Easy Meal Planning Tips

Written By Nicole Sahagun

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Before I got married, I received lots of good advice from women of different parts of my life. A lot of the advice I got was the generic kind, like “don’t go to bed mad” or “remember to go on dates,” but I have to say, the best marriage advice I received was from one of my old coworkers. She advised me to get a calendar just for food. I don’t think I understood how helpful that piece of advice was until now. She was pretty much telling me that I needed to find a way to make a meal plan. Cooking food for my family is another way that I like to show love, so I think meal planning is very fitting marriage advice. Meal planning plays a vital role in my ability to successfully cook the majority of our meals at home. It’s a balancing act for sure, but over time, I’ve learned some tips that helped me maintain a home cooking schedule. 

Know Your Space

The first thing I would do is assess your space for food. We’re not all going to have the same availability of space, so that would, in turn, dictate the amount you can grocery shop or how much you can meal prep with frozen meals or left overs. If you don’t have an extra freezer, I don’t think I would buy as much bulk meat from Costco since it is likely to take up a lot of space that you might otherwise use for make-ahead freezer meals and leftovers. In my case, we have a standard upright fridge and freezer, a pantry and an extra chest freezer in the garage. If you are serious about cooking at home, and you have the space for it, I recommend having an extra freezer. I definitely use most of my food storage space and sometimes wish I had more! If you’re looking for deals, we got our chest freezer from Costco on sale for $100. Freezers periodically go on sale, you just need to pay close attention to their ads. 

Write Down Your Meal Planning Schedule

Making your meal schedule can be fun or it can be the never ending chore of the century. It sounds easy, but thinking of what to eat everyday of the week can be tough. I usually have a running food idea list. When I think of a dish, or have a craving for something, I write it down. It feels good to have something concrete to look at when it comes time to choose what to cook for the week. When I have time to think of what to eat, I usually will ask my husband what he is in the mood to eat this upcoming week, then I refer to my running food idea list to fill in the gaps. 

The next important step is to think of my daily schedule for the next week. Do I have appointments? Will we be out during the weekend? Even the most well intentioned grocery shopper can over buy food simply because they are not home or do not have the time to cook it. Just as you need to be intentional about what you buy, you should be intentional and realistic about how much time you have to cook certain meals. If you are extra busy one week, you might want to choose food that will be quicker to cook. On the other hand, when you have a more open schedule, you can choose more complex recipes that may need more time to cook. The type of ingredients that you buy can also help you decide on when to cook specific meals because you should keep in mind, will the produce still be fresh? Can you freeze certain ingredients while waiting to cook a certain meal? A lot of planning goes into the family meal schedule, but after some practice, this part of meal planning becomes easier. 

And lastly, when it comes to making a meal plan schedule, I’m not just talking about scheduling out your meals. Alongside my weekly meal schedule, I usually have a corresponding to-do list. It just helps to keep me organized in order to actually follow through with cooking the meals I have planned out for the week. This to-do list includes things like pulling out meat and thawing it out in the fridge the night before, feeding my sourdough starter at certain times, so that it’s active and bubbly for baking ahead of time, or even chopping vegetables the day before if I know I won’t have time the day of making a certain dish. 

Make an Ingredient List

Now that you have your meals scheduled out for the week, you can make an ingredient list. This is exactly what it sounds like. The list can get really long! But, listing the ingredients out makes sure that you don’t double buy ingredients that can be used in different dishes. After seeing your list, you can cross out the duplicate ingredients and now you also know approximately how much of each ingredient you may need throughout the week. 

Shop Your Pantry

The next step before actually grocery shopping is looking at what you already have. Sometimes you have extra ingredients in your pantry that you can cross off your ingredient list. Also, don’t forget to check your freezer as well! I usually buy meat in bulk and store it in our freezer, or I preserve extra leftover ingredients such as leftover tomato paste. Not only does this step help to prevent wasting or over buying ingredients, it helps to spark ideas for what to cook the following week. There are many times that I see an ingredient that gets me thinking of how I can use it in the future. I just jot down that thought, and save it for next week’s meal plan. 

Shop Online

This step is an optional step, but it has made my life easier in the past couple years. Currently I use the Safeway App to do most of my weekly grocery shopping. With the app, I can streamline the previous 2 steps and make my ingredient right on the app and delete as I shop my pantry. I don’t need to worry about the time it takes to grocery shop with both of my kids and I can schedule delivery during a window of time, where I will be free to put away the groceries. Shopping online gives me the opportunity to not only quickly enter my ingredient list, but also gives me a chance to digitally clip coupons, and see my running total to see how much I am spending as I shop. 

Cook Extra Food 

After you have all the ingredients that you need, then it’s time to get cooking! I found that if it is the type of food that can be frozen, and I’m finding that most meals can, I like to make enough food for a fresh meal, and a leftover freezer meal. These freezer meals will save you when you’re in a pinch. There will be times that you don’t have time to cook, you just don’t feel like cooking, or you’re entertaining unexpected visitors. Having freezer meals that are ready to be reheated really decreases the pressure of home cooking everyday, but still provides you with a home cooked meal. When you start to have some freezer meals under your belt, it will be very important to keep an inventory of both already made meals and extra frozen ingredients. Knowing what ingredients and meals you already have prepared can give you ideas for what to cook next and prevent overspending or adding clutter to your freezer. 

Keep Learning

I absolutely love this next tip! Once you get the hang of your meal planning schedule, you’ll find that there are times that you can afford spending time trying new recipes. Revisiting old cookbooks or looking up recipes online has become one of my favorite pastimes. The more you cook, the faster you get at prepping ingredients and just cooking in general. If you can expand what you know, it will get easier to brainstorm what to cook, as well as develop a passion and excitement for home cooking. You can also start to mix and match components from different recipes if you need to try to use up ingredients you already have. If you are looking for some good cookbooks with recipes that are pretty easy to try, here are a few of my favorites as of lately:

Meal planning is like any skill in life. It takes a lot of practice to really feel like you have a good grip on it. Though I try to stick to our meal plan for the week the best that I can, life happens and sometimes you go off track. Sometimes plans change, we do end up eating out, people come over and the food count is different, but it’s important to stay flexible. Sometimes you’ll need to think on your toes in order to use ingredients that are about to go bad in a different way than you intended to use it, and that is ok. Don’t be too hard on yourself, practice, and meal planning will be so worth it in the end!

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Nicole Sahagun
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