52 Places In 52 Weeks: Organized Meal Planning

“What’s for dinner?” 

Is that a common question in your house? Is this scenario familiar? You frantically run around the house, trying to find something that will satisfy. Do you ever just not have the energy or time to make something? What if you had a dinner sitting in the freezer or refrigerator, ready to be eaten? What if you spent just a few extra minutes one day, to plan a week of meals so those frantic moments don’t occur? This is what meal planning can do. With a little prep and a little thinking ahead, you can have a stress free mealtime.

Here are some tips to organize your meal planning!

1. Gather all of your cookbooks and recipes.

2. Find a quiet place to sit with a cup of coffee or tea in hand – make this time as enjoyable as you can.

3. Choose a timeframe for which you want to plan meals – start with 1 or 2 weeks if you are new to the process.

4. Create, print, draw a calendar to meal plan on. Divide it into days and within each day, divide into breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you want, leave room at the bottom where you can list snack ideas.

5. Cross out any meals/days you will not have to cook for that week. Be aware of your schedule. If you know you are going to be late or not have a lot of time for meal preparation, make sure to make that evening easy!

6. Think about leaving open spaces to eat leftovers.

7. Go through your cookbooks and choose recipes for the week. There are a few different ways to approach this, to keep variety:

• Choose a different type of meal for each night: mexican, italian, seafood, soup, sandwich, American (burgers), etc.
• Beef, chicken, fish, vegetable, etc.
• Oven, frozen, refrigerated, microwaved, etc.

8. Make a grocery list of all of the items you will need for that week. Prior to perusing your cookbooks, look through your cupboards to see what you have in stock. Don’t write down the ingredients you already have on your list.