Menu Planning Made Easy with These 4 Tips

Menu planning doesn’t have to be a dreaded task. If you follow these tips you’ll be planning like a pro and looking forward to family time around the table.

1. Make a list of your family’s favorite meals. When you manage expectations and stick to the basics it makes planning so much easier. Don’t get me wrong I love new recipes! And admittedly I’m addicted to cookbooks but I save new recipes for the weekends or days that aren’t filled up with activities.

2. Create a system for meal rotation. Why recreate the wheel when you don’t have too. After I have gathered all of my family‘s favorite recipes I sort them out into days of the week. My goal is to create a weekly meal plan that rotates recipes over the course of a month. For example: Week 1 and Week 3 are the same. Week 2 and Week 4 are the same.

3. Get your family involved. This is a group effort and planning meals together adds to the fun of family dinners. Grab your favorite cookbooks, magazines, and online recipe ideas and have everyone pick out their favorite. Each person is responsible for helping to prep and prepare the night of their meal. Kids will love the responsibility and you’ll love the extra help.

4. Make each day a theme. It‘s so much easier to plan when you know that Mondays you’re having chicken, Wednesdays you’re having pasta, and Sundays are a crockpot meal. This will be a time saver and stress reliever.

The best advice I ever got was to make it easy! Happy planning!