New Year: New Meal Planning Setup
Happy 2017!!
Tyler and I just did a lot of reflecting and goal setting, which inspired me to share our meal planning journey with you, in the hopes that it might inspire others in need to try meal planning for themselves...
It's been a year since we first started meal planning, and we're still going strong!
But we're determined to do better!!
What we did right
- We created a calendar dedicated only to the meals we are preparing at home, which easily allows us to reorganize them in case of a last-minute event or change of mind (pro tip: if you choose to list it with an evening meal time, rather than as an all-day event, it appears in sequence on Google's mobile calendar).
- In Wunderlist, we tracked individual grocery items AND grouped ingredient lists for more involved recipes. While the visibility of the grouped ingredients isn't as good, it allows us to uncheck the completed item and everything gets added to the grocery list right away (talk about a time saver!).
- We also added a weekly reminder to decide the meals for the following week and update the grocery list accordingly.
- We included links to any needed recipes everywhere(!), so we would be sure to find it without too much searching later on. I just realized that some of the Pinterest links I've saved are disappearing, so this is more important than ever, and it might be time to start printing recipes out!
The pain points
Too much time was wasted looking up recipes (many of which we haven't tried), stressing over when to eat each thing, and we relying too heavily on prepackaged dishes and pasta, in particular, like Annie's Mac & Cheese.
The revamp process
We discussed our goals for meal planning based on these findings and decided that we wanted to make a fixed rotating menu spanning multiple weeks, to cut down on planning time, with the option for a new dishes throughout. In this menu, we wanted to deprioritize pasta and boxed meals, and prioritize vegetables and rice instead. This is how we did it...
- Got 24 blank cards and wrote a favorite dish on each until I ran out of ideas, then duplicated a few until each had a dish.
- Organized the cards in groups of six and matched them by difficulty/creativity to the days we feel most adventurous/patient. Tuesdays and Fridays get our laziest dishes, like burritos, andouille & rice, or fried rice.
- Entered dishes into our meal calendar, skipping Sundays for our new dish option, and set them to repeat every four weeks.
- Added "sautéed vegetables" and "salad" to the grocery list, so we can pick up what looks best instead of searching for a particular thing.
What I'm most excited about
Now, when the weekly reminder pops up, all I'll have to do is take a look and adjust dishes as needed for the events in the coming week and add a dish to Sunday - woo! If we make any additional changes to the plan based on our experiences, I'll be sure to let you know.
Until then... Bon appétit!
