Meal Planning Strategy

When it comes to meal planning knowing yourself is half the battle.  If you are like me, you like to put off meal planning as long as possible.  Why?  Because it seems so daunting.  At least for me it is.  I am working on simplifying my meals. Which will then hopefully lead to less items in my cart, and less time writing items down, and less time searching the grocery store.

Knowing yourself.  I used to think that I had to think of 7 meals all at once. This can deterred me from making a weekly meal plan.  I have a hard time of coming up with 7 different meals that I know I am going to want to eat.  Unfortunately for me if I am not in the mood for a certain food even if I love it.  I just can't eat it.  Does anyone else have this dilemma?  This is why when I go to meal plan for the week, I only make myself come up with four meals, or three if that is all I can come up with.  But there are seven days in a week you ask? Yes there are seven days in a week.  But usually we will make something with the ingredients we already have, or have left overs. Which happens every once in a while.  Frozen pizza usually saves us about once a week and we typically go over to families on Sunday.  We will usually run to the store to fetch things here or there to come up with another meal.  We typically like to dine out as a family once a week as well. 

Grouping like ingredients when writing out your list of ingredients
I know this one sounds a bit obvious.  But for me I had to make myself do it.  Take the time to make a category for Produce, Breads/cereals, Meats/fish, Nuts, Dairy/cheese, Canned goods, Baking items, and Miscellaneous items.  I love the the Misc. category because nothing will get lost. And everything has a place.  If you  tend to buy a lot of spices then I might add a spice column.  Before you go grocery shopping it's good to scan your spice drawer and cabinets to see what needs to be restocked and what things you already have.  This way you are not doubling up on things, like produce.

Pick a day of the week to go grocery shopping and do it! 
I picked Monday as my day to go shopping.  I was good for two weeks and then fell off the wagon the third week.  So I need to get back on.  I noticed that some of the items at the grocery store needed to be restocked. I think it was due to the weekend and everyone doing their shopping and depleting all the food.  But the nice thing about Monday morning shopping is that it's pretty quiet and your children feel comfortable enough running throughout the store:)
  
 Keep recipes and recipe books all in one location
If you want to start meal planning it's nice not to have to round up different cook books and recipes all throughout the house.  I will print out a recipe and then I will jump right into making it.  This leads to getting the recipes all splattered. I need to remember to put them in my hand dandy binder.  If you haven't started a binder with sheet protectors then, now would be a good time to do that.  This way you can keep track of all your recipes and keep them in tip top shape for years to come.

I am still working on meal planning and grocery shopping.  Tell me what have you done to make it more enjoyable and more efficient.  Is writing out meal plans totally out of style for you?  Have your found some amazing app on your phone/I- pad that is amazing?  Do tell!