Being responsible for a household is always a tall task! Together with this duty, you are also tasked to manage critical family complaints such as repetitive menus resulting in food fatigue, unhealthy food served, or consistent over-budget due to expensive groceries and food receipts. In fact, meal planning is adulting in itself. And because you are very important to us, we have compiled together some useful hacks to help you with your meal planning. Presenting the 2020 Meal Planning Hacks for home managers, cooks, baking enthusiasts, and even foodies!
WHAT IS MEAL PLANNING?
Meal planning is the activity of sitting down at least once a week to make a list of menus and plan a number of meals for a period of time, say a week or maybe even a month. Meal planning is essential, whether you are planning only for yourself or for your family. You can plan some or all meals, including snacks and packed meals. To avoid monotony, you can opt to cook your meals at home, order or eat out at least once a week, if you like. At the very least, meal planning should encourage you to stay healthy and eat healthy.
WHY IS MEAL PLANNING IMPORTANT?
People may have many varied purposes for meal planning. Here are some of the reasons:
- For variety
- To save money
- To eat healthy
- To avoid wastage
- To keep the family happy
MEAL PLANNING TIPS
When you are a beginner, it is important to remember, as with everything else, do it a day at a time. Begin with the easiest task first, experiment, note down what works and what doesn’t, learn from the experience, and keep going! Here are some hacks that you may find useful so you can become a pro in no time.
- List down food favorites.
- Use a weekly calendar planner, indicate what meals you are planning for.
- Based on both lists, research and gather easy-to-prepare and cook recipes, indicating the thaw time, preparation time and cook time for each recipe. You can source recipes from cookbooks, the internet, or from specialty recipes shared by friends and family members. Compile them and build a collection of hearty, delicious dishes.
- From the recipes, you can start listing down the ingredients you need for the week.
- Take time to segregate, properly wrap to preserve freshness, label the ingredients, and arrange them accordingly in the fridge for easy retrieval when you need them.
- Remember to plan eating out or ordering out, too! This practice will help you eat healthy while enjoying time out.
- In the beginning, start by establishing 4 sets/weeks of planned meals. You can rotate them accordingly to make planning easier.
- Grow the habit and repeat it. How? You always have to stick to the plan to make it work.
Try it out!
We’d love to hear your meal planning tips, too! Feel free to share them on the comments below. Don’t forget to share this with your friends!
