Meal Planning is one totally important part of homemaking. Honestly, the energy you save is by itself a reason to meal plan. In addition to that, you will find that your grocery bill will go down tremendously because you know exactly what you need and there will be no wastage.
Save money, eat well? Now that is a win-win!
How does someone start meal planning? Are there any guidelines?
YES THERE ARE!!
Although not everything works for every family, these strategies should help you get your family to cooperate. Are there any other considerations you need to take into account? There can be no strategy that is so perfect that you can cover every single possibility but you can ease your burden (work and financial) quite dramatically if you do some planning.
There are FIVE main ways people menu plan:
1. Grocery store discounts and offer items
Going through the list of the weekly discounted products or offer items, gives us a budget friendly way to decide on what to cook – and from that point other items are added on.
2. Family favourites
In some families, everyone will be asked for their preference of 1 or 2 meals for the week and the menu is built around that.
3. Cuisine based
In this case, 1 cuisine is picked for the week and meals are prepared using similar ingredients and spice the whole week. This does not mean there is no variety of dishes because if it is well thought through, you will be having something different for each meal.
4. One new recipe
In some households, they like to try at least one new recipe each week and will base other meals around similar ingredients.
5. General choice
This is more a case of cooking family choices throughout the week.
You might want to try the different systems and see which one works best for you or you might want to try a combination of 2 or more of these.
Although these are the 5 general categories of menu planning, I am sure some of you have other methods and I would love to hear from you in the comments below.
Do remember that there are a few “techniques” or measures that help to make menu planning easier and more efficient.