Tips for Successful Meal Planning

Ok. Meal planning might seem silly. Planning your weekly meals ahead of time can be daunting. Who knows that they will feel like eating Friday when planning on Sunday? But meal planning isn't necessarily about making exact plans for meals for specific days. Meal planning can be a little more avant garde and flexible as well.

Meal planning has many benefits. For one, you purchase what you need and don't end up with extra groceries or missing ingredients. Meal planning means less food wasted, less money spent and more ability to think creatively about meals. Since you are planning meals ahead of time, you can also use more locally grown food that is in season, which is healthier and greener.

OPTIONS FOR MEAL PLANNING:

#1 - Cook ahead
With this meal planning option, you set aside one day, like Sunday for instance, and cook for seven days. Your meals are refrigerated and/or frozen and taken out on the day you use them. This is pretty flexible in that you can decide when to use what based on what you actually want to eat that day. Some people even cook all their meals for a month on one day. This technique has a lot of different options such as triple batch cooking, making 20 different recipes, etc. A great primer on it can be found at She Knows.

#2 - Plan exact meals for exact days
If you do this version of meal planning, you would plan everything from salad to dessert for every meal for a week. Then this is transcribed into an appropriate shopping list. You have a predictable schedule for what you are cooking on what day and all the ingredients to actuate it.

#3 - Plan seven days worth of meals
This is a very similar meal planning option to option #2 but not nearly as rigid in nature. You still plan seven days worth of meals but this flexible option allows you to decide on a day by day basis which to make.

#4 - Let someone else do the planning for you.
There are websites and books devoted to meal planning. These resources take the thinking part out of the meal planning equation, making meals a snap.

TIPS FOR MEAL PLANNING

- Do choose a meal planning style that fits your personality. If you like a solid, rigid plan, then go with that. If you prefer a more flexible meal planning method, choose that one.
- Don't plan seven days of new recipes. You will go crazy and your family might too, especially if the recipes turn out to be less than stellar.
- Do incorporate some new things each week into your meal plan. As they say, variety is the spice of life.
- Don't plan meals you know your family will dislike. Meal planning is best done when it considers everyone's tastes.

RESOURCES

Better yet, as with everything else these days, there are meal planning resources on the web and in print to help you easily plan your meals and grocery shop accordingly.

Meals Matter - offers an easy to navigate interface, recipe and menu suggestions and the ever helpful grocery list feature, where you can print out your grocery list based on the meals you've planned. The downside? If you just input your own meals without their recipes it doesn't go into the list. The good news? It's free.

Chatelaine - this is for the person who doesn't want to do the planning themselves. They offer exact meal plans for seven days worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner in different types such as energy enhancing, vegetarian, etc. You can print out a week's shopping list and just go. The downside? You have zero control and there is no option to do this just for dinner. But it's free, and that's always nice. And the meals don't sound too bad.

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute - This is a cool interactive meal planner that offers options to add to your daily meal plans. It doesn't have a shopping list feature. In fact, its only use is for calorie planning, but it's a nifty interface.

Saving Dinner - I know a lot of people who swear by this meal planning book and website as the mecca of meal planning, particularly meal planning ahead of time. This site does have a fee associated with it for the weekly meal plans. Or you can just buy the book (which offers dishes appropriate for being made ahead of time) and do the actual planning part yourself.