Welcome to Day #20 of the 31 Days to Professional Homemaking series. To learn more about this series and to see the list of topics, click HERE. Please know that I am not an expert in marriage, motherhood, or homemaking. I'm just a woman {who happens to be a wife, mother, and homemaker}, trying to figure it all out, by the grace of God. This series is just as much for me as it is for anyone reading.
Before we get started, I'd like to offer you the following button, in case you want to share this series with your readers:
When do you normally think about what you are going to serve your family for dinner? For some of you, this decision doesn't happen until 5 pm, when your toddler is whining about being hungry, the baby is crying for the same reason, and your husband hasn't made it home from work yet. But, it doesn't have to be this way.
Some of you are reading that and thinking, "Yeah, right. You're going to tell me that meal planning will solve all my problems. But, it hasn't worked yet, so why try?"
If you thought that, then you're partially right. Meal planning won't solve ALL your problems. It won't keep your toddler from whining or your baby from crying. It won't even get your hubby home earlier. But, what it will do is give you an answer to the notorious "what's-for-dinner"question.
So how do you effectively plan a meal?
DETERMINE NUMBER OF MEALS
First, start with how often you go shopping. Weekly? Every other week? You'll need to know how many days you need to plan for. Once you know how many days are in between shopping trips, you can then determine how many meals you'll need. And, by "meals", I mean: breakfasts, lunches, AND dinners.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
If you're planning for an entire week, you technically have 21 different meals to account for {not including snacks}. It sounds like a lot, but if you keep things simple, it's really not as daunting as it looks. Choose two or three options for breakfasts, lunches, and snacks, then keep the ingredients for these options on hand. By doing this, you've already accounted for 14 of those meals.
Now, what to do for the other seven?
RELY ON THEMES
This is a really easy way to plan your meals: assign a "theme" to each night. Meatless Monday, Italian Tuesdays, Mexican Wednesdays, etc. To make this process even simpler, adopt a "work smarter, not harder" method by writing down four or five options for each category and rotate them out.
PLAN ONCE, EAT TWICE
You've heard of "cook once, eat twice"? This is plan once, eat twice. In other words, plan enough meals for two weeks, then just duplicate that plan for the next two weeks and VOILA, a months' worth of meal planning done! After all, who says you need to come up with a new plan each week?
TRY FREEZER OR BATCH COOKING
Speaking of "cook once, eat twice", this tip isn't so much for the planning of meals as much as it is an easy way for you to execute that plan. If you plan to have lasagna one night this week, buy enough ingredients for two lasagnas. Assemble both, cook one, and freeze the other. For the rest of your meals, you can spend an hour or so prepping and assembling meals the same day you bring your newly purchased groceries home, then keep them in the fridge until you're ready to eat at a later time. {Check out 5 Dinners in 1 Hour for more info.}
Today's Challenge:
Each day, I'll give you a challenge: one small thing you can do to apply each day's topic to your life and your home.
1. Do you plan meals? If not, that's your challenge today: to plan next week's meals.
2. If you already plan your meals, what can you do to further streamline the dinner hour? Some ideas might be to cut up all veggies and brown all meat in advance. Maybe you could store ingredients according to dinner, rather than by category {such as dry goods, canned goods, etc}. Another way to minimize the "dinner hour" stress is to take a box or basket and add toys for the kiddos that are only accessible while you cook dinner. Then, when it's time to cook, give them some crackers {something to tide them over until dinner without ruining their meal} and the basket of toys. If they are old enough, enlist their help in cooking {even young kids can do simple things}.
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