Meal Planning at Casa DeWolfe

When I posted on FB today that my goal was to meal-plan through to Spring Break, I got a bunch of attention and a few questions so I promised a post rather than bury my reply in the shifting sands of FB. 

I’ve never asked my Mom if they meal -planned in any formal capacity when I was a kid, but I seem to recall a limited number of meals — maybe a two week rotation — and almost every Sunday was roast beef which meant roast beef hash on Mondays. If you’ve ever had to live on a budget, meal plans are invaluable — especially if you can plan to use any leftovers in a second meal (ours normally end up being lunch the next day).

Here’s why we meal plan:

1. Meal planning saves us time. We don’t have to waste time debating what we want for dinner or looking through fridge, freezer and cupboard for inspiration.
2. Meal planning saves us money. We can shop for ingredients a week ahead and only get what we need instead of what we might need. This also saves us last minute trips to the store for something we’ve run out of (and usually other stuff “while we are there.”).
3. Meal planning saves our health. Without a plan, we get pretty apathetic about food. Looking in cupboards for inspiration often ends up with take away, meals out, or food fair grazing. Not only is regularly eating out bad for our waistlines, it’s bad for our budget too.

Here’s how — at least this is what works for us.

Gather the following: a paper calendar, pencil, meal cards, cookbooks and family members.

1. The paper calendar & pencil are used to rough out the plan. We note on there which days we know we will be away or have other plans (e.g. gaming nights where we usually collectively put together a pot-luck meal). Paper calendar also serves as a good overview so that we don’t end up with three similar meals in a week or the same meal every Sunday. I print out my calendars using timeanddate.com.
2. Meal Cards are index cards for our “go to” meals — stuff like taco night, tuna casserole, sushi, or noodle bowl. These are meals we prepare often enough to either not need a recipe or the cook book falls open to the recipe page.
3. Cook books are primarily for inspiration; I like to throw in a new recipe here and there and if it ends up being a “winner” it’ll get its own meal card before the next planning session. If it’s a “meh,” well at least we tried something new. We have a lot of cook books and of course sites like Pinterest also inspire ideas.
4. Family members have to give input. If I don’t get buy in, it doesn’t go on the plan. While this is very important for new recipes, it is also key for those recipes that one of us usually cooks (e.g. ratatouille is one of my things; cabbage rolls are one of Mike’s). Kiddo also gets one meal per week that is her job to prepare.

With everything ready, we sit down and start somewhere. This time we started with January 1st which got stuffed peppers. After that we try not to have multiples of any kind of cuisine or similar meals through the week. Weekday meals also tend to require less prep time and/or fewer ingredients or steps. After we run out of meal cards — this generally takes about 5 weeks with a few meals repeated because they are favourites — we start again. It took us less than an hour to plan through to March 10th; I could have kept going past that date, but we don’t know what we might be doing for spring break… aside from more meal planning. 😉

When everything is settled and we double-check the calendar, I add the meals as events on a shared Google calendar so we get reminders and can check them from work/school. We also have a space on our wall calendar in the kitchen. Overkill? Maybe, but I prefer “intentional redundancy.”