Meal Planning Hacks

Calling all the busy ladies who think they are too busy to meal prep!

Guess what, you’re not wrong…but I’m going to make it easy for you!

You feel like you’re living out of your car between appointments to school pick-ups to driving multiple kids to multiple sports practices to after school activities and you may even have a refrigerator full of food, but you’re not motivated to cook anything.

Sound familiar?

This month I’m giving you some of the BEST hacks for meal planning to get you in the habit!

Create a “go-with-the-flow” meal plan for the week. Look over your schedule for the week and figure out how many nights you’ll need to feed your family dinner at home Next, take the number of nights you’ve determined that your family will be home for dinner and subtract 2 or 3. This is the number of recipes you are going to want to plan and shop for this week. These can be recipes from your own rotation, cookbooks, or Pinterest!
Create a list of backup meals and stock your fridge or freezer. “Backup Meals” are quick meals you can throw together quickly and requires little thought, effort, or planning. This can literally mean frozen pizza or chicken nuggets!
Create a master list of recipes your family loves.
Start a list in the notes section of your phone or create a Pinterest board of recipes you’d like to try. You can refer back to it when you feel stuck!
Write it down! Print out a calendar for the week or write it on a piece of notebook paper. First, make notes on the days you know you won’t be home (date night or late night sports, for example.) Count the number of blank days and subtract 2 or 3. This is the number of nights you’ll want to plan meals for and shop for the ingredients from the recipe. Next, fill in 3 ideas for easy “back-up” dinners. Finally, fill in any reminders you need for the week. This could range from remembering to pick something up from the grocery store, to defrosting a roast, to a reminder that you need to bake something for an upcoming event!