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Meal planning is a great way to save money and plan for the week ahead. It can help you use up ingredients, avoid over-spending at the supermarket and take away some of the mental load of ‘What shall we cook for dinner tonight?’.
However, there are definitely times when meal planning can feel like a chore. Here are some ideas of what to try when you’re fed up with meal planning and need some new ideas.
How To Mix Up Your Meal Planning
1. Get The Family Involved
Getting the family involved is a great way to mix up your meal planning, especially if you have children. Ask each person which meal they would like to eat in the next week. They might come up with things you hadn’t thought of or dishes you’ve not cooked in ages.
If you want to get your children into cooking, this is also the perfect way to encourage them in the kitchen, making the dish they have chosen in your meal plan.
2. Pick A Country
Choose a country and have a themed week. Often we associate one or two dishes with a country, such as pizza and pasta with Italy, but their overall cuisine has a lot more to offer. Do some research and find lots of new recipes to try.
3. Have an ‘Around the World’ Week
If sticking to one country doesn’t seem like it’s going to work, then you could try an around the world week instead where you try a dish from a different country each day. This is another one in which children can be easily involved by allowing them to choose a country, pick a dish and maybe do a little bit of research too.
4. Try A Colour Themed Week
Meal planning a colour-themed week is a great way to encourage your family to eat more fruit, vegetables and salad and maybe try some new dishes too. While making a red or green dish is easy, making an entirely purple or orange dish is much trickier but also lots of fun.
4. Social Inspiration
There are some amazing food accounts across social media. Below I’ve listed a few of my favourites from Instagram. They vary quite a bit but are mostly homely meals and fakeaways.
5. Use Recipe Apps
Recipe apps can be an excellent place to find inspiration and my personal favourites are Yummly and the BBC Good Food App. Even when I don’t use the exact recipe I find it inspiring enough to be able to change things into dishes my whole family will eat simply by changing an ingredient or two.
6. Have An ‘Easy’ Week
There are weeks when I feel like the last thing I want to do is cook, or even meal plan to begin with. If I know I’m going to be especially busy with work or we have lots of visiting or general chores and appointments planned. On these weeks it can be very tempting to order takeaway far more often than I would like.
One way I like to combat this is by making things extra easy for myself. While I rarely resort to having ready meals every night, I do buy the occasional ready-meal curry. I’ll also buy fresh pasta and microwave rice, just because they are easy to prepare and can be paired either with something I’ve batch-cooked or something in the slow cooker.
7. Change Up Where You Eat
They say a change is as good as a rest and that can definitely be true when it comes to meal planning. Planning to eat somewhere different can give you a whole new perspective. Why not create a picnic dinner (which can be eaten inside if the weather is bad) or plan for a BBQ or Tapas to be eaten in the garden?
Final Meal Planning Tips
Here are my final tips for meal planning for your family.
- Try ‘Family Style’ meals where everything is served in the middle of the table and everyone helps themselves. While this does create more mess, children often eat more when they can choose what goes on their plate.
- Plan around your life. Slow cooker meals are a lifesaver when everyone is home or eating at different times. School holidays are great for letting the children get involved, such as making homemade pizza.
- Meal plans are never set in stone. If you don’t fancy something, switch the days around or make something different. Don’t feel bad for mixing things up!
- Batch cooking can help you get ahead. We usually pick one weekend day a month to batch cook chilli, bolognese and other dishes to make life easier during the week when there’s more going on.
