I grew up in a home that always had a homemade dinner every night, with the occasional pizza and soda on a Friday evening. I don’t ever remember eating fast food, or something from a package, or store-bought cookies. I’m not saying this to sound stuck up. I am simply thankful that my mother took the time to hone her own domestic skills, and also to teach them to us. I believe that her “old-fashioned” homemaking ways were a great gift to me and my siblings, and to our future families. I know now that lots of people have to learn to cook and plan meals once they get married or move out on their own.
Menu planning became more of a habit for me when I was working in the group home section of the agency I am employed at now. When you are feeding about a dozen people every meal, it’s important not to just “wing it.” Once I started creating meal plans for work, I found that I really liked it!
Planning your meals ahead of time has several benefits that make it worth the extra half hour it might take to sit down and create a schedule.
1) It allows you to eat what you have. When you take time to prepare a menu plan, you can focus on using the items you already have in your pantry, freezer, and stockpile that need to be used up. This cuts down on waste.
2) It saves you money. When you have a plan in place, you can build your grocery list from that. When you have everything that you need to complete a meal every day, there is no need to keep running out to the grocery store and picking up those last couple of items for dinner.
3) It helps you track your family’s eating habits. Writing down what you are going to eat not only keeps you from ordering pizza too often, it helps you see patterns in what you are feeding your family. Do you eat starchy potatoes and carb-loaded pasta too often? Do you need some more variety in your veggies? Looking at your eating habits on paper can help you change them.
4) It saves you time. You can altogether stop asking yourself, “What should I cook for dinner tonight?” or “What do I feel like eating?” When you have planned ahead, you can spare yourself the extra stress. You will begin to look forward to trying new things rather than always falling back on your same old casserole. Another way that menu planning saves time is by allowing you to look ahead and use your time wisely. Are you having pizza at the end of the week? Why not make your dough and stick it in the fridge when you have an extra few minutes. Fajitas? Chop your peppers and stick them in the freezer until you’re ready!
Creating a meal plan doesn’t have to be a focused activity, either. Throw some ideas onto paper while you’re sitting in front of a movie, or when you see something that looks good while you’re browsing through a magazine.
Try your best to stick to your plan, since the whole point is to streamline your life. But allow for flexibility. I know sometimes we are invited over to dinner at someone’s house, or late work schedules don’t allow me time to cook no matter how much I’ve prepped ahead of time. Sometimes in life, ordering a pizza on your way home is just the best option. That’s ok! When you are disciplined most of time, you don’t need to feel bad when your plan just isn’t working for you at that moment. Give yourself some breathing room. When I skip a meal on my menu plan, I like to rearrange and pick the meal that has the most non-perishable ingredients and move it to the next week. The key here is to still use those ingredients at some point in the near future to prevent waste.
Now that I have shared how passionately I feel about planning meals ahead of time, I’d like to share the form I use to plan my meals. I searched for a printable plan that I liked, and although there are some great ones out there, I couldn’t find one that worked for me. So I took matters into my own hands, and this is what I came up with! I wanted a menu plan that only planned my dinners in detail, but still gave me some space for breakfast, lunch, and cooking ahead. Feel free to print and share, but PLEASE give credit where it is due, and link back to my blog! Thanks so much for sharing your time with me today! I’m looking forward to building binders together!
*I was having some trouble making this link click through, so to print my Weekly Menu Plan, copy and paste the link to your browser!
file:///H:/Home%20Management/The%20Modern%20Girl's%20Guide%20to%20Proverb's%2031-%20Meal%20Plan.htm
