Meal planning, especially for your main meal of the day, is a great way to simplify your life. Pre-planning what you’re going to make for this main meal – for us it’s dinner – makes it so you can simply prepare the food instead of also having to figure out what to make when it’s time to cook.

This not only helps evenings to flow smoother by not having to decide what to cook at the last minute (or needing to defrost ingredients quickly), it also helps you to ensure that you have all of the items you need to prepare a particular meal on hand because you knew you were going to make it in advance. This also is a great way to reduce food waste (see HERE), as it helps you plan your shopping. With planning, you can buy only the food that you need for your planned meals and then to actually use the food you buy because you have a plan for it.

A great first step in meal planning is to make a master list of all the meals you and your family like to make and eat. This gives you a list to refer to when you’re trying to plan meals for the days or weeks ahead. That way, when you’re all sitting around the table and trying to figure out what to cook for the week (or however you do this; we frequently plan as a family so everyone has a say in what we prepare), you can pull out the list as a reference for meals that you’ve made in the past that everyone has enjoyed. I made a list like this for us. I think it’ll help us tremendously when we draw a blank as to what might be a good meal for a particular night, especially when we’re looking for something that can be prepared quickly or in advance with the slow cooker.

I encourage you to start a Meal Planning Master List. Each time you think of a great meal, write it down. Then, continue to add to the list as you think of other meals, or you try a new dish that you enjoy. That way, you have a list to refer to when you’re doing your meal planning. You’ll likely find this makes meal planning faster and easier, as well as helping you to avoid falling into a food rut.

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