Savvy Meal Planning

A few years ago, when my son Jackson was three and my daughter Madeline was one, I started to look for some ways to make meal planning easier.  I knew that I wanted to make a commitment that we would eat dinner together as a family most nights of the week and that I wanted to make the meals instead of convenience food or eating out.  However, I struggled with planning what we would eat every week before I went grocery shopping ... to be honest, it made my head hurt!  I had heard some friends mention that they plan a month of meals at a time to make it easier, so I decided to try that.


First, I listed in Excel all the dinner ideas I could think of.  Then I divided them up into categories by type of meat:  chicken, beef, turkey, pork, and seafood.  The next step was to put together a calendar and plop the meals into it.  I rotated my different categories and added one "eating out" and one "easy meal" night a week (so you only need about 22-23 different meal ideas per month). 


Now, depending on how tech savvy you want to be, you have several choices on where to go from here.  Obviously, the low-tech version would be to get a paper calendar (yikes!) and start filling in meals.  But then you would have to write it every month. That's what copy and paste are for!  If you want a basic way to put it on your computer, you could use a calendar template in Microsoft Word.  To do this, select File, then New in Word.  On the right side a menu should open up with the option of "Templates on Office Online".  Select this and it will take you to a Microsoft web page with lots of Word templates.  You'll then see the Calendar selection with an option of "2010 Calendars."  Click on that and then download.  There are lots of cool templates on this website if you ever have time to look through them.  (If you want you can also go directly to the templates by clicking here http://office.microsoft.com/.)



I wanted something very automated (as I always do), so I started doing some research online for software programs.  The best option I found is called Living Cookbook 2008.  It is a recipe database/meal planning software.  I put all my recipes in this software, and then used their calendar to insert meals for each day.  Then when I'm cooking, I put my laptop in the kitchen, pull up the calendar in the software and click on the meal of the day.  It then takes me straight to the recipe ... pretty cool!  When the next month comes up, I use their copy and paste feature to easily move the meals to the next month and then make little tweaks as needed.  Note: this software costs money, and takes some time to figure out.  I don't recommend purchasing it unless you are really committed to spend some time getting your system set up.  However, it will definitely save you a lot of time in the long run.  I have been using it for 4+ years now and it's been an awesome tool!


A few disclaimers here:  I am not so compulsive that I follow my meal plan exactly every day.  When I go grocery shopping, I buy the ingredients to make all the meals that week, so I'm prepared.  But I'm flexible enough to know that situations are going to change and if so, I can go with the flow.  If a meal doesn't get eaten that week, I put the meat in the freezer for the next month.  I use my calendar as a guide so I'm never caught without food for a meal, but I also have to put very little thought into it.


Some other ideas that I have been told about by friends are to have theme nights (instead of types of meat like I do).  Examples would be Mexican, Italian, Crock Pot, etc.  Also, there are websites that will plan your meals and give you a grocery list of everything you need to buy (http://e-mealz.com/).  This would be a good way to get started if you are struggling with coming up with meal ideas.  I would also guess that the Iphone has some applications that will do all this for you ... I just haven't really looked into these other options because I have a good system set up already.