What is the definition of meal planning? In simpler words, it means planning and preparing your meals for the coming week ahead of time which makes life a little easier and more efficient after you come back home for dinner. This is kind of a beginner’s guide for meal planning. I will start with the advantages and then move on to the processes.
A step-by-step guide for meal Planning
This guide will cover the advantages of meal planning
- What is meal planning?
- How to do meal planning for the upcoming days?
- The strategy you need to follow up, for planning your meals ahead of time.
- Advantages of Meal Planning
A) What is meal planning? AND How to do IT?
Meal planning is preparing your meal ahead of time. In other words, if you are a busy person and you choose to eat fresh every day and that’s too home-cooked meals and you don’t have sufficient time to cook over the weekdays, you surely need to plan something about it because you have only two choices and that is either you cook every day after finishing your office work or you take away outside food to eat. If you choose the first option then you need to finish half of your preparations over the weekends or perhaps during the time you have some free time.
Next, comes the question of what to prepare and how to prepare meals for a week ahead of time. To meal plan for the week, you need to follow a strategy. The strategy that is going to be efficient in saving your time, and money and to make it worth trying. So let’s break down the Meal Planning task in a few steps detailed below. Also, you may Download a 5 set of Planners designed for different tasks for free
B) Strategy To Follow for Meal Planning
1) How many Meal Plans ?
The first step is to decide how many dinner/Lunch meals you need to prepare? For example, Is it a week of dinner plans? or Lunch and dinner both?
2) Decide your Menu
In this step, you need to decide your menu and then list out your grocery. Make a list of things that you need to cook. Decide on the recipes that you know you and your family would like to eat for dinners or say lunch. Say for example you like Lentil soup, with stir-fry vegetables and steamed rice for your dinner. You need to buy the ingredients to cook these. Once you have fixed your menu you are good to go for grocery shopping.
Additionally for a tip, always try to shop a day before you start to cook for the whole week’s dinner or so. Also, I would like to suggest that start planning for 3 nights then, slowly as you get used to it you can prepare for a week’s dinner or so.
Where Can you Find Those Recipes?
Recipes can be found at GreatFoodIdeas.com. Also, try searching on Google, Pinterest, check in some other cooking websites, find out some interesting cookbooks. You will surely find plenty of ideas to get the perfect recipes for yourself.
Plan and note it down
Plan a list of menus that you want to prepare. For example, on Monday you will prepare FriedRice with Mix veggies. Tuesday you planning for Teriyaki chicken with brown rice and so on. So note it out in Menu Planner which is going to be very convenient to use or you may note it down on your computer or phone or even a piece of paper.
In fact, make a master list of your recipes that your family will enjoy for a week or so. List them out and get the processor for these recipes. A recipe list or menu for your example is shown below. Stick the menu in the kitchen somewhere and make sure to rethink the plan and get the final list. Note down all the ingredients required to prepare these recipes on a piece of paper before you shop.
3) List out your preferable Grocerry items.
This list includes all the grocery items that you need to get a day before you start preparing a meal. It’s better to shop everything a day before so that in case you miss out on anything you can cover up on the next day.
For example, choose the grocery list from the section below
- Fresh Vegetables
- Fresh Fruits
- Fish, Meat, and Poultry
- Spices and Condiments
- Bread
- Milk/ Dairy products
- Cereals
- Frozen foods
- Baking needs
- Drinks/coffee/Tea
- Water/Juices/Health drinks
- Breakfast Cereals
- Cereals and pulses. Legumes/Beans/Lentils etc/Wheat Flour
- Soups/pasta/Macaronis/Noodles/Sphegethi
- Canned foods and preservatives
- Snacks/Chips/Cookies etc
- Organic Nuts/ bars
- Juices
- Yogurt and frozen desserts
4) Pre-preparation and storing the ingredients
Once you have bought the ingredients, you should be ready to start preparing the things, for example, clean up and chop any vegetables that you have bought. Divide and seal in a Ziploc bag/ or use any airtight bag. Refrigerate or freeze to keep these fresh for a longer period of time. For example, if you plan to prepare mixed vegetables twice a week for dinner then chop them and divide them into two packs (raw form) that you will prepare. This way these don’t get soggy or bad. In other words, do not wash if you storing these. Every night take out the individual packages from the refrigerator, give these a wash using a strainer, and then cook. This way you should be able to spend less time before you cook every night for dinner.
Note: Few vegetables for example Okra (bhindi) needed to be washed first and then pat dried using a kitchen towel nicely before you cut these out. Or else they get soggy and bad. So in this case, before you chop these make sure they are dried nicely, then put these in a ziplock bag and refrigerate or freeze and use them within a week. This way these stays fresh and nice to use.
c) Advantages of Meal Planning
Initially when I thought about “Meal planning” I felt like its way too difficult to manage everything together and keep going perfectly with everything that is being planned ahead. But since after these pandemic years, nowadays health I guess should be the first priority for everyone, obviously, the home-cooked meal could not be ignored anymore.
Also, not only does it save time, and effort, also it saves you money. Once you start working on it over and over again, after a few practices you would be able to know what all you need and why you need, eventually your grocery excursions become more focused and you will only buy things that are required.
Initially, it feels overwhelming and boring but with a few times of practice, it becomes easier.
Always make a plan to buy your grocery before the weekend starts. Let’s say if you buy on Friday before late evening, then you should be able to start your preparations on Saturday morning. Peel chop cut vegetables, pack, and store. Soak pulses or beans in water for later use. Steam some extra rice and refrigerate. Get some ready-made bread, roti, or naan, and always keep it as a backup for use. Similarly, if you are a nonvegetarian then go ahead and keep some boiled eggs ready to use for dinner. Or chop some chicken, or any other meat to use later. In the same way, put these in separate Ziploc bags and store them, which is easy to use once you are ready to cook.
If you are someone completely new to Meal Planning then I would recommend starting preparing for 2 to 3 days initially and then gradually increasing. This way you will understand what is convenient to you. Be flexible and prepare the things that best suits you. There are many other options you may choose, depending on your budget and the number of people you are planning for.
Once you start with this practice it’s actually easy to exaggerate the benefits and solves a lot of problems. By personalizing things based on your needs and interest and give yourself plenty of room to explore a system that’s best suits your time.
Another intelligent move you may make before buying ingredients for your favorite recipes is that make sure to check your kitchen cabinets, pantry, and refrigerator for the leftover ingredients that you already have to protect from overbuying them which in fact saves your time and money both.
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