I Was A Meal-Planning Failure.
Planner-part 2
According to Cooking Light, the five main reasons to meal plan are: 1. More likely to reach health goals. 2. Save lots of money. On average, take-out costs five time more than homemade. Bethebudget.com says families save $3,000 to $6,000 in a year! 3. You have control over ingredients and additives, and special diet needs. 4. Meal planning streamlines your shopping trip, so fewer trips and less food is wasted – more money savings. And 5. Meal planning prevents decision fatigue. No staring into the fridge and cupboards trying to decide what to do. That’s a tremendous time and energy saver!
I, however, don’t like being locked in to a particular meal on a particular day. I often I forget to get something thawed out, or I didn’t start cooking soon enough for that day’s menu. I sometimes am unwilling to fix the planned meal. Then crossing out switching around just made a mess of my planner and I was frustrated. I was bad at meal planning.
My Solution
Now I do a variation of meal planning. My planner, Home Makers Friend from Sue Hooley, has over a third of a page for writing down tasks, each week. I try to keep my lists realistic, so I never have more than a column of tasks. On the right side of that section I list whatever meals I know I have ingredients for, and list of all the meats I have in the freezer for meat and potato meals. When I get low on options, I scan my recipes for ideas. What ingredients I don’t have go on the shopping list. I stick to recipes that use ingredients I normally have on-hand. When I wonder what’s for supper, I look at my meal list and pick whichever one seems most delicious and doesn’t take more work than I am willing to do. I also keep a list, in my planner of quick and easy meals like eggs, pancakes and waffles, grilled cheese, seven can soup, canned soups, hot dogs and beans. I almost always have the ingredients for these.
If you are bad at meal planning, this system may work for you. So which benefit of meal planning resonates most with you? I find the amount of money saved to be amazing. That’s more than some exotic vacations! You will find that I will reference this planner many times as I explain how I work around my unreliable brain. If you aren’t using a planner or are not happy with your current planner, you can’t go wrong with this one. (This is an affiliate link, which means that if you buy through that link, I will receive a small commission, that does not affect your purchase price at all.) Sue has a meal planning template that is included with your purchase to make it easy to meal plan. And be sure to sign-up for emails so you don’t miss any of my planner posts and posts about how you can work around an unreliable brain, and join us on Facebook as we share tips & tricks for life.