A Meal Plan is a Life Plan

Meal planning=life. The dinner dilemma is a challenge as old as time. Millions of blog posts, thousands of cookbooks, a common discussion among friends. What to have for dinner, and, more critically, how to logistically get that dinner on the table is the heart of the question. And I have the answer.

Make a plan. Make. A. Plan. Makeaplan!!!

Said plan could take many different forms, you’ve got find what works for you. My husband and I love to talk about the food styles we had growing up. Both our families were, and to a large part still are, standard shoppers. By that, I mean, they generally always have the same-ish food in their houses, mostly purchase whatever strikes them or is on sale during grocery store trips at irregular intervals. It (mostly) worked for them. It does not work for us. We need a plan.

Making a Plan

Pick a day for your plan making. For us, it’s Saturday morning. We wake up, do breakfast, plug C into a show (Spirit on Netflix is current fave) and sit at the table and make this plan. It looks like this.

• Write down the days of the week. On an old fashioned piece of paper. Apps, fridges that know you need milk, even (and this will be controversial)—grocery delivery services. Not for me. I think it can be easier.
• Look through your cookbooks, or your Instagram saves, or, if you’re 80 years old, your recipe box. Think about what you feel like eating for the coming 6 days. I don’t care, but the key to this step is deciding what you want to make for the coming week. Don’t overthink it. Pick two things really quickly. If you’re not sure, choose a soup or stew and a lasagna. More on crowd-sourcing good ideas later.
• Slot in your meals into the days of the week. This step is critical. You might divert from the plan, but start with a plan so you have some semblance of structure when you enter into the doom of Monday. For example, this week for us it looks like this

Saturday: Chicken Tortilla Soup
Sunday: Turkey Ricotta Meatballs
Monday: Leftovers
Tuesday: Roasted squash and black bean tacos
Wednesday: West African peanut soup
Thursday: reprisal of previous meals—meatball subs or roasted squash bowls with quinoa and cabbage slaw.
Friday: frozen, pizza, TBD. This is the one exception I’ll make to not knowing the plan. The plan is to not know the plan. Because Friday.

Keys to Success

Make 2-night meals. Aside from the making a plan, selecting 1-2 meals that hold up, are things you want to eat as leftovers, is critical to our meal planning success and actually following through on your plan. We both love to cook, but it’s unrealistic to think you’ll want to can cook French onion soup every night of the week. We often talk about meals in terms of one-nighter or two-nighter. As in ‘is this a two nighter or can I eat another serving?’ Meal planning/dinner making would be impossible in this house if for not a few nights where you’re not really cooking. Think soups, stews, chili, slow cooker meals, one pan/skillet meals, lasagnas, quiches, cassoulets, etc.

Toddler factor: If relevant, choose 2 or more meals that you know your kids will eat some component of said meal. No, not the whole thing, per se. That’d be a Christmas miracle. But, the chicken from the chicken a Moroccan chicken and rice dish, the baked sweet potato from Cajun sweet potato burgers, a less spicy version of a chili, the sauteed asparagus that went alongside a roast chicken the night before. Dinner a Love Story is the master of the same meal for different family members, just packaged differently. When I go to make C’s dinner at 5pm, I’m not starting from scratch—there are usually 3 or 4 things hanging out that I can combine to make a legit meal. (when in doubt add an egg. Or black beans from a can).

Reinventions versus leftovers. I’m so in love with Julia Turshen’s new book, Now and Later. Dedicated to the re-purposing and reinventing of leftovers. Some days are for straight leftovers (Tortilla chicken soup, stored in the pot it was cooked in, slapped on the stove. Sprinkling cheese on top is almost too much work). Some days, you can convert pieces of meals into other meals (meatballs into melty meatball subs, roasted squash from tacos into squash/quinoa/cabbage slaw bowls. Think about this as an option that’s somewhere between leftovers (no effort) and a recipe from scratch (effort). It’s leftovers plus a step.

Assigning meals to days of the week. Tuesday’s going to be a late night? Leftovers. One of you home early on Wednesday? A meal with more prep. 100% done with it? Delivery.

Grocery list: It doesn’t necessarily go without saying. So let me implore you—making your grocery list based on your meal plan. 1. Choose recipe 2. Decide what day to make what. Write it down. 3. Look through your foodstuffs and write down anything you don’t have. This is your grocery list. (Note: more on pantry staples and routine weekly items in another post)

Be realistic and decide what your version of a successful plan is: Your version of success here could look very different, and that’s great. You should do what’s feasible for you, but you should plan for it. Let’s say you know you’ve got a 2-night max for meals you feel like you can cook, and you’re busy most of the weekend. No problem. Your weekly plan could look like:

Saturday: Dinner at a friend’s house. Bring dessert. And wine.
Sunday: Soccer tournament eating most of day. Slow cooker chicken tikka masala (2 nighter!) before leaving house in morning
Monday: leftovers
Tuesday: Stovetop lasagna
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: Trader joe’s creamy tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Or eggs. Or crepes. I’m not counting this as a cooking night—it’s an assembly night. I know this is still an effort for some folks. Plan this one out too until you have a well-stocked pantry and a bag of tricks you can easily reach for to craft a non-cook cooking night.
Friday: Order in and celebrate, you planned your week out and were much less stressed. By food planning, at least.

Your plan can also be to make chili Sunday night and eat it until it runs out. That’s ok, too. Just give it a shot, be flexible where you need to, and cut yourself some slack. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s all you can do.

p.s. if you want to meal plan but really don’t know where to start, pick 2 recipes from any of the below, do a taco night, a breakfast for dinner night, and you will not go wrong:

Love and Lemons, Cookie and Kate, Smitten Kitchen, The Humble Onion

C helping with the West African Peanut Soup. ‘Farm to table!’