How To Meal Plan – Week #1

How To Meal Plan – Week #1

This month I’m taking part in a Meal Planning Bloggers Group Project. Created by The Organised Life Project & Katykicker , it is a group of bloggers sharing ideas on how to create interesting and tasty meals for the week. Meal planning is something I’m surprisingly good at but keep forgetting to do. I have all the ideas but usually none of the motivation! 😀 The key with a good meal plan is to make it easy to create the meals but also make the meals tasty so that you want to actually eat them. This blog post will be some simple basics on how to complete a good meal plan.

Step 1 – Store Cupboard/Larder

This is a vital part of any kitchen. Here are some staples to make sure you always have in. You’ll soon learn what works for your cooking and what items you use and don’t use.

Herbs/Condiments

1. Salt
2. Pepper
3. Mixed Herbs
4. Italian Mixed Herbs
5. Cayenne Pepper
6. Chilli Powder
7. Mild Curry Powder

Sauces

1. Ketchup
2. Sweet Chilli Sauce
3. Tabasco
4. Hot Pepper Sauce
5. Soy Sauce
6. BBQ Sauce

Additional Items

1. Chopped Tomatoes
2. Coconut milk
3. Passata
4. Frozen Spinach
5. Frozen Chopped Peppers
6. Dried Pasta
7. Garlic bulbs
8. Ginger

Obviously this isn’t a complete list – you will build items up over time.

Step 2. Print Out Your Week

I have created a simple weekly sheet to start your meal planning with. These meal plans will be for dinners only but you can also have them for lunches and lunches/breakfast. Here you can write out what you are going to eat and when. This helps you identify where there can be cross-overs. When I do a meal plan I tend to start on a Sunday. The reason for this is that I often have a roast on a Sunday and so this can become part of dinner on Monday and even Tuesday if you are lucky.

Step 3. Plan Your Week

As I said in step 2, I put a bit of thought into my meal plan. To start with I make Monday’s dinner based on the meat from Sunday night. If you do this three times a week you can have 6 dinners planned with ease. There are some classic parings of roasts and secondary meals that go together perfectly. I will outline these in another blog post.

Step 4. Buy Food

A meal plan requires food! You can buy food online or in a shop. From a major supermarket or to one of the lower-cost shops you can get your food anywhere. My only recommendation would be to make sure you get food with a long use-by/best-before date. Although Best-Before dates are just a suggestion, it will ensure your food lasts as long as anyone.

Step 5. Cook Food

This should be the easiest bit of a meal plan – Cook your food! Most of my cooking happens in the oven or on the hob. Occasionally I will use the microwave to re-heat a meal. When you cook you will also be bringing out the items bought in Step 1 – get those tastes cranked up to the max. It can also help alter the taste of the 2nd use of the meat so that you don’t feel like you are eating the same thing again.

Step 6. Store Food

A bit of a boring one this but it is vital to make sure that no-one gets ill when eating meals. I am a great believer in clic’n’store as these help keep food covered in the fridge, it can be taken to work and it can also be heated in the microwave. It is very important that you keep COOKED meat above UNCOOKED meat. Hopefully this is stuff you already know but its good practice to keep raw meat on the bottom shelf of the fridge and I keep my cooked meat on the top shelf.

Meal Plan – Its Easier Than You Think

So that’s it. Creating your meal plan can be done one evening. If you’d like you can also join the Meal Plan Blog Group. You can find out more information – HERE. Watch out for future blog posts by me and guest posters with meal ideas, planning help and storage recommendations. If there is any help you need with cooking or ideas you’d like to work on then please get in touch.