Meal Planning: How

My usual answer – EASY. However, it takes few steps for me to have the perfect meal plan for the week. My meal plan week starts from Saturday – Friday. The reason is to have full fridge in the weekend. Furthermore, I only meal plan our dinners – breakfasts and lunches we do separately.

First I make a simple template where I fill in my meal plan! It consists of 3 columns and 8 rows. The picture below gives best explanation.

To make the meal plan itself, I take few things into consideration:

• Am I eating out any of the days (usually no, as I still want to save some bucks)?
• What is left in our fridge (usually not much, as we only buy fresh produce for a week, but maybe some potatoes, yogurt, bread)?
• What is on offer (I usually check the local supermarkets for good deals, that also helps me to have some inspiration)?

Then I go through my cookbooks and see if there are some recipes that I desire, have few ingredients at home or something might be on the discount in the local shop.

There are few other tips I do think about:

• Combine the ingredients through out the week. For example, if I buy a big broccoli, I tend to in cooperate in another recipe.
• Think of diversity in foods – one-day rice dish, one-day potato dish, one day soup etc.
• Have quick dinner recipes on weekdays and more complicated recipes on the weekends.
• I have one leftover day so no cooking but only reheating. Usually the meals that I have on the weekends are for more than 2 people, so we save it for Friday!

And voilà - the plan is ready, the only thing left to do is to make a shopping list (YES - another list) and go to the supermarket.

Ulla