A No-Worries Week of Meals: Quick Tips for Planning & Preparing Meals at Home
Back-to-school time usually leads to busy schedules and hurried meals. The stress of getting meals on the table can sometimes be overwhelming and have us resorting to take-out or frozen dinners. But there is a better way! By following these quick tips, you will be able to design a no-worries week of homemade meals that can hold up to any busy schedule.
- Make a list of recipes that your family loves. Keep ingredients for the top 5 on hand at all times.
- Plan all 3 daily meals for the entire week. Be sure to include snacks and dessert options.
- As you are meal planning, use your favorite grocery delivery or curbside pickup app to add recipe ingredients to your shopping cart for your next order. (Make the pickup day the same every week.)
- Make a list on your menu plan of items that can be pre-prepped like chopping onions for several days of meals, prepping school snacks in individual containers ready for lunches, portioning out salad items, or baking French bread the day before you need it, etc.
- Before you start preparing any meal, mise en place your ingredients, utensils, appliances, and cooking tools needed.
- Make a double batch of freezable recipes, one for tonight’s meal and one to freeze for later.
- As you are cleaning up the kitchen from the meal you just ate, look ahead to the next meal and prep as much as you can ahead of time.
- Most important, sometimes things just don’t go as planned. Give yourself grace and a stock of easy-to-prepare meals at the ready if this happens. A quick turkey sandwich or quesadilla using leftovers will fill bellies just as well as any 5-course meal a chef could have prepared.
Meal planning can be a challenge, especially when you have busy work and family schedules that don’t always coincide. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the prospect of cooking dinner every night or packing lunches for your children each morning. But with some creativity and careful meal planning, it doesn’t have to be so hard! Use these tips to make life easier on yourself this week.
What are your favorite go-to tricks? Leave us a comment below!
