Meal planning has been a life-saver for me throughout all the various seasons of our life. When we were first married, our grocery budget was tight. Some weeks we had $20 for groceries, some weeks we had $25. I had to learn to stretch every dollar, shop wisely, and re-use as many ingredients as possible.
When our children started school, meal time was always a challenge during seasons of after-school activities. It seemed everyone was on a different schedule, and we had to make the best use of our time and resources as possible. I learned that cooking once and eating twice (or three times) was an absolute necessity. That didn’t necessarily mean leftovers, but rather….planned overs. That’s planning to use last night’s leftover chicken to make tonight’s chicken fried rice.
At the time, there was a chef on the Food Network who had the slogan, “Life is crazy, but dinner doesn’t have to be.” I learned so much from her, and I hope to share some of that with you now. As we enter the empty nester years, cooking for two has been challenging. It seems I always end up with more than I need, but I’ve learned solutions that keep all that excess from becoming food waste. Let’s dive right in.
Overcoming Meal Planning Anxiety
I frequently hear from families about the struggles of putting a meal on the table every night. When I mention the concept of meal planning, I often hear, “I have no idea where to start, and don’t have the time even if I wanted to.” In actuality, though, meal planning only takes about 10-15 minutes when you follow a few simple steps. The amount of time and stress it saves in the long run is completely worth the few minutes of up-front effort. I often refer to this as “doing the hard work of thinking.”
I want you to go through a simple exercise with me. It will only take a couple of minutes, and it will illustrate how simple meal-planning can be in its optimal form. Ready? Let’s Go!
- First, I want you to list your family’s top three favorite dinner meals. These can be your go-to meals, the meal you pull out in a pinch, or the meal you have on rotation. The point is to pick three.
- Second, for each of those meals, I want you to jot down the ingredients you need to make each of those meals.
Finished? Congratulations, you just meal planned three meals for your family. Bonus: You’ve also started a fantastic grocery list! It’s really THAT simple. Here’s an example of what this may look like:
Meal Idea
Spaghetti with salad and breadsticks
Ingredients
Pasta, sauce, ground meat. Salad mix, salad toppings, salad dressing. Frozen breadsticks or Texas Toast.
Meal Idea
Chili with cornbread
Ingredients
Ground beef, chili seasoning mix, 2 cans chili beans, 1 can tomato sauce, 1 can Mild Rotel. Cornbread mix.
Meal Idea
BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, Cole slaw, deviled eggs
Ingredients
Pork roast, bbq sauce, buns, Cole slaw mix and dressing, eggs, mustard, mayonaise.
Start with What You Have On-Hand
It’s a funny thing when you come to the end of the week or month. Your pantry is low, your fridge is low, your freezer is low. You may not want to go to the grocery yet, and you need to make do with what you have on hand. I used to joke with my family, “tonight we’re having spaghetti noodles and scrambled eggs.” But they knew when the cupboard seemed bare, that’s when dinners got really creative.
Step one is to start with what you have in your refrigerator. Odds are you will have eggs, bacon, a potato or two, and probably have the ingredients to make biscuits. Voila! Breakfast for dinner.
Maybe you have a bag-o-salad and one piece of left-over grilled chicken. Pair that with some garlic bread and you have an amazing grilled chicken salad.
What about what’s in your freezer and pantry? There have been times when I had one frozen chicken breast, one box of pasta, and a few fresh veggies. Grill up the chicken, cook the pasta, toss in some onions, garlic, and mini tomatoes. Toss it with olive oil and some Parmesan cheese and chili pepper flakes and you’re golden!
The point is to start with what you have on hand. Use up what you can in your refrigerator, freezer, and pantry FIRST. Try to build a meal or two from ingredients you already have. This will save you money, and will help eliminate food waste.
Once you’ve decided what you’re pulling from your freezer stock, go ahead and place it in your refrigerator to thaw. It will keep for several days and will be ready to use when you need it.
Fill in the Blanks
Once you have an idea of what you already have on hand, you can start to build meal ideas around those ingredients. For example, in your freezer you may have a pork tenderloin, and in your pantry some potatoes. Knowing you can roast the tenderloin and serve it with mashed potatoes is an excellent start. All you need to add is a salad, or a veggie.
