7 Menu Planning Tips to help you De-stress your Week
You may be wondering how menu planning can help you. Honestly, I didn’t see the value in menu planning until I started to do it myself. Well, it actually wasn’t until I had been doing it and then stopped doing it that I really noticed its benefits (as I watched my time spent at the grocery store and my grocery bill go up). I realized that menu planning not only resulted in less grocery store trips and less money spent on groceries but also less food waste, and it eliminated the daily question of “what’s for dinner?”
The key is to make time once a week, or every other week, to establish your menus for the week(s) and everything else should fall into place. I come up with a plan over the weekend with my family, which gives everyone a chance to share their meal requests. From there I use the simple steps below to plan out the menus by day. An added bonus for our household is that we use dinner leftovers for lunch which saves money and time throughout the week.
7 easy tips to make menu planning quick and easy:
1. Keep a list of your go-to meals and dishes: Keep a list of all of the different dishes that you make, and have it organized by protein and/or vegetables needed, so that you can go through that list and figure out what sounds good, what is on sale that week at our local grocery stores, and what will use up what you already have in your fridge. I always try to pick meals that allow me to overlap ingredients. This way I am not buying a hundred different things just to make a few dinners but can use the same ingredients in a few different meals. For example, when I buy cabbage, I will use it for stir fry one night, and then in a coleslaw another night. They are completely different dishes and you don’t feel like you’re eating the same thing, but you’re not wasting it either. In your list, know your go-to meals. There are some things that you may have every week, like taco Tuesdays for example, that you can use week to week. This makes it easier to plan, and you don’t have to come up with so many different meal ideas every week. To help figure out the meals for the week, pick your protein first. If you decide on beef tacos for Taco Tuesday, then you know Monday and Wednesday will need to be a different protein, such as chicken, fish, or eggs, etc. We try not to do the same protein two nights in a row, especially if you’ll be having it for lunch the next day too.
2. Plan your grocery trips: if you know that you need to go to a couple of different stores to get everything you need (based on availability, sales, or price), then plan accordingly. I don’t typically want to go to two grocery stores in the same day, so I spread out my shopping trips and plan my meals based on which store I will go to at the beginning of the week, and what ingredients I won’t have until my next shopping trip.
3. Keep your pantry stocked: I keep certain things in our pantry at all times, and stock up when they are on sale. These include: organic chicken stock, organic canned diced and crushed tomatoes, organic coconut milk, curry paste, rice, spices, oil, BBQ sauce, fish sauce, rice flour and/or garbanzo flour (or your favorite flour for cooking), and tomato sauce. These items stay fresh in your pantry for a while, so you can easily stock up when they are on sale and always have them on hand, instead of needing it when you don’t have it and having to pay full price. (I hate to pay full price for anything!)
4. Use what you’ve got, all of it! Reduce waste and keep your grocery bill low while decreasing your environmental footprint. By utilizing what you already have in your refrigerator and pantry, repurposing ingredients, and using all of the edible parts of your vegetables, you can reduce waste and your grocery bill.
1. Use what you already have in your refrigerator. Make sure to check out what you already have before you go grocery shopping. Make note of what you’re low on, what you’re out of, and what you still have plenty of so you don’t duplicate anything. It sounds basic, but how often do you really survey your fridge and pantry before you go to the store? If you’re like me, that answer is “not enough” when it should be “every time!”
2. Repurpose ingredients. Utilize leftovers for lunch the next day. Throw that leftover steak on a salad or turn that extra BBQ chicken into lettuce wraps for your lunch. Extra chopped veggies can be used in the next night’s dinner, a breakfast omelet or a breakfast frittata on the weekend.
3. Use every edible part of the vegetable. So much waste comes from us not knowing how to use every part of the vegetable and throwing it away.
1. The carrot greens on the top of that carrot bunch often get thrown away, but they make a great pesto, or can be chopped up and added into soups, stews, or even dishes like meatloaf.
2. Broccoli stems can be chopped up and used in risotto, or any recipe that calls for diced vegetables, or grate them and make a slaw. It adds a mild broccoli flavor, without using the florets that can often get mushy in dishes like stews or slow cooker meals.
3. Keep the peel on your organic veggies-edible peels like on potatoes, sweet potatoes, zucchini, and carrots are high in nutrients and fiber. Save yourself some time and don’t peel these!
5. Pay attention to expiration dates: make sure you look at expiration dates when you are buying food at the store and keeping in mind that meat and produce are best when fresh. There are some things with longer expiration dates, like the above pantry items, so stock up on those when you can. You can buy your meat and veggies week to week so it’s always fresh. Keep your oldest food in the front of your refrigerator so they are what you see first when you open it. It’s a nice reminder of what you need to use up first!
6. Prep ahead of time. Prepping foods ahead of time makes actually making dinner so much easier. Have a few extra minutes on Sunday? Then get chopping! Prep what you’ll need for the next couple of night’s meals so when you go to make dinner after that long Monday, part of the work is already done for you! Chopping veggies and prepping meat ahead of time can save a lot of time when you go to cook for the night; so can setting out what you need from the pantry the night before. Making dinner shouldn’t be stressful, so let your Sunday-self prepare for the week and help out your Monday-through-Friday-self.
7. Keep it simple. Menu planning doesn’t need to be difficult or overwhelming. Start with meals that you know are easy to make and utilize what you already have in your refrigerator and pantry and go from there. Picking recipes with obscure ingredients or that have a lot of steps aren’t always feasible after you get home from work starving and just want to eat. If you want new dishes, maybe plan to try one new recipe a week when you know you’ll have more time, such as on a weekend or a day when you typically get home from work earlier. Keep adding to your list of go-to meals this way and soon enough you’ll have a long enough list that you don’t feel like you’re eating the same things all the time, but you’re not overwhelming yourself with new recipes all the time.
Set yourself up for success and have fun with it!