We all know the benefits of meal planning. It helps you save money on the grocery budget, avoid food waste, stay out of fast food joints and generally avoid dinnertime stress. Right? So why do we still procrastinate about doing it? Good question! I think it’s because meal planning is yet another item to check off the to do list. Here are a few tips to making meal planning a little easier.

Know Your Style
Every cook has her own style. Some of us need to follow recipes. Some of us hate them. Some of us want to know exactly what’s for dinner, lunch and breakfast 7 days a week, others like a little more flexibility. That’s ok. Your style of meal plan doesn’t have to look like mine.

Whether you’re super organized or more flexible and fly by the seat of your pants, meal planning can work for you. A more flexible cook could still benefit by making a looser plan. Instead of deciding on an actual recipe, she could have themed nights: Asian, Mexican, Fish, Pasta, Sandwich, etc.

Don’t Reinvent The Wheel
Sometimes we moms make things harder on ourselves than they need to be. What does your family enjoy? Sit them down and ask them what their favorite dishes are. Or think about meals that everyone enjoyed in the past. Write those down and see if you can come up with 25 or 30 meals that can be rotated through the month.

Keep your family’s schedule in mind as you plan. If Mondays are when everyone has extracurricular activities and you’re coming home late, that might be the night for a slow cooker meal you prep in the morning.

Use Evernote and Pinterest
If the idea of paging through your cookbooks trying to come up with good recipes for your meal plan sounds like a boring chore, then skip it. As you browse the web and come across good looking food, clip those pages to an Evernote account or your Pinterest boards.

Personally, I love Evernote because I can search it by ingredient and my account is synced across all my computers and phone. When something’s on sale at the store or I have an ingredient on hand I need to use up, I can easily find a recipe featuring that item, saving me money and avoiding waste. Most of us use only a few of the recipes in each cookbook we own. Why not scan those and get rid of the actual cookbook?

Use a Meal Planning Service
And finally, if you’re just too busy for meal planning or keep putting it off but know it would make your life easier, let someone else do the heavy lifting. Throw a little money at the problem and try one of the meal planners available online. There are several that come to mind: BuildAMenu, EMeals, MenuPlanningCentral, and PlanToEat.

They each have different features, so you’ll have to do a little initial investigating to find which one is right for you. However, once you are familiar with how the websites work, you’ll be printing off great recipes and meal plans in minutes a week.

Carrie is a homeschooling mom of 6 who finds that her day goes much more smoothly if she plans her family’s meals. Find healthy, whole foods recipes and meal planner reviews at her site http://www.NaturalMomsRecipes.com

When my family was going through really tough financial times an acquaintance of mine told me about this organization called Angel Food Ministries. She related to me that they offer food at really reduced prices. There were no income requirements, food stamps are accepted and the food was of excellent quality.  So, I gave it a try about a year ago and have been a steady customer ever since.  For more information on their ordering location throughout the USA, you can visit www.AngelFoodMinistries.com.

And if you’re wondering about the variety of foods that are offered, I’ll be sharing some of the recipes that I’ve collected from them over my months of patronage. This is a sample recipe that I got when I picked up my order last month:

Ingredients:

• 1 large watermelon
• 1 cantaloupe, halved and seeded
• 1 honeydew melon, halved and seeded
• 2 (15 ounce) cans mandarin oranges, drained
• 1 pineapple cut into 1/2″ chunks
• 2 cups halved fresh strawberries
• 2 cups seedless grapes
• 2 tablespoons grated lemon zest
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh orange peel
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Instructions:

1. With a large, sharp knife, remove the top 1/4 section of the watermelon.
2. With a melon baller, scoop flesh from inside o watermelon, removing as many seeds as posible.
3. Leave 1/2 inch of flesh inside the shell of teh watrmelon.
4. Scoop cantaloupe and honeyew in teh same manner, removin as much flesh as possible, and discarding the inds.
5. Refrigerate fruits separately until read to assemble.
6. In a small saucepan over medium-high heat, bring water and sgar to a boil.
7. Remove from heat, and continue stirring until sugar has completely dissolved.
8. Add lemon zest, and set aside to cool.
9. To serve place watermelon balls, cantaloupe, honeydew, oranges, pineapple, strawberries and grapes in a large mixing bowl.
10. Pour syrup over and toss thoroughly.
11. Transfer mixture to watermelon bowl and serve.
12. Set aside any fruit mixture that will not fit. There will be enough fruit to refill the bowl.

Please note: All ingredients in bold were a part of the vegetable/fruit box that is distributed by Angel Food Ministries.

photo credit: rox sm

Today we’re going to join up with Menu Plan Monday from Organizing Junkie!  Like so many other memes, I’m posting a menu plan here, and linking to the post at OJ’s.

OJ’s post includes the links where you can find all the participating MPM posts – and there are already over 130 participants as of this post. It is NOT necessary to click each participating link, but feel free to join in!  Maybe by visiting a few of the participants you’ll find some inspiration to help spark your own menu planning!

Menu Plan 5/18-5/24

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I thought I would introduce a theme for Mondays here to cover the subject of Meal Planning, and share my personal family menu plans and ideas, with some recipes along the way.  I’ll be looking to connect us with another Meal Planning meme so we can benefit from the experience & advice of others, too!

Starting next Monday, I will post my family’s meal plans for the week and some of the recipes I rely on.  Today, I’ll share my philosophy of Meal Planning and what I’ve learned as I’ve incorporated Meal Planning at home.

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