What if you have pasta and ground Italian sausage. That’s an excellent start. Simple build on that idea by adding in lasagna noodles, sauce, and cheese. There are some AMAZING crock pot recipes for lasagna online. Just because a recipe ‘normally’ takes a long time to make doesn’t mean there aren’t short cuts available to you.
Plan your Protein Sources
A good money saving tip for meal planning is to plan your protein. I like to see what protein sources will be on sale at my local grocery for the week. (I do my meal planning on Sunday.). If chicken, chuck roast, or ground beef are the proteins that are on sale for the week, I plan most of my meals around them.
I can plan multiple meals around chicken: Roast chicken, grilled chicken salad, chicken Alfredo, chicken chili, chicken taco soup, chicken salad sandwiches… the list is endless.
It’s easy to do the same with ground beef: Stuffed bell peppers, spaghetti, chili, hamburgers, meat loaf, beef stroganoff… again, the list goes on and on.
The point is to do a little research first to see what’s on sale. Then, plan your meals around the protein source that will save you the most money for the week.
Cook One; Use Twice
This one tip has saved me countless hours in the kitchen during busy seasons of life. If I’m using chicken as my protein source for the week, I will often cook as much of my chicken at one time to use throughout the week.
For example. Let’s imagine I have on my meal plan for the week chicken and dumplings, chicken chili, chicken tacos, BBQ chicken, and bbq chicken pizza. I can cook the chicken for the chicken and dumplings and chicken chili at one time. I can grill the chicken for the tacos, BBQ chicken, and BBQ chicken pizza at the same time. That way, I’m only cooking my protein twice and saving myself time in the long run.
This same concept can also be used for sautéing onions, garlic, bell peppers or other aromatics. Even if you aren’t sautéing them, dicing them all at once saves time overall for the week. When it’s time to make the chili or the BBQ chicken pizza, most of the ingredients are already prepped in advance and dinner goes together in a snap.
Think about Themed Meals
Meal planning can be further simplified if you like the idea of themed meals. I like more variety when it comes to dinner – plus I like to start with what I have on hand – so themed meals aren’t always my go to. However, during super busy seasons of life when our kids were young, I would have two go themes EVERY WEEK. The first was Taco Tuesday. Mainly because it’s just fun, but also because it was easy and fast and I could throw it together in a snap. The second was Leftover Sunday. Let me explain.
In my experience, I find that most leftovers will last seven days in the refrigerator before going bad. I also find that there are rarely enough of any leftover to feed multiple people. That’s where the beauty of Leftover Sunday comes into play.
Any leftover meals that are cooked Monday through Saturday get stored in the fridge. They can be used for lunches, remade into a new dish, or simply just wait their turn. Then, on Sunday, because all the food in the fridge has only been there for a few days, we would pull it all out, set up a buffet, and our family could pick and choose whatever they wanted on their plate. What one person may not want, another may. We found that having leftover Sunday saved us a ton of money, and was actually fun. It was a way to get creative with dinner and everyone could choose his or her favorites.
Some of the other themed meals could be Meatless Monday, Spaghetti Thursday, or Crock Pot Wednesday.
Sharing is Caring
As we find ourselves in the early empty nester stage, we have found that cutting our protein source in half is the way to go. For example, when I purchase chicken breasts, I immediately save them in individual packages. When mealtime comes, I butterfly the chicken into two pieces. We also will BBQ a third of a pork roast. It’s enough for the two of us, and usually have some for lunches, too.
When we do have a large amount of left overs, I’ve found that freezing our meals is an incredible time (and money) saver. I purchase the divided food storage containers, dish up our left overs, and pop them right into the freezer. When we need a fast, easy meal, we thaw them out, reheat them, and we’re on our way. If you’re short on space, these collapsable divided food storage containers are also amazing!
Ready to Start Meal Planning?
If you’re ready to start meal planning, we have a free meal planner and shopping list you can download. It’s completely FREE, and it’s yours to keep!
