to make sure I have everything I need for each recipe.
I recently saw a meal plan idea that combined all the ingredients for each meal in a bin to store in your frig. While this intrigues me I don’t think I have enough room in my frig to do this but it’s a great idea if you do!
As I said my method is really simple but effective in getting the meal planning done for the week. What is your method of choice for meal planning? Or do you meal plan at all? E