Meal Planning Made Easy: Ideas And Tips To Help You Develop A Weekly Family Meals Plan

Becoming that little bit organised by executing a weekly Family Meals plan will potentially save you money, time and effort. A meal plan can offer your family a different variety of meals for the week and it will allow you to decide what you need at the shops before you go. This will mean that you can avoid those unnecessary and sometimes unhealthy impulse buys once you're there.
Grocery shopping turns into a piece of cake as you confidently stride down those aisles locating and ticking all the items on your shopping list. The short period of time it takes you to plan out your family meal times is really well worth it because it takes the standard "what am I going to cook tonight?" pressure off since you will have a pre-planned weekly menu at the ready as well as the ingredients you need to be able to cook everything on your plan.
Ideas to set up a household meals weekly plan:
1. Once a week on a day you prefer, take a moment and write some ideas regarding possible dinner ideas that you could prepare that week
- Try and incorporate several family favorite dinners that you know the family members will love
- Pick out several new dishes to try; Do this by reading through your own personal cookbook collection (if you have one) or perhaps start looking online at cooking websites or even ask your friends and family to show you a few of their own family favorite recipes
- Try and vary the dish varieties through the course of the week i.e. incorporate a pasta recipe, a chicken dish, a red meat dish, a grain recipe etc to ensure a well balanced and wholesome meal plan
- Try and double the recipe for at least one of the recipes to enable you to enjoy one dish across 2 evenings and/or freeze the meal for another day
- Add in one freezer meal throughout the week that you can simply remove from the freezer and set straight inside the oven
- Allow yourself a night or two off from cooking where you can either leave the house for an evening meal out or simply get takeout
2. Use a Meal Planner template to write out your program for the week
Once you have chosen several different meal ideas, look through your family's weekly activity schedules and start allocating the meals for each of the evenings using the template. If you know there are a busy few days then keep the double up recipe and also the freezer dinner for those times. When you have a little more time on other days, those can be great times to experiment with your new recipes
3. Use a Shopping List template to write-up a food checklist of those things you require from the supermarket.
Depending on how often you like to visit the supermarket throughout the week (not that much I bet!), be sure to stock up on the necessary groceries for your planned recipes in advance. Many people like to do a single main shop every week as well as 1 or 2 smaller sized shops in order to stock up on perishables such as milk, bread, fruits and vegetables. Regardless of how you prefer to go shopping, always take a look at your weekly meals plan at least two days beforehand to ensure that you have on hand the ingredients that are required for the upcoming days. In the instance that you need to pick up anything from the grocery store then this provides you with more time to obtain the item compared to it being a rush at the last-minute
4. Keep the plan adaptable.
Understand that unexpected things do come up at the eleventh-hour and sometimes your weekly plan will need to change so be sure to remain flexible with it.
In summary, the minimal investment in time that it's going to take you to complete a weekly meal plan is well worth it. A plan means that you can incorporate a mix of tried and tested meals in conjunction with a number of completely new recipes. This allows you to continue to enhance your cookery repertoire not to mention keep your household content at evening meal times.
Simply click here to obtain a totally free Meal Plan Format and then click the 2nd link to get more articles, delicious meals, food preparation info and Family Meals suggestions.
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