How you can plan your meals in under 10 minutes each week
We’ve all been there. It’s 6p, you just got home from work and everyone is tired and hungry. And then with dread you realize that you have no plan for dinner.
What if I told you that you could meal plan in under 10 minutes and spend less than 2 hours preparing food each week. Would you want to know how?
When I was trying to figure out how to spend less time planning and preparing meals I had 2 major pain points that I was trying to solve for:
I did not like deciding what we were going to eat each week
I did not want to cook every single night
Here are the solutions I came up with to solve these 2 pain points.
My 2 pain points:
I did not like deciding what we were going to eat each week
I did not want to cook every single night
Deciding what we were going to eat each week.
I felt like I spent A LOT of time and energy looking for recipes on cooking websites and in cookbooks. And I didn’t like being the sole decision maker on what we would eat that week. I felt like I spent a disproportionate amount of time worrying that my family would revolt and not like what I made (which kind of seemed baseless because I never got complaints, but it was something I worried about nonetheless).
I wanted meals that I could cook in 30 minutes, met my family's standard of “healthy-ish” and that everyone enjoyed (or could be easily modified to be enjoyed by the whole family).
I realized that we already had quite a few recipes that met this criteria. So, I curated my recipes and my DINNER LIST was born.
Once I had a solid list, I was ready to tackle the second pain point.
2. I did not want to cook every single night.
There used to be a time when I enjoyed cooking and trying new recipes (honestly, mostly before I had kids). Now I’m all about efficiency. The prospect of cooking a new meal each night MAJORLY overwhelms me. All the cooking. All of the cleaning up. Running my dishwasher twice a day just to keep up.
So I decided that I would calibrate each recipe to make 3 meals. That meant I would only need to cook 2 recipes each week and I could treat the 7th day as a swing day (leftovers, take-out, clean-out-the-fridge fried rice, etc).
Sunday: Meal A
Monday: Meal B
Tuesday: Meal A
Wednesday: Meal A
Thursday: Meal B
Friday: Meal A
Saturday: Swing
Sunday: Meal A Monday: Meal B Tuesday: Meal A Wednesday: Meal A Thursday: Meal B Friday: Meal A Saturday: Swing
Once I had my curated DINNER LIST and a plan to cook less frequently, I realized there was one more thing I could do to make both of those things easier.
3. I made a laminated note card with each recipe calibrated to last 3 meals.
I did not want to do the mental gymnastics of trying to remember if I doubled this recipe or tripled that recipe. And I wanted my husband and I to flip through the meals together so we could share in the decision making process. He picks one meal and I pick another.
You could do this electronically in a google doc, but for me there is something magical about having a physical notecard for each recipe.
Making these 3 changes has drastically reduced the time and energy it takes me to plan and prepare meals for my family.
Remember, this system works so well for me because it solves my pain points. I’m not suggesting that this system will work for everyone, because not everyone shares my pain points. And even if you have the same pain points, you might find solutions better suited for you.
No 2 situations are exactly the same. This is exactly the reason why I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. I believe in getting clear on your pain points and discovering solutions that will work for you.
