SIMPLE MEAL PLANNING HOW TO
SIMPLE MEAL PLANNING FREE

Not every meal has to be a big production! Don’t set yourself up for failure by planning things you can’t actually do. Don’t be afraid to write down sandwiches, carrots, and pretzels. Pair a harder side dish with a frozen chili or something like that. And maybe you can! But if you don’t have help at dinnertime, try to keep it simple. Sure, you think, I can do homemade bread, a pie for dessert, a baked potato casserole, and beef Burgundy. When you are relaxed and just writing things down on paper, it is easy to get overambitious. This is part of what will help make your meal plan budget friendly. To get you started with budget friendly meal ideas, check out this list from Taste of Home of inexpensive meals that actually look appetizing. It is much easier to choose from a list of things than to invent ideas from scratch. That way, every time you need to plan your meals for the week, you have pre-selected all the possibilities. These can be organized as Pinterest boards or simply sheets of paper.Īs you try new recipes, add them to the appropriate master list if they are something that your family liked. We have a few lists for different scenarios: family favorites, make ahead, summer meals, and quick meals. Instead of coming up with a meal plan from scratch every week, keep master lists that you refer to each time. If there are quieter days in your upcoming week could you use some of that time to prepare something ahead of time? 3. Busy afternoons need something quick or made ahead of time. Cold days need warmer meals, and vice versa. Make sure what you are making for the week matches up with things that are already set in your schedule. Is there something in your garden that needs to be harvested? Is there something deeply reduced at your grocery store that you would like to work around? 2. Think about what you have that needs to be used up. Start with what you haveĭon’t begin right away dreaming up what you need at the store and what you want to serve for the week.

SIMPLE MEAL PLANNING HOW TO

How to make your meal planning session simple and budget friendly: 1. (Plus you will save all that time spent rummaging through the freezer for something acceptable to serve!) Just do it all ahead of time, in a relaxed fashion, and let it go. Every time you serve anything for dinner, you have had to think about and exert mental time and energy. Well that would be weird… except that meal planning is not doing an extra thing, its just doing what you already do, in a more organized way. Does planning meals ahead save time?ĭoesn’t it seem weird that doing an EXTRA thing will give you even more time? Planning meals ahead of time lets you do all those little extra things. You can still put together a respectable meal, of course! But you’ve lost the opportunity to cook something extra frugal that would have helped out your food budget. At three in the afternoon, it is too late for those. But not having dinner planned tends to lead to carryout, fast food, etc.Ī lot of the most frugal things you can make, like simple sourdough bread, dried beans, and slow cooker meals take time and planning ahead. Well the act of writing down dinners does not do anything to help the bank account, obviously. People may think meal planning is a lot of effort, but not doing it is much, much harder. A few minutes of planning once a week will save you from all of that. It keeps you calm and prepared and lets you take your mind off the endless what’s for dinner nightmare. You just do pasta again, and no one complains, but that panicky afternoon feeling is not enjoyable. Then at around 3 you realize your options have dwindled to whatever you have in the house, because it’s too late to grocery shop. You know how when the afternoon rolls around and you aren’t sure what to make for dinner, a light sense of dread settles on you? (Is that just me?) You imagine some scenario that will rescue you from dinner making. First, accept that miserable fact and move on. You have to provide something for dinner every single day. If there is one thing that has to be done around the house, it is dinner.

SIMPLE MEAL PLANNING FREE

Free weekly grocery shopping and meal planning templates. Here are 5 meal planning guidelines to keep your meal planning simple and budget friendly. Meal planning saves you time, money, and anxiety.

Simple meal planning