Weekly Meal Planner Tips to Save Time
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Meal planning is a great way to save time for busy individuals and families alike since food is the main focus of the family. When you’re making a meal plan you want to find recipes that the entire family will like and you can cater to everyone in the family on different days of the week with ease. Knowing what you’re cooking throughout the week can take a lot of stress off everyone and keep you prepared. This will leave more family time, more time for fun, and keep everyone satisfied. We have these great Weekly Meal Planner Tips to Save Time for you!
Weekly Meal Planner Tips to Save Time
Weekly meal planning can also help you save money by not opting for fast food or take out any given day of the week. You can eat healthier with a wide variety of food options available. Meal planning also gives variety and helps cut down on food waste. When you make a meal that has leftovers you can take those for lunch the next day too.
Think about your meal plan for a few days so you’ll have time to plan, do the shopping required, and prep for the meals. If you get creative and would like to try a new recipe try to limit the amount of new recipes you add into a weekly meal plan, this will help cut back of food waste if you decide you don’t like the new recipe.
Use Common Ingredients
Plan your meals with that share like ingredients, this way you’ll use up that bag of potatoes, onions, or garlic. Again, this helps to cut back on food taste and saves money by using what you already have on hand. Check your fridge and pantry to see what you already have on hand that you can incorporate into a meal for the week, this helps to use up ingredients that would otherwise just be sitting going bad while you’re buying new ingredients.
Keep it simple
Having a few easy meals at the ready will be convenient on those days where there is an event, occasion, or family time. The easy meal can be prepared still giving you time to eat and spend time with your family. Easy meals once a week are a great idea when you’re first learning how to meal plan weekly because you already know the recipe, enjoy it when it arrives to the table, and best of all; how easy it is.
Make a List
Write your grocery list while planning your weekly meals, this will make sure nothing gets left off the list and you won’t need to discard a recipe because you don’t have an ingredient. Missing an ingredient can set you up for failure causing you to scramble and possibly spend money on fast food or make another nights meal. You can create a spreadsheet of ingredients you already have in the pantry to match your favorite grocery store isles. You can add ingredients into new cells as you add more recipes to the repertoire.
Pin it
Creating a Pinterest board to keep all your recipes handy is another trick you can use to save time. In the days of digital organization this will help you save time looking for recipes that you might’ve printed and put somewhere so you’ll remember where it is then you completely forget; yes, it use to happen to me but not anymore because now I use Pinterest. When picking recipes remember variety is the spice of life.
Did they like it?
Keep a log of what meals your family thoroughly enjoyed and the ones they were not so keen on. If your family isn’t too interested in a dish don’t totally disregard it all together, simply add it to the back of the meal prep planner; because every now and then might give them a chance to grow to enjoy it.
Timing is everything
Sunday is the best day to plan your weekly meals; this will set your week up for success. Preparing the ingredients for each meal usually takes about an hour but you’ll be so excited when you see all you have to do on the week day is pull out the labeled ziplok bags and cook! I really like to use my FoodSaver and make a big batch for the freezer – so I am always able to grab a meal and get started! Prepping on Sunday will save you time and stress. Using your Instant Pot will help you save a lot of time too!
When you start weekly meal planning you’ll see how easy it can be after a few weeks and you’ll never go back to unorganized dinners on the fly ever again. If you’ve tried weekly meal planning before give yourself a little time to get use to the ideas, recipes, and shopping. Every week you’ll learn something new about recipes and meal planning that will make it easier. You’ll find it takes so little time in the aspect of smooth weekly meals.
Want more tips for meal planning?
- How to Meal Plan Effectively For a Large Family
- The Secret of Monthly Meal Planning
- Is a Meal Planning Service Worth it?
- How to Organize Your Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping
- How to Make Quick and Healthy Meal Plans
- 1000 Recipes For Meal Planning
