When it comes to feeding a family you want to keep effort to a minimum. I love cooking but my three young children aren’t partial to haute cuisine. Give them plain pasta with grated cheese any day. Family meal planning is a great way to minimise effort, reduce shopping bills and find meals to suit everyone.
There are few things less motivating than presenting a new meal to young children. You serve a delicious meal and wait for the shower of gratitude. Instead, you look across the table at faces contorted in disapproval.
“What IS this?”
“I don’t like this.”
“Yucky!”
As much as I enjoy trying new recipes, this season with young kids is simply not the time for experimenting in the kitchen.
I used to think meal plans were time-consuming, complicated and boring. I’ve since learned there are many ways you can do this. You just need to find the way that suits your family.
Here are some options for family meal planning:
ASSIGN A MEAL “THEME” FOR EACH NIGHT OF THE WEEK
This is my favourite way of planning our family meals. There is more detail about how I do it in this post.
I assign a meal “theme” to each night of the week, rather than a specific meal. For instance, Monday night is pasta night and I vary the pasta dish I make each week. This is so simple yet it works well for us all. I don’t have to spend much time thinking about what to make and the kids know what to expect on each day of the week.
Our current weekly meal plan is:
Monday – curry
Tuesday – pasta
Wednesday – sushi
Thursday – “snacky”
Friday – fish/nuggets and chips
Saturday – BBQ
Sunday – leftovers
USE AN ONLINE MEAL PLANNER
If you feel like you’re stuck in a food rut and need some inspiration, you could try an online menu planner. This one from taste.com.au is really user-friendly and they have a huge bank of recipes for you to try.
Recipes can be filtered according to family preferences and dietary needs. Once you have allocated recipes to your weekly menu, the planner generates a shopping list for you. You can either print your menu and shopping list or just view it on your phone or another device throughout the week.
Other similar services:
Mealime
Yummly
SUBSCRIBE TO A MEAL PLAN SERVICE
Meal plan services do all the family meal planning work for you. Each week they send you a meal plan and a grocery list. Some will also include instructions for preparing meals for the week ahead of time.
Most services give you a free trial so you can test out their plans for a couple of weeks. The advantage of this type of meal planning is that you don’t have to come up with meal ideas. The disadvantage is that not all meals may be to everyone’s taste.
Here are some meal plan services you could try:
Prep Dish (gluten-free, paleo and keto plans)
Forks Over Knives (plant-based meals)
Cook Smarts
MEAL KIT DELIVERY SERVICES
If you haven’t been cornered by a HelloFresh or Marley Spoon sales rep, where have you been hiding? No, really, I want to know so I can hide there too.
The rise in popularity of meal kit delivery services is no surprise. Households are either too busy to spend time planning and preparing meals or we’re too scared to go to the shops and catch COVID!
Meal kits come with recipes and pre-measured food and are delivered to your door. They do all the work other than cooking the actual meal.
This is a great service for busy families. You choose your recipes for the week and they do the rest.
JUST KEEP IT REALLY SIMPLE
If all of the above still feels like too much work, below is a simple but effective way to plan out meals.
- Spend five to ten minutes on a weekend thinking about meals for the week ahead
- Have a quick look in the fridge, freezer and pantry so you have a mental inventory of what you already have
- Grab your diary, a piece of paper or a meal plan printable and quickly jot down your planned meals for each day of the week
- Take your meal plan along when doing your grocery shop for the week
- Spend an hour or two on a Sunday prepping a few things that will minimise meal prep during the week. Let the kids join in and make it a Sunday afternoon tradition.
Family meal planning is a habit that can truly reduce mental clutter and stress during the week. Even the most basic forethought and prep can give you precious time back when you need as many spare minutes as you can get.
Do you have any meal planning ideas of your own? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
You might also be interested in:
Simple meal planning
What is the healthiest diet for your family?