It is 4 o’clock, you just got home after a long day at work and you realize that you have no idea what to make for dinner. You search frantically through your freezer and your recipe box.
Finally, you find your perfect recipe just to realize that you are missing the main ingredient. By then it is too late to come up with another plan so you load the kids into the van and go to the nearest drive through. Your kids are happy, but you are feeling guilty that you just fed your kids an unhealthy dinner. After all you are a good mom and all good moms feel guilty if they think they could have done better.
Does that scenario sound familiar? I am sure most mothers out there go through it more often than they like to. Is there a solution to it? Yes! All you need is a little bit of planning ahead and you’ll always be prepared for dinner.
Start by looking ahead into the week. Are you planning to cook dinner every day or are you going out on one of the evenings? Do you have a weekly pizza night, etc? For example, I have some menus that are created for a 5 day week and some for a full week. It all depends on my work schedule and my family s activities.
Look through your favourite recipes and choose the ones that you will prepare for the week. Mix and match. If you have chicken on Monday, you probably don’t want to have chicken again on Tuesday. Be creative!
Choose recipes that are nutritious but not too time consuming to prepare. On busy days do not forget about your Crockpot. It can be a life saver!
Once you have your menu planned out, it is time to put all the ingredients on a shopping list. Arrange the shopping list according to the sections of your grocery store so you’re not running back and forth. For example: Produce, Meat, Dairy, Bakery etc.
Make as many weekly menus as you want to and keep them saved on your computer or in a binder so you can cycle through them.
My goal is to create 52 menus for every week of the year. That way my family will never complain about lack of variety.
Keep in mind that different seasons will need different menus. For example your summer menus might have mostly barbeque recipes while in the winter you will use the oven quite often.
Your life will be a lot less stressful with this weekly menu planning. Trust me on that. I did just that and I always can answer the once dreaded question:” What’s for dinner?”
If you don’t have time to make your own dinner menus, you are more than welcome to use mine. I created them using my family s tried and tested recipes. They all have shopping lists included, so all you have to do, is choose and print!
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