Home Help: Meal Planning

Meal planning is one simple step that will help you create a great atmosphere at home for your family. You don't even have to have meal planning mastered to improve dinner time and the stress of figuring out what to feed the hungry people in your house. I've heard it said that you should know what you're serving your family for dinner by 10am. It really helps me if I am not rushing around at 5 or 6 wondering what's for dinner. So you may not have a 12 month long meal plan lined out, as long as you know in the morning what you're family will be eating for dinner that evening, you're off to a good start!


This piece of advice also shows up in one of my favorite blogs; Like Mother, Like Daughter in the post about beginning the journey towards being more organized in the kitchen. Leila writes that meal planning doesn't have to be you wracking your brain every week for menu plans. She suggests you get everyone involved in the planning,  "once and for all, you all brainstorm together and create a Master Menu List. Then you use that to make your weekly or monthly lists." 
Another tip from Leila is to categorize menus; make a menu that is full of meal ideas that are less expensive and create a menu full of more extravagant ideas. She also suggests incorporating some of your favorite restaurant style meals. At our house we like to look up copycat recipes online from our favorite restaurants. Then we like to "judge" the finished meal to see if it really measures up to the restaurant!

I do think there comes a time when a mom or dad needs to work to improve the standards of what the kids want to eat. So if you ask your family for input and they all ask for ice cream and french fries for every meal you may need to try some healthier meals that may or may not always work. Here are some ideas from the Wichita Eagle for healthy eating:
Research backs up these 10 ideas for getting your kids to eat their veggies: from the Wichita Eagle