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My friend Karen called me today and asked for some guidance with meal planning.

She’s never meal planned and doesn’t know where to start.

She also wants to keep the recipes quick & easy… easy clean-up afterwards, even better!

Here’s some steps that should help you dip your toes into the meal-planning world:

1. browse your grocery store’s ad.  Get an idea of what is in season and what the store has in stock that week. I feel that people fall into one of two categories:  1. buy what’s on sale OR 2.  buy what sounds good.  If it is on sale, great – if not, oh well.

I definitely fall into the second category.  Most of the foods we buy are not processed and coupons or sales are rare… but I still browse the ad to get an idea of what I will be able to buy.

2. Pick 2-3 resources to select your recipes from. For example: food blogs, allrecipes.com, Cooking Light magazine, family recipes, Pinterest.  Don’t overwhelm yourself with using 20 different recipe resources in one week.

3. Choose a variety of protein bases: in one week, choose a couple of each: chicken, beef, turkey,  fish, pork (if you eat pork, which I don’t), and at least one meatless protein. As a rule of thumb, we rotate through these protein bases for dinners and have alternating proteins for lunch or leftovers for lunch from the previous night’s dinner.

4. Select a variety of food preparations for the week.  Grilling, baking, crockpot/slow-cooker, saute, pan-fry – you get the idea… The key is variety so you don’t feel like you are having the “same thing” again, since texture is such a big component to enjoying food.  Also, use the fish, salad and items that perish quicker at the beginning of the week.

5. Choose side dishes: choose a veggie/fruit & a healthy grain as a side.  Some ideas: quinoa, brown rice, yams, sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, spaghetti squash, mixed green salad topped with fruit…

6. Use little post-it tabs to mark recipes you want to try in cookbooks, magazines & any hard copies you can get your hands on.  As you mark the recipes you want, notice the serving size and how many portions the recipe yields.  Don’t be afraid to scale down the recipe to fit your needs.  There’s no sense in having 10 leftover dishes you don’t have room to freeze and don’t care to eat as leftovers.

7. Make a list!  My new favorite way to make a list is the smart-phone app called GroceryIQ.  It is free & easy to use… as you type in the item, it brings it up and you confirm it for your list. You can sync lists with your spouse (via the website or phone app) – so if they think of something to add, they can just add it!  Nice huh?  It keeps your list in categories – somewhat how you would search for food as you shop.  In the store, as you add items to your grocery cart, you do the same virtually by checking items off your list in your phone. There’s even a coupon feature.

IF the thought of this app makes your skin crawl, go ahead and put some pen to paper and make a list that way.  It will help to “map out” your trip around the store, by categorizing your list and adding items under each category:  produce, dairy, meats, etc.

8. Breakfast, Lunch, Snack & Dinner: write or type it out… We have our meal plan on the side of the fridge & I send a copy to work with my husband.  When you fail to plan, you plan to fail – in other words, if you don’t plan each meal, you’ll be improvising: running out of ingredients, eating junk, skipping meals (then overeating the next), ordering takeout, overspending on food you didn’t plan for.

So write it out; Even if it as simple as:

breakfast: Huevos Rancheros (family of 3, two eggs per person… then you know how many eggs you need for that meal)

lunch: turkey bacon & cheddar grilled cheese (family of three: how much bread, turkey bacon & cheese will this take?)

snack: protein shake or handful of raw almonds and and apple (add these to the list)

dinner: crockpot Catalina Chicken (which you can throw in the crockpot the night before or morning of and keep in the fridge until you need to start slow-cooking it)

9. Dietary needs.  Your body needs a certain amount of protein each day, plenty of water, some carbs, and some fat… if you have NO idea what you need, talk to your dr or a dietitian.  Don’t believe everything you Google. I keep track of what I’m eating, to ensure a balance, with another smartphone app: Calorie Counter.  Sometimes I forget to use it but my friendly reminder to use it again is usually constant “crashing” between meals – which means I’m eating too much sugar & carbs… but that’s my vice.  Everyone has one, right?

10. Alternate Planning. My husband and I have different tastes in food, therefore we alternate weeks for meal planning, whenever possible.  It helps us appreciate each other’s efforts and we end up eating more variety of foods.  Lately, he’s been working long days, but he still in enjoys starting the “general” food ideas for the week.

So there ya go! Some meal planning tips for those just starting out. Hope it helps! Feel free to share some of YOUR meal planning tips below:

Please leave a comment below & share with your friends. All comments await my moderation.

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