Originally Posted 12/3/21

It's Wednesday night. I have been running all day to appointments all over the valley, and expect to be home by 5:30…..just in time for dinner. Wait, what dinner? My husband has been working all day and I have not yet taught my teenage son how to prepare an entirely well-balanced meal. And we have church and rehearsal in an hour and a half. Crap! On top of all of that, I haven’t eaten since breakfast at 6:30 am this morning. Without a doubt, the solution to this situation for most people is the same: Take out, Drive Through - Fast Food!

I recently touched on this topic in my blog post “How to Stay Healthy on the Road” I spoke briefly about the benefits of meal planning to help keep you healthy and to meet your health goals while on the road for business. Today I want to talk all about meal planning and how doing this can help you in a number of ways. Well-planned meals can be easy to prepare, ready to go, great for your budget, and the very best part? Great for your health! So let's get into it.

What is Meal Planning?

I Googled this phrase because I was curious how it would be defined. My definition is simply the planning and pre-preparation of foods for the week (or two weeks or month). Healthy Link BC defines it like this: “Meal planning is the act of thinking ahead about what you’ll make for meals and snacks and getting prepared.” They have a great article all about meal planning that I’ve linked here.

So plan your meals. That's the most basic definition of meal planning. The truth is, it's really not that hard to do. I will outline the step-by-step process of meal planning below. You’ll see this is not complicated, but some people might just need a check-off list, like me.

Step 1. Plan your meals for the week.

Let's use a week's worth of planning for the example. It's easier than a month or even two weeks. So sit down with a piece of paper or your phone ( I use my notes on my phone) and start to plan. I use Pinterest often to meal plan. I have a massive recipe folder called Food Food and More Food. It has thousands of recipes that I have recently reorganized into categories. I also build my plan from what are family favorites and staples. First I make a list. I write out Mon-Sun or Sun-Sun. We are going to use dinners as the example here, though meal planning can certainly cover breakfast to dinner and everything in between.

With my days listed out, and often an overview of what we already have, I start plugging meals into certain days. This week for my Friday dinner I have listed: Left Overs. (We’ll get into leftovers in a minute) I specify what leftovers we are going to eat.

Step 2- Plan your grocery list & Go Shopping

So, you’ve now got your list of the week and the meals you want to make. The next step is to dive into these recipes and make a grocery list. If you are using Pinterest like I am, I find it easier just to write all the ingredients in each recipe and then go through the house and delete anything we already have. ( Pantry staples and spices) I then edit and move my list around to make sense for me and where I am shopping. You know the stores you shop at. I like to start with produce and then move down the list as the aisles are set up. Time to go shopping!

Step 3- Prep as much food as you can

Meal planning and shopping by itself doesn’t really make life easier at meal times. It just means you know what you're making and you have the ingredients to make it. Step 3 encourages you to prep and pre-cook as much of your ingredients as possible. I do this on Sunday or Saturday or both. Food prepping could include: dicing your vegetables [like onion, peppers, carrots, and celery] saving you money from buying prepped. Cooking parts or all of your meals before mealtime can also help. I often will make a massive batch of brown rice in the Instant Pot and grill some chicken for the week ahead. I also will parboil whole russet potatoes to have ready in the fridge for morning hash browns. Or parboil diced potatoes for another easy breakfast ingredient. The entire point of this process is to make your meal time easier.

Another route you could go is full-on cooking or putting together your meal and putting it in the freezer. If you have never fallen down the black hole of YouTube freezer cooking videos like me, then I encourage you to take a half hour here and there and check them out. Preparing casseroles in foil pans or throwing all the ingredients for a crock pot or instant pot recipe into a freezer bag and freezing it. Prepping like this allows other members of your family to participate in helping get meals to the table. Note: Be Careful with some of these freezer meals if you're watching your weight or have specific health needs. They tend to use a lot of processed foods. There are lots of other options.

You can also prep your proteins like cooking chicken in the instant pot or slow cooker for shredded chicken, available for a multitude of meals. Brown some ground beef, or lots of it- a quick dinner by adding taco seasoning or sloppy joe mix.

Step 4. Left Overs

When I am meal planning for my family I always take note of what I know we’ll have leftovers of. I don’t just reuse them the same way I cooked them. Though that works well enough, especially if the family loved it the first time. For example, with the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving this year- I did serve a complete thanksgiving dinner more than once- but once the family was begging for something different, I needed to get creative. I saw this recipe for leftover turkey taquitos on a YouTube channel I love. I will link that here. The key to keeping it fun and yummy is to spend some time thinking outside the box of what you're used to doing.

Step 5: Enjoy dinners at home!

Ok look, dinner at home could still be takeout, but if you are eating most of your meals at home made by you, then you and your entire family are eating healthier. And the time you spend together eating meals is priceless.

I hope you have found this article to be helpful. As we rapidly approach a new year, so very often people put their health on their list of goals to achieve. If that's you, meal planning will help you achieve them. Thank you for hanging out with me and if you enjoyed this post please let me know. I would love to hear from you.

Jen Cooper

JKC Mobile Notary