HOW TO CREATE A WEEKLY MENU FOR YOUR FAMILY

How to create a weekly menu for your family

As tempting as it may seem, “fly by the seat of your pants” is not exactly the best philosophy when it comes to meal planning with a family. Beyond the actual logistics of just figuring it out as you go, when juggling school, work, and extracurricular and sports schedules, there’s also the general healthfulness and affordability of it all.

 It is a statement of fact that meal planning is better for you, and easier on the budget. It’s also an easy way to keep everyone in your family happy. Here’s how to get started. 

Step One: 

This may sound ridiculous, but the most important step in meal planning is in finding a good meal planner. Whether you work with a meal planning app, exclusively, or prefer a day-by-day meal planning notepad you hang on the side of your refrigerator, finding one that suits your personality and has all the features you need can help in motivating you to carry out the planning and follow through with your plan. 

Step Two: 

Assemble your family’s likes, dislikes, food allergies, and requests. 

Obviously, if you are the one that typically manages the kids and the cooking in the house, you already know what everyone can and cannot, or will and will not, eat. There’s no shame in complying to the preferences of your kids, either - within reason, of course (you can’t have Kraft mac ’n’ cheese every night for dinner). 

Pick a day each week that you have and can devote the time to sit down and plan out meals for the week, and use that as a time to check in with everyone as well. If they’ve been craving something, make sure to put that on the soon-to-cook list. If something has been upsetting their stomachs lately, consider dropping it for a while from your regular menu. 

Step Three: 

Consider themes, like Pizza Night, breakfast for dinner, sandwiches, etc. Then plan from there. Coming up with meal ideas can be very challenging, especially when you find yourself making the same, three or four dishes every night. Selecting a theme for each day of the week will help you create a unique meal plan that deviates from that generalized template on a week-by-week basis. 

Themes don’t have to be very specific, either. You could just do an ingredient, like chicken, beef, rice: and come up with meal ideas from there. 

Step Four: 

Get your shopping done, making sure to plan out the meals in the order by when your food is going to go bad. If you’ve got some fresh meats that have a short shelf life, put those meals in sooner on the plan. Leftovers can be reserved for later in the week (or leftovers used as ingredients, for example, leftover pieces of turkey put into a casserole from a roasted turkey dinner earlier in the week); and of course, produce should always be purchased in smaller but cost-efficient quantities. 

If you are planning for longer periods than a week (some even do a whole month plan, although it’s less common), make sure to buy meats in bulk and utilize freezer bags and your freezer. 

Also, when you’ve done your shopping, consider cutting, slicing, and otherwise prepping ingredients for ease of use during the week. With that being said, while it’s currently on trend to completely cook and store meals in the refrigerator one day a week as a meal prepping strategy, it doesn’t always work out in terms of the food staying fresh and tasty for the length of time it’s intended. 

And on that note, the Final Step: 

Accept that your meal plan may not always work out.

 Sometimes life will get in the way. You’ll have everything planned down to the tiniest snack, and then a flu bug will sweep your house and meals are reduced to Ginger Ale and soup broth. 

It’s also completely okay to accept defeat on a busy day, a rough day with your kids, or simply a level of parenting exhaustion that cries out: we need a break! On those days, scratch your meal plans, toss your ingredients in the freezer, and serve your kids that Kraft mac ’n’ cheese with dino nuggets they’ve been begging for (because, honestly, anything to get them to clean their room and stop fighting, right?). Those ingredients or planned meals can be reincorporated later, which especially comes in handy if you’ve had a creative block and can’t come up with any meal ideas. 

Meal planning doesn’t have to be too complicated. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be the hard and fast rule. Just remember that healthiness and financial gains are what you see at the end of your planning, and - if you’re lucky - a smoother running household with a happier (full) family. Happy planning!