Well, in an effort to alleviate my frustration with meal planning, one of my friends, and blog readers, Heather, sent me an amazing email detailing how her family has found a way to make meal planning extra easy and stress-free!! With her permission, I thought I would outline her method for all of you – in case I’m not the only one struggling to meal plan!!
Here is Heather’s Tried & True Stress-Free Method to Meal Planning:
“I have a 10 week rotating menu.
Each week has 5 things planned:
* 3 weekday meals
* 1 Saturday meal (something that requires more prep time than weekday meals, or grilling in the summer)
* 1 Sunday meal (We always do breakfast for dinner – pancakes, scrambled eggs, homemade granola, muffins, etc. It saves me from slaving in the kitchen Sunday afternoon, and the kids absolutely love it.).
Then, I usually make homemade pizza on Fridays. And that leaves 1 meal unplanned, and it varies from week to week what I do for this meal. Sometimes we have guests, or we eat out, or I grab a meal from the freezer, or I make something using things on sale that week.
My rotating menu mostly just has main dishes, and for sides I make whatever is in season or on sale.
The beauty of the rotating menu is that I have ingredients listed for each meal, so when I’m making my grocery list, I just look at the ingredients I need for that week’s menu items. No more sitting in the living room surrounded by cook books, racking my brain to find something interesting. My rotating menu might not seem like the most frugal way to do it, but it’s what works for me at this season in my life. I have 3 small children, and since we’re homeschooling, they’re all home with me all the time. So I just don’t have the motivation to take the time to make a unique menu each week based on what’s cheap at the grocery store. That’s what works for me. 
”
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The best part of Heather’s method is that she has a 10 week meal repertoire with which she works – that’s 50 different recipes = 50 different meals from which to choose!! That way, you’re not eating the same five dishes every week!! I love that! I spoke with her more in detail this morning and she elaborated that she actually has a binder in her kitchen that holds all of this information. She writes down the meal, the cookbook & page number of where to find the recipe, and the ingredients list. She goes grocery shopping on Tuesdays and therefore plans her week’s menu prior to this shopping trip, planning the meals, and writing her needed ingredients on her grocery list.
Now, I should warn you that Heather and I are VERY similar!! We are both very routine oriented, thrive under structure, and want to make life as predictable and stress-free as possible. That being said, you all know that I love to cook, which has been one of my struggle with meal planning. I don’t want to be stuck in a boring cycle or be overwhelmed trying to cook something gourmet for every meal. Which is why I am so drawn to her 10 week rotation. She said that she often “swaps” meals out of this cycle – finding a new recipe and being tired with an old one, she just switches them out in her rotation.
To make this work even better for me, I think I’m going to try including the entire recipe w/ the ingredients list in my binder. I’ll make a section at the front where I can move that week’s recipes and then just put them back when I’m done. I’m also going to “swap” out seasonal recipes within my repertoire. If you wanted to make this work with each week’s sale items – just plan you menus after the Sunday ads have come out, and match up the items on sale with ingredients needed from your 50 meal options! Voila – done!
Thanks, Heather!!
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Do you have any great meal planning tips or resources?
We’re listening!!!
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Oh wow! I really need to do something like this! Thanks for the post and thank you Heather for letting it be posted!
Me and Mine in a Small Town